what is the fastest and most reliable way to ingest P2 into a powerbook

R

Richard Sutcliffe

Well-known member
Im thinking we will ingest through the PCMCIA slot using the disk image workflow I saw posted on this board.

Would anyone suggest that P2 genie or P2 log would be a better alternative?
 
Disk image may be overkill

Disk image may be overkill

The disk image thing may be overkill. It is surely slow as heck. If you have that much time to be able to spend and lose tying up the chips I can't see it hurting your persay. But if you backup the RAW MXF stuff (Contents and LastClip.txt) then simply using P2 Genie, P2 Logger or FCP's built in import function right from the cards are all perfectly good choices.

If you don't need the automated re-naming and handy file management that Genie and/or Logger offer then you may as well just import using FCP straight from the cards. If you want some better naming and folder management tools then use one of the two available software solutions.

The whole disk image thing providing better stability is still just a theory. I'm not questioning the validity of the source, but until Apple puts it on a white page and stamps their logo on it, they aren't officially claiming it a more stable option. That's not to say it isn't, but if you really go down that thread, there are some arguements analysing the fact that it may very well not be (not that its less stable, just that it doesn't actually offer anything for you).

cheers.
 
I highly recommend P2 Genie, it's a great time saving tool when you're on a shoot.

In fact I think Panasonic should pay the developer a large sum of money to include it as a standard front end to their P2 driver software.
 
Panasonic gave Windows users a free app, but denied it for Mac users. Seems that Panasonic is not as Mac friendly as we thought. Apple does all that dirty work for Panasonic. Funny, Focus claims the majority of FS-100 sales have been to Mac users, but Panny thinks we're not worth the trouble.

P2 Genie, I love it, and forget the disk image scheme, it's a waste of time, IMHO.
 
What he said. Ben is absolutely right. (Is there an echo in here?)
The safest and fastest workflow is to stick the P2 card into your laptop or tower (with a PC Card adapter) and just drag and drop the darned thing and be done with it. Back it up to another drive, of course. But that's that. And you can import the metadata into a FileMaker database. Simple. Clean. Safe.
And the "disk image" system is emphatically a waste of time. It buys you no safety. That's not what disk imaging was designed for.
 
I usually just leave them in the camera and copy them directly. I don't think I've removed my P2 cards but once, maybe twice since I got my camera.
 
Speed = direct import into FCP on a single drive or level 0 Raid
Speed +Peace-of-mind = direct import into FCP on a Level 1 Raid
Versatility = Copy to Folder
Versatility + Peace-of-mind = Disk image to Level 1 Raid
Versatility + Peace-of-mind + redundancy = Disk image to two separate drives or DVD archive.

--

Rob
 
that all sounds great but why isn't anyone acknowledging the lack of reliability of the card mounting on the powerbooks? it's been mentioned so many times and everyone i know is experiencing it. a powerbook in the field with a straight p2 ingest is simply NOT a reliable workflow regardless of what application or process is being used to transfer the footage (unless time to reboot is a non-issue). yeah, i know i sound pissed. and i am. mostly because there doesn't seem to be any response from apple or pany on the issue.
 
I've never had any card mounting issues, and we do it all the time. None of my clients or associates using P2 cards and a Powerbook have had this issue. Is there a really wide spread problem? Just asking.
 
BenB said:
I usually just leave them in the camera and copy them directly. I don't think I've removed my P2 cards but once, maybe twice since I got my camera.
Click to expand...


I am also tending to this is more and more.
 
I would have used this method, but it was a concert we were shooting for an upcoming DVD. I wouldn't have been able to make this work given there was no time to stop recording and transfer.
 
Hi Davetronic,

I went with the offload of P2 to powerbook via pcmicia. I did find that transfer times were inexplicably variable, sometimes twice as long as other transfers but that was the only issue I had. We had four cameras cycling through 3 cards each all day and never had any issues with the powerbook and p2 cards. I read about the powerbook issues other users were having but my experience was good. We were using p2 log to view captures.
 
Richard, thanks for the info. On a tip from SouthCoast in another thread, I went through a job with this formula: 1) eject the P2 card and lock it 2) do a standard drag and drop copy onto an external hard drive 3) eject P2 card from desktop 4) power off card and 5) remove from laptop, unlock card and put back into camera.

I had 10 card loads that all worked just fine.

On another note, I did have 1 card load from the night before (different workflow) that gives me an "error -36" when trying to read or copy the card from the laptop it was off loaded to, leaving the .mxf file unaccessible. Have you ever run into that or know of a fix? It would be tragic if the first 10 minutes of this particular concert wasn't accessible from my cam position (not to mention give me some reservations about shooting P2).
 
addendum,

There was also an issue with clearing the cards in the powerbook. we deleted the contents of the card before recycling them to the cameras. The cards regularly appeared as full when inserted into the hvx. No content was visible in the thumbnail view but until the cards were formatted they would not read correctly in the camera.

My ersonal view was that when reusing cards it is good practice to do a reformat in the camera before each use. cleairng the content off before sending it back to the ops removed any doubt about whether the card had been ingested or not.
 
I too inserted the cards back into the camera in order to reformat. My choice was simply due to time constraints having to manage both shooting and the workflow (not ideal). It worked out just fine, but required an exacting attention to detail in order to make sure the correct slot was formatted when both cards were loaded in the camera.

Just for clarificaiton in case you were also addressing my latter question: the contents that are unreadable or writeable now had already been transfered off the card and onto the computer. Just can't access the .mxf file now.
 
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