P2 Genie for Windows is out!

It's really a nice piece of software. Now if necessary I can even work without P2 assistant (or Digital Media Assistant like DC said).
 
I have a small feature request.

I would love it if P2 Genie would create a DVD for me of my P2 card. Nero is fully scriptable and I know it wouldn't be that hard to make the second destination a DVD.

At the very least P2 Genie could allow me to run a custom script when the copy is complete and I will script Nero myself.
 
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I don't think that's practical, even if it is possible.

Burning a DVD will be significantly slower than copying the data from the P2 card to a hard drive. And in the interest of data integrity, I would not burn at speeds above 4x (8x max), or the PI/PO errors go up, and being able to read the data back is paramount. So it will probably take ~15 minutes to burn 4GB of data to DVD. If you have 8GB cards and want to burn that to DL media, your burning speed will drop down even lower, probably 2.4x.
 
Yeah, that's about how long it takes.

It is possible. No offense, but whether you think it's practical or not is not what I'm asking. The director is freaked out by P2, and handing him physical copies of the cards at the end of a day (with the data still backed up on HDD obviously) is making him sleep easier. It's that simple.

I just want to take a little more off the plate of my AC if I can, so I'm asking for a small, simple feature.

Even if the P2 Genie guys don't want to mess with DVD burning, it would be easy to get P2 Genie to run a .bat or something at the end of a successful card copy, so I can script Nero to burn a data verified DVD.
 
Other users have requested a feature like that. It would however (from my point of view as the developer) be stupid to make a feature like that and only have it work with one program (like Nero) so I'll look into what a feature like that would take to implement. Maybe - as suggested - I could make it run a script of some sort. VBScript would be the most obvious choice.
 
I agree that supporting Nero only sounds like an odd choice. The only reason I phrased it like that is because the programmer guy I was talking to on the movie said that Nero is all he would trust and that it's easy to script for.

I think the degree of difficulty would skyrocket if you start trying to make P2 Genie burn DVDs natively, although I obviously have no idea either way about this kind of thing.

I think automatically running a user specified script is probably the simplest, most effective solution for the short term.

If something like that were to be patched in, I'm sure the brilliant minds here could help others with scripts to automate the DVD burning... I'm sure I can post the one we will use on this movie (if we get the P2 Genie script support) for everyone to use.

It would be much appreciated!
 
Building in native CD/DVD burning would be out of the scope of the programs area so that won't happen, but I can see why building in support for scripting would be really powerful so I'll put some thoughts into it and see if I can come up with a good solution that would be cost-effective.

Tony
 
Hi Tony, I received a beta P2 genie some weeks ago but did not work, now I have time to test, could I Try a new updated cersion?

Thanks!!!
 
Tony,

Just downloaded a P2Store's worth of footage, in mixed formats, with one effective P2Genie click.

Thanks for putting this app. out there. Panasonic should license and package this program with every HVX system.

Cheers,

e
 
overlandfilms said:
Tony,

Just downloaded a P2Store's worth of footage, in mixed formats, with one effective P2Genie click.

Thanks for putting this app. out there. Panasonic should license and package this program with every HVX system.

Cheers,

e
Click to expand...

Thanks for your kind words - I'm glad me app is being put to good use as valuable production tool ;-) Panasonic is most welcome to approach me and Anders with an offer is someone is listening in.
 
erdiaz said:
Hi Tony, I received a beta P2 genie some weeks ago but did not work, now I have time to test, could I Try a new updated cersion?

Thanks!!!
Click to expand...

Sorry, Ernesto but the P2 Genie is out of beta and being sold in it's final form. I'm still working on the trial-version of the P2 Genie which I might put out in a week or so. It's taking longer than anticipated because I want to limit the application to run only a certain amount of times and have a time limit. I will post when the trial is out.
 
Not certain if this is related to the P2 Genie, but I have not had the problem untill I installed it.

Every now and then I get a prompt that says, there is no disk in (insert drive letter) drive.
 
tlorenzo said:
Sorry, Ernesto but the P2 Genie is out of beta and being sold in it's final form. I'm still working on the trial-version of the P2 Genie which I might put out in a week or so. It's taking longer than anticipated because I want to limit the application to run only a certain amount of times and have a time limit. I will post when the trial is out.
Click to expand...


Thanks tlorenzo, I really don't care if it only works 3 or 5 times I just want to see it working without problems on my equipment, if it does, I'll buy it.

Thanks again.

:dankk2:
 
Duster, that is the external I use... I have a bunch of them and leave them with clients when I freelance... This workflow is idiot proof and fast... pop a P2 card into my laptop and it automatically copies it to TWO drives and then formats the card... how's that for non-stick!




ash =o)
 
Green Hornet said:
Not certain if this is related to the P2 Genie, but I have not had the problem untill I installed it.

Every now and then I get a prompt that says, there is no disk in (insert drive letter) drive.
Click to expand...

Doesn't sound like a problem related to P2 Genie. If the problem occurs when P2 Genie isn't running then it can't be related to it since P2 Genie doesn't install anything on the client computer that runs when the application isn't running.
 
Dusterdoo: P2 Genie will work with any external storage device that connects to Windows with its own drive letter.
 
I think this is a nifty little program, but why are people so desperate for a program that just emilates a basic drag and click type function? You can do it in 8 instead of 12 seconds? No offense Tony, I definitely respect what you're doing. I'm just wondering what it is that makes people need a $33 program to do what was designed for you to do on your own. Are people that afraid of their own human error?
 
keep your laptop lid closed - pop in card - da da sound, wait until beep sound. remove card. keep shooting. I have used the P2 Genie for about 30 hours of p2 dumps so far. MONEY! When you are in harsh environments, you can protect your laptop better with P2 Genie. Think of it as making a laptop a p2 store with MORE storage. You can have 160gb of dump space.
 
Nathan Beaman said:
I think this is a nifty little program, but why are people so desperate for a program that just emilates a basic drag and click type function? You can do it in 8 instead of 12 seconds? No offense Tony, I definitely respect what you're doing. I'm just wondering what it is that makes people need a $33 program to do what was designed for you to do on your own. Are people that afraid of their own human error?
Click to expand...

I've been using my HVX to shot weddings and other projects where I'm using multiple cards worth of footage for one product. For me, it is worth way more than $33 to be able to compile the cards into one folder. I cannot explain how nice that is. I would almost say critical. Importing into your NLE of choice one card at a time is painful. Setting a virtual card up in the P2 viewer for each folder created by copying a card over is brutal. The whole reason I went to P2 was to make things simpler, and for me, the P2 genie puts icing on the cake.

For example, last weekend I shot a wedding and my workflow was like this. Take full card and pop it in laptop, P2 Genie copies the card to a pre-designated folder for that wedding on an external hard drive. Takes 5 seconds, I go back to shooting. Come back a little later and hit "refresh" in the P2 viewer (which was previously set to see my designated folder as a virtual card. Now I see the clips and can confirm that everything copied over okay, and I hit "erase" on P2 genie. Takes 10-15 seconds I go back to shooting. At the end of the day I have all the clips in one folder, I was able to confirm they copied ok, and when I get back to my computer I bring them all in with one click....... ahhhhh life is good.

Now, Tony. I definitely think you should talk with Panasonic about licensing this to them or selling it to them so they incorporate it into the P2 viewer, because this program should integrated right from the get go. No one should be without it!!!!!
 
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