P2 Card freakout - I'm really, really not happy.

Try P2 Log or the Batch Converter included with the Serious Magic DVCProHD Decoder.

P2 Log has a reputation for being tolerant of file damage, and the SM Batch Converter doesn't need anything other than MXF files to do its work, and it can output QuickTime files.
 
On a separate note, the problem you experienced has nothing to do with the camera or P2 card. The Mac screwed up and trashed the file system when it ran out of battery power.
 
Sorry, but if anything you should be blaiming yourself. Neither the P2 nor the mac is responsible for you not checking for proper power battery level before inserting your card. Even the Panasonic manual warn you to check the batttery before pluging in the camera to a computer... Obviously the same thing should apply for the computer battery.

Unfortunatly, Technical problems will happen from time to time with any hardware and with any cameras, p2 or not p2. Make yourself a check list so that those kind of mistakes do not happened again.
 
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It's a problem with the OS -- it should flush all pending writes before shutting down the PCMCIA slot if there is a mass storage device in the slot, and it should remount the storage device (load the critical file system information) when powering the slot back up.

If the Mac powered down the slot, the card was removed and put in the camera, was then written to, put back in the Mac, and then the slot powered up again without remounting, the Mac would have used outdated file system information and the P2 card contents would certainly have been trashed shortly thereafter.
 
JimmyTheSaint said:
I have no idea what happened. Put the card in the PCMCIA slot in my Macbook, (I've done this about 20 times with no issues) unfortunately this time the low power safety comes on, I plug the mac in to wake it back up - and viola - P2 card is like swiss cheese.
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Why were you offloading clips on battery power to begin with? Thats like cardinal rule Number one. Dont render, trandsfer (large) files, or leave an Ipod attached when on battery power. you will hate your life later when the battery runs out.
 
P2 is about as close as most have seen to bulletproof when it comes to other available recording mediums.

It sucks that you had that problem, don't get me wrong.

Nobody said you shouldn't run off of battery power though, just that you should make sure you have enough battery power to do an offload, render, backup, etc, etc.

If you shoot a bazooka at it, a bulletproof vest is going to fail :thumbsup:

For whatever reason, people inherently have more problems with p2 on a mac. That's not a p2 issue though. It's a Mac issue.

Later,
Jason
 
JimmyTheSaint said:
And for the record Tim, what you're saying is like telling Jodie Foster it was her fault for getting raped because she wore a skirt when she left the house. Yeah, I'm going to be using battery powered devices Panasonic - please dont f* me.
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LMMFAO!!!! Where did Jodie foster come from? lol....

Thats funny because i just tried a similar experiment. put my computer on battery, and set it to go to sleep in three minutes on battery power. did it while trandsferring data. computer went to sleep, when it woke up, the data on card was fine. But the data on the Cdrive, were incomplete and thus "deleted". they just ddint exist.

but the card survived fine.

And FWIW i meant leaving them on battery power unattended. and i knwo how they can go to sleep on you in like an instant if youre not paying attention.
 
JimmyTheSaint said:
Thanks for the tips, I'll see if I can find anybody with the gear that's willing to help me out - fortunately (or un as the case may be) I am Mac based and don't want to spend a bunch of jangle on software I hope I'll never need again.
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P2 Log is a Mac application, that should be the first thing to try, and why I mentioned it first.

If that doesn't work, you can download a free trial of the Batch Converter and have someone with a PC install it. If all else fails, PM me a link to the MXF files and I'll see if I can get any of it converted to QT for you.
 
well what yo ushould do now, fill a P2 card up and try to replicate it. see if it happens again. like force it to happen if yo ucan.
 
I recently got very corrupted files on a P2 card, nothing happened that could have caused it. Just swapping them out during a very historically valuable interview, copying the files to a hard drive on my Powerbook, got back to the studio, poof, lost over half the footage. The last round that was still on the P2 cards: we went to a Mac, to a PC, used various software, and the majority of the clips, directly off the card, were not readable, period.

Anyone who thinks P2 is about as bullet proof a medium as you can get is very uninformed. P2 is no where near as bullet proof as tape. I'm currently in process of talking with my producers to re-evaluate the whole P2 tapeless system. My producers for this doc are pushing me hard to find a tape solution, and I'm very close to agreeing with them.

"It's not the camera or P2 card, it's the Mac." That's about the most ignorant statement I've ever read. The camera, the P2 card, and the computer make up the "system" as a whole. P2 cards are no good without a computer. The camera is no good without P2 cards and a computer. You can NOT separate them out. The System as a whole is fragile, fraught with glitches and data corruption. That is a simple fact.

Tapeless is far from bullet proof, far from secure, far from being as reliable as tape, and that is just a fact of life, kids. Face it.

I've never had a tape go bad just from using it. I've had a P2 card corrupt historically very valuable footage that no one else has ever gotten. Something that would not have happened in a million years with tape. I shot with Mini-DV and VHS-C tapes for just over to ten years now and never had a bad tape. Shot with the HVX for less than one year, and I've had lots of corrupted footage and problems with the overall system.

I love my HVX, don't get me wrong, I love the camera. But the whole tapless system (not to mention the on going battle with HVX's noise problems), by its own mechanical properties, opens itself up to infinitely more vulnerabilities than tape. Is P2 the most bullet proof medium to date? No way, not in any form or manner, that's just ignorant to believe such a thing.

When the DVX-100 came out, the big problem was capturing 24p natively. Did people post about tapes going bad and corrupt data on tapes? Hardly...

Just so we have our FACTS straight.
 
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BenB said:
"It's not the camera or P2 card, it's the Mac." That's about the most ignorant statement I've ever read. The camera, the P2 card, and the computer make up the "system" as a whole. P2 cards are no good without a computer.
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I think the point here is that the problem likely lies with the Mac, not the entire computing platform in general. The fact that several Mac users have reported problems with P2 footage while offloading, and virtually no PC users have had issues leads me to believe that the problem lies somewhere with the Mac. You suggest that the P2 cards or the camera are to blame, when it could easily be something within your Mac.

Yes, I know you tried using a PC to offload as well, but if you'd already inserted the P2 card into the Mac, the damage was likely already done.

Now I can't say if the ongoing Mac issues are due to an error by Panasonic, or if it is something with the Mac technology that has issues, but I can conclude that it quite likely has little or nothing to do with P2 technology in general.

If you have given up on the HVX, that's your choice. I won't try to talk you out of it -- I'm just responding for the sake of everyone else reading this thread.
 
How can the Mac corrupt data on a P2 card it can't even write to? That makes no sense. P2 cards are not corrupt by just sticking them into a slot. I'm a retired IT Engineer, that's just hogwash.

There ARE corruption stories on PCs, I've witnessed two myself. Bear in mind the majority of HVX and FS users are Mac users, so of course we'll hear from them more than PC users. Data is data and is pron to problems at ever stage in the game.

Point is, P2 is not bullet proof, nor anywhere near it.

Yes, PCs occationally have had problems with P2, I've seen it with my own two eyes, first hand. So, P2 is not bullet proof, and very far from it, period.
 
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