Dumping - which Laptop, which HDD?

J

jynxprod

Member
Hi there,
soon-to-be owner of HPX 500.
having been talked out of a firestore, I am now looking at the P2 cards again...
I was looking at options to dump P2 footage in the field. We work in documentaries, so am expecting to shoot 4-6 16GB cards / day either at 1080 or 720pn.
Often on multi-day shoots, so will need to dump at end of day and clear cards.
Keep reading here to avoid my Mac for dumping, and instead buy a cheap Windows laptop just for offloading.
Since I know nothing about the Windows world, does anyone here have a model to recommend just for this purpose? The more cost-efficient, the better, of course.
And a reliable external HD to put the footage on?

Thanks much,
Johannes
www.jynxproductions.com
 
As for an inexpensive windows laptop, I'm not sure what your definition of cheap is, but for well under $1000 one can obtain an adequate machine right off the shelf at Best Buy. That is if all you are going to do is dump P2 data to it. the only other consideration you may want to consider is making sure it is robust enough run P2 Viewer and P2CMS - but again, most of the newer machines are quite capable given enough RAM

But if you think you may ever have a need to use an app like OnLocation, you may want to think about bumping up your specs.

As for HDD's, I have been buying Western Digital 1GB drives. However, I am considering moving to the Raid 1 option of 2 - 500 GB mirrored drives built into one external case. Then I have a redundant backup.

-Brad
 
Brad, thanks.
so basically any windows laptop with 2 GB of Ram and a pcmi slot will do...?
right now, no plan to run on location.
as for hdd, why do you need so much space? Wouldn't a 160 GB drive be enough to dump say 5 cards?


Johannes
 
Hi Johannes,
Yea, sorry about that...

We shoot a lot of 2-camera long-form stuff that requires lots of drive storage. You can probably get by with a much smaller drive. Just use the GB per minute outlines listed in the manuals to determine how much drive space will be required.

One more item that I find really handy, is in addition to a PCMCIA slot, we use the SD memory cards for setting up scene files and entering meta data prior to the shoot. So having that card slot on the laptop is very useful.

So yes, most any laptop with those specs should be more that adequate.

-Brad
 
We just ordered a 1TB LaCie 2big external SATA RAID, running in RAID 1 (mirrored drives). We've had our 500 for a couple of months now, and very quickly realized the implications of offloading P2 cards mid-shoot. Remember, this isn't tape... tape may have dropouts, or whatnot, but once you've a tape out of the camera, unless it's physically destroyed, you've got your media. If you offload P2 cards to a single drive, there's the potential for several different failures, any of which could destroy your data. Granted, the odds are very low that'll happen, but are willing to risk a client?
That drive I mentioned is just $400. When the drives are full, replace them, put both on the shelf, and now your camera files are archived, already duplicated.
 
Thanks smelni. That workflow looks useful and can definitely be applied to smaller productions like ours (where I'm the producer, director and AC :) .
You recommend two hard drives at all times. Would a RAID1 drive qualiify in your opinion - since it is basically two drives in one?
EditingFX, seems like a brilliant idea to use just one RAID1 drive to dump AND archive footage. I will look into it further ... what about those Graid2 drives? You liked the Lacie better?

- Johannes
 
jynxprod said:
Thanks smelni...
...You recommend two hard drives at all times. Would a RAID1 drive qualiify in your opinion - since it is basically two drives in one?
- Johannes
Click to expand...

Raid 1 stuff works great in the event of a drive crash. But if you want off-site storage your going to have to create a b/u to an additional external that you can store off-site.

-Brad
 
No preference G vs Lacie.

I'm OK with the single RAID unit for location transfers... it'll live in a travel case, and be treated like royalty. Not disputing it is "eggs in one basket", BUT, huge time-savings when offloading cards in that you make 2 copies at once.

Also, off-site backup isn't a concern for me at this point. HOWEVER, when we transition to LTO-3 tape archives, then the cost of adding an off-site copy will be minimal. Hopefully we'll be using LTO within a few months. Then the RAID files will flow from RAID directly to LTO.... no drives on shelf (don't like drives on shelf, not even 2, for the long term solution.)
 
try your mac before you blow your cash on a pc. lots of hype mixed in with the legit problems. i know a lot of people using powerbook g4 including myself with no issues at all.
 
hi cheezweezl ...
and how do you make the offload-workflow work on your powerbook?
I'm on a new macbook.

- johannes
 
Just wanted to point out that the higher capacity hard drives also have better performance numbers, because of the higher density. I avoid the 7200RPM drives in laptops because they guzzle batteries faster. Definitely buy an extra battery... I use mine all the time.
 
jynxprod said:
hi cheezweezl ...
and how do you make the offload-workflow work on your powerbook?
I'm on a new macbook.

- johannes
Click to expand...

on a powerbook with the latest driver from panasonic, you simply insert the card and drag it's contents to a folder on your drive. i use the internal drive as well as an external for backup. always have 2 copies on separate drives in case one dies. i have FCP 5.1 installed and i use that to check footage and to make rough edits on set. panasonic has released the p2cms software for mac that lets you view the footage and manage the data. i haven't really used it in depth yet but i hear that it's pretty cool. i have played with it and it seems to work as advertized.

always have your p2 card in write protect mode when dumping. if the computer should crash during the dump, this will leave the contents of the card untouched and intact.

as far as you being on a macbook, is it the macbook pro? if so, you can use the duel adapter. i know guys who are using it and they tell me it works great.

i also read all of the horror stories and was kinda nervous going into the world of p2 on a mac but it's really not as complicated as some make it seem. not to say that problems don't exist, but they are rare in my experience.
 
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