Himalaya expedition: How to assure P2 first timer of reliabilty?

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daktulus

Well-known member
Is P2 with a HPX3000 plus HVX200 really the best way to film a Himalaya expedition? (not the peak of Mount Everest, but a 6 week expedition in the Himalaya mountains)

Is P2 really the best bet or would HDCAM be the better choice?
What are the arguments?
What are the experiences?

Which laptop for offloading is most reliable?

Is there a professional HPX3000 forum?

Is there a forum for filming trekking or just trekking?


All infos welcome.
 
I think you could do this pretty easily, but here is the twist to the plot: skip the computer, get yourself an HPG -10 AKA P2 Gear and some small USB OTG drives. The P2 Gear becomes your nerve center, able to host drives and transfer P2 volumes to them. You can also use it to view clips, and do the data management _ and it runs off the same batteries as the HVX. It can even power the USB drive in host mode. Its a pretty powerful little box and for the kind of trek you are on would be the most efficient device to have along. Another plus: it weighs a fractioned of what a laptop weighs.
 
Regarding reliability- while nothing is flawless, solid state (P2) is by far the best choice for extreme conditions, and is proven to be so. Tape mechanisms and other
storage mechanisms with moving parts simply are at a disadvantage in those conditions compared to P2.
 
mainstreetprod said:
Regarding reliability- while nothing is flawless, solid state (P2) is by far the best choice for extreme conditions, and is proven to be so. Tape mechanisms and other
storage mechanisms with moving parts simply are at a disadvantage in those conditions compared to P2.
Click to expand...

Yes, I went 160+ mph in an offshore race boat (very violent ride) and not one frame was dropped on my hvx P2 card.

P2 is solid... Never been below -10 degrees with it but would trust it more than tape.
 
I think about preferring the HPG -10 AKA P2 Gear over a laptop.
Can I make backups to 2 OTG drives at the same time?
Do the drives have to be FW or can they be USB?
 
I don't think you can make backups to 2 drives at once, but if you had a Raid 1 drive as suggested transferring files to that would put your mind at ease. Since you have an HPX 3K along , you will have batteries to power that as well. You can easily rig up an inverter to a camera battery and meet the power requirements of an AC powered drive. I did that on my trip last summer out to an uninhabited island in the south pacific. You don't really need to have a big fat inverter either- something like 100 watts is way more than enough, and camera batteries will have plenty of juice to power a drive through the inverter.
 
Do you use a RAID1 array or do you just use single simple OTG drives, no backup?

Is there an inverter you can recommend?
 
When are you going? Looks like I will be in KTM around April 18-19, and then trekking to EBC. We need to be at EBC around May 1.

I'll be taking an HVX200, with a Brevis Flip and a Nikon lens Pkg. Not my first time trekking and shooting at EBC, but my first time there with the HVX and 35mm adapter.

G.
 
On the trip I spoke of, I used my computer to back up to multiple drives for a number of reasons ( I needed to have a computer with me for something else as well, the P2 gear wasn't available...) Its easy to find Raid 1 drives so I would be tempted to go that route with a P2 gear and an inverter for the drive"s power. Honestly though, I don't know enough about your trip to make a hearty recommendation one way or the other.
As for the inverter, I went to my local auto parts store and bought a 400 watt inverter, wired a cigarette lighter adapter and a 4 pin female XLR to the box. 400 watts is huge overkill, 100 watts is still a lot of overkill and if I did it again I'd go with the smaller inverter. I tested the setup before I went on the trip and it ll worked as expected, and with the size inverter I had I could even run my laptop at the same time as the drives. If I were you I'd look for the smallest raid 1's i could find and go that direction knowing that once you transfer, you're in good shape, but i might also take a couple of small OTG's as a fall back plan in case you get jammed. THe small OTG's can run off the P2 gear if you connect using USB.
 
June...
I don´t know yet if I am personally fit enough, I´m not a super experienced climber, so maybe only my equipment will go. I´m an experienced traveller, but this trip will be hardcore trekking and climbing in thin air.

Mark:
"Also: macsales.com has some raid 1 drives that look like the smallest ones I've seen so far."
Which ones do you mean?
Are they OTG?
 
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax

The OTG drives that they sell have been real workhorses for me over the last 2 years. I have a few 100 GB drives and a 250 that have been bounced around on my travels and air shipped back and forth to clients countless times without any problems as well as being used for generic workflow drives while attached to various desktop machines. No problems any where.

I have not used the Raid one drive shown on the link above but I'll have one in my pipeline this week.
 
Have you ever used battery powered OTGs?

The idea is to not take a laptop and plug in directly into HVX FW.

One possibility is the Nexto CF Ultra, but it is pricey and I dont if it is "All Terrain Grade".

The alternative would be a Lacie rugged drive with external battery, powered over USB while connected via FW to camera (I still have to test if the Lacie drive can be used like this)


Is there any other battery powered OTG FW solution?


How do you do it, do you only offload at the base camp/hotel room with AC power?
 
On my Niku Island trip, I had a P2 store with me and I would off load to that if need be while trekking and shooting on the island. No cable connections, just insert card and push buttons. Next best thing to that would be a small OTG drive like the ones from OWC connected to a P2 Gear and bus powered over USB.
At the end of the day when back aboard ship which was home for a month, I would do the heavyweight file management, make back up copies while connected to a laptop, everything AC powered. Lessons learned: don't make file transfers while on the move, what can go wrong will go wrong. Be in a "comfortable" place where you can settle a bit and do your file management. A ship is not really a comfortable place as it can go from relatively placid to a rocking and rolling platform in a short amount of time, with computers and drives sliding across desktops!
 
I just got in a Maximus hardware raid 1 drive (750 GB) . While I do not know the profile of your trip my sense is it a little heavy (4.0 lbs) but it is Raid 1 so it contains 2 drives. It is AC powered ( world power supply) so it might actually be a decent choice considering it contains a back up set of files. The OTG's are by far smaller and lighter but also lower capacity and hence you need more of them . It might be a toss up depending on how much storage capacity you think you need.
 
daktulus said:
Have you ever used battery powered OTGs?

The idea is to not take a laptop and plug in directly into HVX FW.

One possibility is the Nexto CF Ultra, but it is pricey and I dont if it is "All Terrain Grade".

The alternative would be a Lacie rugged drive with external battery, powered over USB while connected via FW to camera (I still have to test if the Lacie drive can be used like this)


Is there any other battery powered OTG FW solution?


How do you do it, do you only offload at the base camp/hotel room with AC power?
Click to expand...

Be carefull!

One in ten people who try to conqure Everest don't make it back, actually they don't even get close to the summit...

Reliablity wise I'd feel secure with P2 ONLY, please do some test on the drives in that climate. I'm sure they will not record and will freeze up... I'd save the $5k for the p2 gear plus the other $2-3K for a laptop and hard drives and blow the whole $ on a bunch of 32 gig P2 cards... You will have serious problems with 7200 rpm drives and laptops in that climate...

There is a book about the making of Planet Earth, in it they talk about thier helicopter trip to the top (someone almost died of hypoxia)... In the new issue of HDVideoPro there is a good article about a guy who has climbed to the top of Everest sevral times and talks about his experiences...Off topic but there is also a really nice article about Barry Green training wounded vetrans for video production.

When your done sell the P2 cards on eBay, you'll recoupe at least 75%-80% of thier value maybe more if your a savy shopper and you'll have extra cash for post production or marketing.
 
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Thanks.

The expedition will trekk the Himalaya mountains, but not Mount Everest. At what temperatures will laptop and ext. HDDs freeze?
All the recording will be done on 32GB P2, but at the end of the day they need to be offloaded. Are you sure P2 gear is more dependable than an "all terrain grade" laptop?

The question is: what are the toughest ext./OTG HDDs?
 
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I just got back to Kathmandu this morning (night in NA) from a shoot at Everest Base Camp.

Battery power was the number one concern, we were on solar at base camp, and in the 'towns' leading up to it. Wired power was at least a 3-4 day walk from where we were shooting. Charging batteries was slow - slow - slow. Charging the offload computer (MacBook Pro) was even slower.

This was however my 3rd trip to base camp and I knew that these problems existed; so I had 6 back-up batteries for the computer, 7 Panasonic batts for the camera as well as 2 Anton Bauer 10k Batteries.

Cold was not really a problem, other than in the early morning.

We had 3 - 32GB, 2 - 8GB, and 2 - 4GB cards, we shot in 720p-24pn so there was lots of time between dumps.

Power at base camp was not the only problem; politics was, and luckily our film liaison from the Nepali gov't smoothed that all out. We ended up with better access than the crew from the BBC who were shut out completely. Moral of that story - Do your homework, and fill out the forms!

Once I get back to Toronto next week I will post a longer story covering the gear we brought and what it took to shoot here.

G.
 
P2 gear seems pretty bullet proof to me, and a versatile tool to boot. For a trek liek yours it would seem the ideal tool plus it runs on HVX batteries and it weighs a little over a pound...
 
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