A couple of Powerbook / P2 questions (tv commercial related)...

B

Brian_Broz

Active member
Heyy'all,

I've had the opportunity to work on a few "National" / North American spots with the HVX. Normally we have 4-8GB P2 cards + 4-4GB cards. My official position has been HD Tech, and my responsibilities include matching scene files and timecode in multicam shoots, offloading P2 cards to a Powerbook, setting up monitors and downconversion for video assist/playback etc.
Anyways...I have a couple issues that I'm still not comfortable with:

What is the proper way to format a P2 cards once offloaded? This is very important as there have been times where 25-30 people are standing around waiting! I'd like to clear the card 100% guaranteed on the laptop. It only works sometimes?!

Thus far I simply unlock the lastclip.txt (in getinfo) and drag that and the contents folder to the trash. Then empty the trash before ejecting. I have heard to hold the option key down while "trashing" the trash. Sometimes the cards when placed in the camera show no clips but a 4GB will be almost full. Not good when the dp+camera op+Camera assistant+grizzly bear+and trainer are standing by !

Secondly is there any good explanation why USB2 is sooo incredibly slow when hooked up to a PB G4 1.67? We have always used FW external drives (usually backing up 2 at once and then a 3rd drive after). But today we used USB2 (booo!). Normally FW400 gives around 1GB/min transfer (roughly) but today we were backing up to 2 USB2 Lacie drives (run through a USB2 Hub) and 6.5GB were taking approx 1 hour to transfer! I stayed 2 hrs after wrap and am still perplexed why it took so long. At one point I removed the hub out of the equation...no difference. It seemed 1 Lacie was faster than the other, but I would love to learn why. For next time!

Hoping somewone else had similar experiences...and can chime in! Working in the film world is a LOT different than the 4 person EFP crews I am used to! Enjoying it a lot, but time is so crucial on set.

Thanks for listening!
Cheers,


Brian Broz
 
From my experience it is best to reformat the card in the camera. It takes only a few seconds and works the same as if you were reformting a regular hard drive.
 
Maybe P2 Genie would format the cards? I really don't understand what the problem is with allowing you to just format the cards on the Mac; on the PC you just right-click the P2 card icon and say "format" and it does it in about two seconds. The Mac should be able to, but for some reason they don't allow it.

As for USB, Macs have always had sub-par USB performance. But the type of transfer times you're seeing are just silly. There's something wrong in how you're connecting; obviously I'd say get rid of the hub and try it directly. A decent USB drive on a PC can offload an 8GB card in about 8 minutes, so you certainly shouldn't be looking at 8x as long just because it's on a Mac. Mac USB performance will be slower, but not by a factor of 8!
 
try downloading the P2 store Manager. I don't know if it allows you to format the P2 card, but it allows you to format the P2 store. It should, tough.
 
P2 Genie would be a good $35 investment just to clear the cards, though I'd recommend using it for your entire capture operation.

As was stated, the P2Store, which we carry for back-up on shoots where we capture via laptop, offers a quick three-second card format operation.

Still, the easiest thing is the auto-erase function within P2Genie.

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Normally I like to format the card in the camera as it doesn't take that much time after you get used to the steps involved. However on some shoots I have not been able to do that as it was a continuous live shoot, so I just off loaded the P2 card via the mac PB to an external drive. Then I dragged the P2 contents & last clip.txt to the trash, held down option and emptied the trash. The cards showed as empty and I put it back in camera and continued recording with no problems.
 
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