P2 glitch similar to 'tape hits'

I understand that. But the card doesn't do anything to the footage once it's on there, the only way it could get scrambled is if the computer you plug it into somehow wrote to the card, or didn't ensure the data integrity during the transfer.

Even though it may be cumbersome, I would write-protect the P2 card (using the small sliding switch on the spine of the card next to the serial number) before inserting it into the Mac.

Create a disk image of the card on your hard drive for later processing, or copy the entire contents to a folder and open up the material in FCP -- don't try opening what's on the card directly, even Apple advises against that.
 
Anyway, all that aside - based on Barry's info and other's suggestions - it would be safe to say that if I am a Mac user I should NOT be using an HVX200?
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Well, I know there have been many complaints from mac users, but let me chime in and say I have not had a single issue in the last 9 months / hundreds of card downloads/ thousands of clips. I transferred over 300 clips to final cut pro just today. Not a single issue. I don't doubt the problems are occuring, but I'm wondering what the constant is. My workflow seems to be similar to those with problems, but haven't had an issue here.

I shoot to five different 8 gig cards in either 720pn 24 or 720pn 30. I use p2 genie on a powermac g4 1.67Ghz 1.5gig/ram osx 10.4.7, to dump the cards to 2 seperate lacie D2 hard drives (both drives contain the same data, for backup purposes). If I'm not near a power outlet, I dump to 2 lacie bus powered porsche drives until I can get to ac power to transfer them to the D2 drives. (before ejecting and erasing the cards I double check several shots on each D2 using p2 log). When back home I hook one of the d2's to the mac pro running FCP 5.1.2 and I import all shots. I don't mark any ins and outs, or rename anything, just straight import all clips. Edit away. We have done several 1/2hour shows using this workflow as well as shorter segments. No probs.

Not sure what to say about all the problems, but wanted to interject a positive experience into the mix. I'd love to be able to lock down where the problem is. I'd be happy to try some tests if someone can suggest what can be done to replicate the problems. Right now seems like the only constant is "mac" and that quickly devolves into a useless format war.

-tim
 
I have seen little if no dropout threads where there was a PC involved. I would, for the moment, use a Windows PC to transfer your cards to the FAT32 drive(s).

Unless something has changed, I wonder if the convoluted "erase" function Mac users suffer under has something to do with these corruptions? Perhaps there is some unresolved data left on the cards?

I've got 3.5TB as of last weekend through our HVX > P2 > PC XPPro > Seagate Barracuda USB2 (RAIDless) without a lost file to date.

I'd go with what works while you get the Apple issues sorted offline and offdime.

e
 
Barry_Green said:
I'm telling you how to make it work. You just don't like the answer -- if you want a flawless experience, use a PC; that system works. Apple has a bug and they need to fix it.
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Wow...I can't believe I am going to say this...

Barry I think your a little off-base. My company which includes 3 Worstations and 2 Off-Loading machines via Powerbooks has never had a glitch at all. P2/Apple Combo is Rock Solid for past 11 months. I believe others like Justyn and Pascoe would agree.

Could it be that you are biased after having tried Mac from PC land and gave it up very quickly. You cited a move as your decision for selling your Tower but after only a few months you probably just didn't like the mac taste. But don't cite that viewpoint by saying Apple/P2 is flawed. More than likely is a software conflict that exists on the system.
 
My Mac isn't writing anything to the card - it's READING FROM IT.
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I'm another Mac user without problems (so far). But I will say that the Mac OS (and FCP, in some cases, I think) are known for dropping a folder or file or two onto mounted volumes in some cases; further, with all the indexing and such done for all the new-fangled built-in search features and such, who knows what the OS's might be writing. So again - PC or Mac - I'd suggest using the write-protect whenever you transfer to a computer. Both Apple and Microsoft are Hell-bent on adding all kinds of automatic background processes, indexes, logging data to everything; any app installed may do the same... the computer is a weak link!

Also, Jimmy, sadly, intermittent problems are the hardest to diagnose and the most frustrating. I wouldn't rule out the computer cause it works fine most of the time. I've got 5 Macs in regular use for critical audio and video recording of live events. I've so far never had a major problem. But I always have a backup on-line that completely involves any involvement with a computer. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I'm the type who'd be weighted down by a Cineporter AND an FS100 for anything important. If your job depends on never losing footage, you may want to devlop some of the same paranoia, too...

P.S. - I had some glitchy problems on one (long! - 2 hour) shot taken at 2 FPS. I don't know if it relates to your situation, but there may be some issues with unsupported frame rates if you were using those... and in that case, it was in-camera, not computer-related.
 
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it would be safe to say that if I am a Mac user I should NOT be using an HVX200?
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Maybe a better way to say it would be -- maybe you shouldn't be using THAT Mac with P2.

Over 80% of HVX users are Mac users too. We hear our share of complaints, but frankly I've got to believe that if there were overwhelming amounts of problems we'd be hearing a lot more. There is an issue. It doesn't affect everyone, obviously. But it's affected enough people that it should be fixed.

What you're experiencing is absolutely abnormal. You've got a problem somewhere in your chain. Either your Mac is destroying footage, or you've got bad cards. It's time to do some R&D, some bugfinding, to find out where the problem is. You've either got some bad hardware, or you've got some program running on your Mac that is trashing footage and trashing cards.

Narrow down what it is. Remove all variables from the equation, and test one thing at a time. Shoot footage on one particular card, and play it back in-camera. If it plays back fine, but is trashed in the computer, then you know for a fact that your Mac trashed it. If you shoot footage and try to play it back in-camera and it won't play back, then you know for a fact that your Mac didn't trash it, but instead you have a bad card.
 
pretopost said:
P2/Apple Combo is Rock Solid for past 11 months. I believe others like Justyn and Pascoe would agree.
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Many, many people would agree.

Could it be that you are biased after having tried Mac from PC land and gave it up very quickly.
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Not at all. I don't care what platform anyone uses. But I am awfully tired of seeing this complaint come up over and over and over and over, and every single time it does, there's one consistent factor: the people used a Mac. Every time. Without exception, without fail, every time.

So that tells me there's a problem. BenB says there's a problem. He has other reasons to believe so too. The problem is showing up over and over. As moderator on this forum, I see what people are going through. As a trainer who's conducted seminars around the globe, and had to answer scads of questions, I can assure you that every time anyone says "my footage glitched" I always ask "did you use a Mac or PC to transfer the cards?" and EVERY SINGLE TIME they have said "Mac."

But don't cite that viewpoint by saying Apple/P2 is flawed. More than likely is a software conflict that exists on the system.
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I'm not citing any viewpoint, I'm saying there's a problem and it needs to be fixed. I've started threads about it, people have weighed in on it. The time I finally blew a gasket was when I was P2 consultant on a major production that was actually being supported by people who worked for Apple. I tried to lay out a workflow to avoid the glitch, and one of the key guys said "what glitch? There is no glitch; we import from the cards all the time and we've never had a glitch." I said, rather incredulously, "umm... I mean the sparkly little dropouts that look like DV tape dropouts -- you've never seen those?" And he said "Oh yeah, we get those all the time. We just cut around them."

Sorry, I find that outrageous and unacceptable. There isn't anything about a "biased viewpoint" here, it's simple observable evidence.

Now, could it be a software glitch? Sure, I guess. Part of why I started the "Let's fix this glitch once and for all" thread was to get people together who have had the glitch, and get them talking and sharing about what they did, what hardware they used, what software they have installed, etc. So we could finally get to the bottom of it.

There is a problem, somewhere. It is always reported by Mac users. It might be software, it might be hardware, it might be an anti-virus program, it might be a lot of things. I don't know what it is. But I know that it has to be fixed. And I am trying to get people to focus on where the problem IS. It's somewhere with the Mac. Of that I am 110% certain.

I know there are many, many users who are very satisfied and have never had a problem. Congrats to them, that's the way it's supposed to work. But for the rest of the members here, who *are* having a problem, we need to get to the bottom of this. And to do so we have to identify where the problem is. And I'm telling you, it's somewhere in the way Macs read P2 cards.
 
JimmyTheSaint said:
I dump the contents directly onto a hard drive and open them later in FCP.
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How? Through the computer, or using the camera to control the hard disk?

I would be very interested in hearing if you could avoid the problem by using the camera to transfer directly to a 1394 drive, and then importing the footage from that hard drive. Don't let the Mac ever touch the card, and let's see if your problem disappears.
 
pretopost said:
Barry I think your a little off-base. My company which includes 3 Worstations and 2 Off-Loading machines via Powerbooks has never had a glitch at all. P2/Apple Combo is Rock Solid for past 11 months. I believe others like Justyn and Pascoe would agree.
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The Green one comes on a little strong here, but not without basis. There are certainly some issues floating around, certainly stuff Apple needs to attend to, and certainly things Apple could do to make life easier for HVX users. At the same time, Apple has also been a frontrunner in some aspects of HVX support. I think the gentler way to put what Green Barry's saying is that not all Macs are problematic, but certain problems are clearly due to Macs.

As for P2 drivers... I don't know who's to blame; the PC P2 drivers are supplied by Panasonic, who won't provide them for Apple; I'm sure Apple is therefore dependent on information from Panasonic; I think they both could step up to the plate a bit more.

-Barry
 
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i would like to say that I haven't encountered any problems, whatsoever, with transferring P2 footage onto my Powerbook. I use P2 log, however, and have no used FCP or the camera through 1394. That may rule out any physical problems with MACs, and suggest that its more likely to be some kind of software problem, either in FCP, or the P2 driver.

Maybe a good idea would be to see who else uses P2 Log, or any other program besides FCP, and if they have encountered any problems.
 
JimmyTheSaint said:
Devils advocate, if 80% of the people using the HVX are on Macs, and it's not a common problem, would the odds not be tipped in favor of it primarily seeming like a Mac problem?
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If 80% of people drive Pintos, and most have no problems, but only Pintos explode when you tap 'em on the rear bumper, is it a Pinto problem?
 
ullanta said:
I think the gentler way to put what Green Barry's saying is that not all Macs are problematic, but certain problems are clearly due to Macs.
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Brilliantly put. Exactly what I meant. Clearly there are many, many satisfied users. The vast majority of satisfied users are on the Mac. All those that have problems with the footage are on the Mac. Therefore there is a problem, it affects exclusively Macs, but certainly not all Macs. The problem is not all that widespread, but it does exist.
 
Wait, wait! If most people eat beef, and most people don't get mad cow disease, does that mean we shouldn't look to cows as a source of mad cow disease?
 
JimmyTheSaint said:
I could test that but in my universe that process is useless to me.
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You have to find where the problem is. If the problem is your Mac, you cannot use that Mac in the workflow! If the Mac is the problem, no changing of cards or nagging of Panasonic is going to help. You must identify the root cause of the problem.

If you are one of the few who simply cannot reliably import cards on their Mac, then you must eliminate that Mac from your workflow. I strongly, without hesitation, recommend you just use a PC laptop to do the offloading next time. You can still edit your footage on FCP all you want. Just don't use that Mac to copy the cards. Offload the cards onto an external FAT32 hard disk. Unplug it from the PC laptop, plug it into your FCP system, and import and edit away -- except this time, with 100% rock-solid reliable footage.

If it solves all your problems, wouldn't that be worth getting your hands dirty by having to touch one of Bill Gates' demon children? :thumbsup:
 
No, no, wait! If lots of people eat plastic bags of lettuce, and some bags of lettuce have e. coli... No! If lots of people take tylenol, but some bottles are poisoned... no, hold on, if everyone likes astronauts, but some astronauts kidnap and try to murder their amorous rivals...

Man, astronauts! Is nothing sacred?

I should have stopped when I was brilliant.
 
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