FS-100, P2, and Cardbus: How to download...

M

MannHands

Active member
So here it is:

Shooting a feature, two HVX's, one shooting on 8gig P2 cards, the other recording to FS-100. We have SLOW iBooks from yesteryear, and a PC with cardbus. I will be shooting AND editing on my PowerMac G5. So how do I download my footage?

We need to back up to G-Tech drives, but won't they need to be formatted to PC in order to use the cardbus to download the P2? I don't want to format to PC since I'm editing on a Mac, but I want to be able to use the cardbus and not power off the HVX to download P2 cards. What are my options here.

Here's my equipment:

(2) HVX
(2) iBooks
(1) PC w/ cardbus
(2) G-Tech 500gb HD's
(1) Western Digital 1TB HD for backup

I'm totally lost.....
 
You might invest in MacDrive so the PC with cardbus slot will read/write to the G-Tech drives.

Don't know what you want to use the iBooks for?

My also try p2 Genie for the PC to expedite offloads.
 
I'm not a Mac expert, but it sounds like all you need is to get a common file system on the G-TECH drives that both Windows and Mac can mount. Try mounting the G-TECH on the Windows computer and format the disk with FAT32. Put a couple of files on it and switch it to the Mac. You should be able to open the files there.

OR...

Add a few MASSIVE internal disks to the Windows computer, and set up a network link between your workstation and your Mac. Then you can use the G-TECH drives strictly for off site backups (back it up and move it to another location). Big disks are getting cheap, but I'd stay away from the 750 GB technology, it's too new (undependible). Just depends on how safe you want to be...

Bob
 
Being on-location, the only PC's we'll have to backup will be laptops. So here's my plan.

I downloaded and installed MacDrive, which works fine. We got a cardbus/firewire adapter to attach the drives, and we'll just download the P2's to the laptop's internal (60-100GB)

Formatting the externals to FAT32 is basically pointless when dealing with HD video because they'll only write 2-4GB at a time. Less than our P2's.

The firestore has 100GB, which, in PN is more than enough space for a day of shooting, I'll just download it back at the ranch.

Lesson here: PC's are way behind. Macs can read anything. Why'd they ditch the cardbus slot? Let's petition....

When's someone gonna make a firewire cardbus slot for the P2's? Duh.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top