How to use P2 card in Linux or FreeBSD? Any help greatly appreciated...

TwistedLincoln

TwistedLincoln

Veteran
As I've mentioned in a few other threads, I'm working on trying to get P2 cards recognized in Linux. However, there are a few technical issues I am unclear about that are making my work more difficult.

In Windows (both 2000 and XP), you need the Panasonic P2 drivers in order to use the cards.

I do not have access to a Mac, however from what I've read, no drivers are needed -- you simply mount the card. Is this correct? If so, as MacOS is very similar to FreeBSD / Linux, it would seem that a similar process should be possible in one of those OS's.

I notice that P2 Genie for Mac does not appear to require any specific drivers.
However, is it possible that FCP simply installs the relevant drivers when it is loaded? I can't seem to find any posts where people are using P2 Genie to offload on a notebook that doesn't have FCP installed...

When I insert the P2 card in my notebook (running Fedora Core 5), it recognizes the fact that a device has been inserted in the Cardbus slot. However it will not do anything with it besides that. It is not assigned a device type (ie sda0, etc) so I cannot mount it.

Does anyone have any insight? I tried loading the Windows P2 drivers under Wine, but the install package requires the .Net Framework, which won't install under wine. I'm going to try to manually install the drivers later, but I'd really rather make native Linux support possible.

EDIT: after reading Barry's post, I see that there are in fact special P2 drivers for Mac that you can download from Panasonic's site. Not sure why I didn't see them the first time I looked...
 
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Any progress with this? I would love to be able to handle my P2 transfers without booting into Windows. Using Suse 10.2 unless I have to use Windows.

On a related note - do you know of any linux software that is capable of viewing mxf files? I edit with Avid, but just to log and view files it would be nice.

Aloha
 
Progress? Well sort of. I haven't been able to get any kind of P2 drivers working in Linux yet. However, I can offload my cards by putting the camera into USB Device mode. Linux sees the cards as Universal Mass Storage devices, and mounts them right up. The downside of this is that you tie up the camera while offloading.

There aren't any programs in Linux (that I am aware of, anyway) that will handle the MXF files directly. However Raylight works perfectly fine in Wine, so I am able to convert the files to Uncompressed AVI and use them in Cinelerra. But the file sizes get ridiculous fast, so this really isn't much of a solution.

At the moment, I use Linux to offload from the P2 card and convert to standalone Raylight AVIs. I then transfer them over my network to my RAID array, and delete them off of the notebook. This works fairly well, with the exception of tying up the camera. Luckily I have a second camera available... :laugh:

I have searched high and low for a P2 driver for Linux. There was a few references to one on the DVInfo forums, but nothing concrete enough to be helpful.

My next thing to try is actually isolating the .dlls in the Windows P2 drivers, and see if something like Ndiswrapper will allow me to use them in Linux. It's a longshot, I realize, but it's worth a try.
 
You have more skills than I do Tony. Hope you figure something out with those .dlls. I'm not really excited about a wine solution. I would love to see a free and open source project attack the p2 and mxf situation. I'll poke around on some linux forums and see if I can find anything out. Keep me posted if you are successful.

Aloha,
Cmus
 
As a former UNIX specialist, I'm wondering why Linux? Mac is UNIX, and has the drivers already written. Just wondering out loud.
 
BenB said:
As a former UNIX specialist, I'm wondering why Linux? Mac is UNIX, and has the drivers already written. Just wondering out loud.
Click to expand...

It's not an issue of stability or performance-- otherwise you're right, one might as well just use Mac over Windows. The issue is the freedom (both in price and ideals) that Linux provides.

If we can get P2 cards working in Linux, it opens the door for incredibly cheap offloading options. Mac OS by itself is ~ $125. You can buy an old P3 notebook on eBay for that much, and simply run Linux. Not only is the price superior, but because the licensing is the way it is, you can have the freedom to customize things they way you want, and use an unlimited number of machines.

Mac OS certainly has Windows beat on the technical level. But Linux has them both beat on the philisophical and monetary level.
 
Ok, Linux has that, IF you're UNIX savey, which most people are not. As far as the "Linux Philosophy", well, I consider that BS. You can only take advatage of LINUX if you, again, are LINUX savey and spend a lot of time learning it. I had a former client call me about two years after I retired from the IT biz becaue they caught their IT guy stealing, big time, they sent him to jail. They couldn't find anyone in their town who knew LINUX well enough to run it. So the switched to SCO UNIX, simply for the support. And that's only one of several stories of businesses getting stuck over a barrel with LINUX, cause it was so cheap to install. So let's not go there.

If you're good with LINUX, good for you, enjoy it. But don't start talking about how it's "better" in any way over the OS's that have the majority of support.

I'd be very interested if you do get MXF P2 working on it, though.
 
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BenB -

I have to respectfully disagree. First, you can only use Windows or Mac OS X to their full potential if you spend the time to learn them too. Linux is not nearly as difficult as it used to be. Installing the OS and applications has been greatly simplified in recent years. Second, it is and will remain free. That alone makes it worth learning. And finally, its performance is better than Windows - especially after you use a windows machine for a while and it gets bloated with all the spyware and other junk that gets installed without your knowledge. As I understand it, our HVXs run Linux. I wonder why they chose that platform. Anyway, probably not a topic meant to be discussed here.

Back on topic.

TwistedLincoln, I did find some projects working on Linux MXF capability. Here are some interesting links:

http://www.freemxf.org/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mxflib/

No luck yet on finding a P2 management program though.

Aloha,
Cmus
 
Hi Tony,

I know you probably don't want to hear this, but developing a P2 driver for Linux is a pretty tough job. You have to know all the P2 specific information and security codes, as we have developed for the CinePorter. Panasonic can publish a driver, if they want, since there is one inside the Camera, however I do not believe there is an effort to do so.

David
 
BenB said:
Ok, Linux has that, IF you're UNIX savey, which most people are not. As far as the "Linux Philosophy", well, I consider that BS. You can only take advatage of LINUX if you, again, are LINUX savey and spend a lot of time learning it.
Click to expand...

I actually mean the philosophy of Free Software, and the idea that regardless of how much you pay for a product, you should be able to control how and where you use it. I agree that UNIX is more appropriate if you need support, unless you paying the big bucks to a company like Red Hat for corporate support. Saying that one OS is "better" than another is usually silly, because when you are speaking about it in a technical manner, it is usually more a question of "better for you." On a political level, however, I can make the statement that Linux is better and back it up with reasons why. Still my opinions, mind you, not facts, but reasons nonetheless.

Spec-Comm said:
I know you probably don't want to hear this, but developing a P2 driver for Linux is a pretty tough job. You have to know all the P2 specific information and security codes, as we have developed for the CinePorter. Panasonic can publish a driver, if they want, since there is one inside the Camera, however I do not believe there is an effort to do so.
Click to expand...

Well if you'd like to help, I'm all for it :laugh: Honestly, though, I don't expect to write a P2 driver from scratch. That is far beyond my abilities. However I do believe it is possible to get P2 Cards working in Linux in another manner-- most likely by using the existing PC or Mac drivers. Once .Net support is better ironed out in Wine, there is a decent possibility I won't have to do anything special for it to work...

cmus said:
I checked out those links you posted, but haven't had time to test them out. There wasn't too much info on the type of MXF files, however. If memory serves, Sony uses a similar filetype with the same extension that is not compatible.
Click to expand...
 
Hi!
Is there any news, yet? I don't know to much about linux, but I realy like it. I'm using UbuntuStudio alot and it would be great if I could use the P2-Cards with it.
I saw, that there is a new firmware available for the HVX on the panasonic-website.
I have no idea how complicated it is and maybe you laugh at me, but istn't it possible to extract some data from the firmware and kind off reverse-ingeneer it? Just thought about it, because someone said the HVX runs on Linux and the P2-Slot is basically a PCMCIA-Slot? Would that even be leagal?

Sorry for my bad english, I do my best!
 
Reviving a slightly old thread, but here's my thoughts - I've only just begun to explore this, and currently I have neither P2 cards nor a Linux box with PCMCIA interface, so I'm at a disadvantage...

However could someone with Linux and P2 cards and appropriate slot try this for me:

Insert card
As root type: lspci

You'll get a bunch of information back, at least one line of which should relate to the P2 card. Figure out which bit it is, and paste that here...

According to Wikipedia, the card uses an unspecified LSI RAID chipset - some of these chipsets are already supported in Linux, so in theory knowing what's in the slot may help find a suitable device driver.
 
Jihaa!

Jihaa!

Man, that's awesome, finally somebody cares again! I wanted to install UbuntuStudio on my Notebook anyway, so I try that and keep You informed!
 
The line is....

The line is....

02:00.0 Mass storage controller: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Unknown device 8206 (rev 01)

The "*" is a "t" it's zensored here, lol s h i t a

I hope that helps!
 
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Well, it's slightly hopeful - it's identified with the correct device type (Mass Storage Controller) - I'll be handing a P2 card to a much smarter geek than myself (one that recently had Microsoft techs working through their Thanksgiving weekend, after he found something interesting and told some people about it) - I reckon if anyone will be able to figure out what might work, it'll be him.

I'm going to go through a similar process with SxS as well.
 
The only way I could think of offloading the P2 cards is to run windows in a Windows VMWARE virtual machine. Hopefully it will transfer PCMCIA devices over the virtual layer.

But then you wouldn't be getting away from the windows tax now would you?
 
alexberman said:
If the hvx runs linux and has p2 drivers, don't those drivers have to be open source and available?
Click to expand...

The modified Linux kernel that the HVX uses internally is available as source code, although without the rest of the closed-source software components that the HVX uses, it doesn't do much good to anyone.

The P2 drivers, on the other hand, are completely seperate, and no source code is available.
 
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