2 x 4G or 2 x 8G P2???

[editatjoes]

Those of you that are in full swing with the HVX and P2, I need your opinion. Given a choice between 2 8 gig cards or 2 4 gig cards, on the surface the choice might seem obvious. 2 8 gig cards gives lots more shooting time per card; but when you start thinking about burning MXF files and lastclip.txt files to a permanent backup, a 4 gig card easily burns to one single layer DVD-R, which records at a much faster rate than any of the dual layer burners required to fit an 8 gig card on one disk. 4.5G DVDs can burn at up to 8x while dual later DVD+R functions are limited to 4x (someone correct me if I'm wrong here). My major question about P2 workflow is how to protect and archive footage effectively; so does the 4 gig card win this round?

I have the HVX, and have P2 available to rent/borrow when I need it, but soon I will buy my own. Trying to figure out which direction to go. Thanks for any input-

Joe Murray

 

[Green Hornet]

I can't imagine having half the recording times I currently get with the 8 gig cards.
I can't imagine only having 2 cards instead of 3.

I am still trying to imagine how to deliver footage to customers who only want the raw footage, and I have 8 gig cards.

I don't know if everyone can READ dual layer disks, or only dual layer devices.

Do firestores make this easier, or worse (due to having even more capacity)?

Has anyone tried to zip them, and then span the archive across multiple dvd's?

 

[dregenthal]

I can't imagine having half the recording times I currently get with the 8 gig cards. I can't imagine only having 2 cards instead of 3.

I can't imagine not having three 4gig cards . . . but that's what was available when I bought, and I've gotten used it to it.

I am still trying to imagine how to deliver footage to customers who only want the raw footage, and I have 8 gig cards.

Yeah that can be a problem unless they bring their own external hard drive . . .

I don't know if everyone can READ dual layer disks, or only dual layer devices.

You gotta have DL device to read.

Has anyone tried to zip them, and then span the archive across multiple dvd's?

You're not going to see much compression (if any) with MXF files.

 

[TedRR]

I went with the 8gig cards because I was afraid the 4 gig constant changes might frustrate my agancies and their clients instead of impressing them.
I can back-up with nobody watching.

I'm looking more forward then today. With HD and Blueray DVD's I'll be backing up to much larger then 8gig DVD's. I currently have about 6 300gig firewire drives for backing up. The prices have gotten much better.

By the way, we transfered 4 8 gig DVD's of footage for an out of town company and they claimed to have 8gig drives, but they couldn't read the DVD's. They claimed anything written over the split layer was corrupt???
We ended up sending them a hard drive.
Just a heads up.

 

[doccutter]

Ted, could you read the DVD's, or were they corrupt even for you? I was planning on the 8g p2 and DL dvd route.

 

[TedRR]

Yes, we could read the DVD's. We've used the Dual Layer for data and video before and didn't get an error while copying either. This was video converted to QT for their AVID system.

There was some vauge discussion about them NOT having a dual layer DVD, but later they said their GFX department had one and couldn't read over the half way point???

So as I said, this is just a "heads up" and might be thier problem. Not positive that there is an incompatability issue between DVD drives. But with the NON-Compatability issues in our industry, there might be something to be aware of.

What ever happend to friggin STANDARDS???:furious3:

 

[DC]

My experience is that two 4GB P2 cards work GREAT in combination with a laptop, especially in 720p 24N mode as I get about 10 minutes of storage per card. And they're cheaper!

Here is my workflow that NEVER has me waiting more than 5 seconds between cards:

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[1] I have my DMA (Digital Media Assistant) on set who grabs a full card and hands me a blank.

[2] He quickly spot checks the clips on the card with the P2 Viewer software.

[3] He then offloads the card onto my external (intermediate storage) hard drive connected to my laptop. {This is my personal hard drive and is meant to be formatted at least once by the end of the shoot.}

[4] Then he transfers the footage to the editor's external (extended storage) hard drive which is also connected to my laptop. Someone will eventually deliver this hard drive to the editor/NLE.

[5] He quickly verifies the new data on the two hard drives by spot checking clips with the P2 Viewer software's Virtual P2 card function.

[6] Then he formats that P2 card.

[7] And finally, he uses Nero to start burning a DVD-R (single-layer) backup - about 11 minutes burn-time for a typical 3.5GB or so.

------

All this takes maybe 15-20 minutes of work per card. By the time I'm done filling up the next card, my DMA is standing right behind me with a another blank card.

Anyway, it works out very nicely. I also have Avid on my laptop so we can start cutting native MXF's on the set, if need be. And simply by viewing the clips with the P2 Viewer software, we can evaluate any and all previous clips for whatever reason. We move quickly, easily and have all the data/archival backups we need.

P2 rules! Death to tape!

 

[doccutter]

Ted,
Thanks, I would just be backing up data in the field to put on a hard drive when I returned, so compatibility with other drives is not an issue, although it is ridiculous that a burned dvd-r wouldn't work in any other machine. "Single Layer" drives read replicated DL DVD's just fine...