A P2 Card Question

K

Kashi

Member
Hi,

I recently decided to use my 8 GB P2 card but i was doing a series of test with various frame rate. So as you can imagine, i tested them all. Anyhow, I tried logging the clips to my Pc and it seemed at first that they did log, however when i tried opening them, all i got was some encoding stuff, all numbers and letters.

What should I do?
 
Please explain what you tried to "open" them with.
How did you transfer the files?
Did you copy the entire "Contents" folder and leave that in tact.
 
Well i simply put my P2 card in the Pc and double clicked on the P2 card folder. When i saw them all in Thumbnail, i highlighted them, right click, and sent them to my desktop and to my Documents. It shows that they are all 3kb and the thumbnails are blue/greenish with a globe figure on it and three parallel lines under the globe symbol. Is that what they should look like before i open them?
 
Applications on your PC can alter the look of the "thumbnails".
Just open them in the application you are editing on and don't worry about how the computer sees them...if I'm understanding your question.
 
The contents of a p2 card are actually a series of different folders. Clips, audio, video, etc, etc. All housed within the contents folder.

What you should see when viewing the directory structure of a p2 card are the contents folder and the "lastclip.txt" file.

If you want to manually transfer the contents of the folder to your pc's HDD you will have to copy the entirety of that mentioned above, to a specified folder. Make sure you maintain that file structure.

As Ted mentioned, your best option is to just let your NLE do it for you.

Some things to make sure of:
Did you format the p2 card in camera before using it? If not, you will need to do that. Then you can shoot footage that you will be able to properly transfer.

Did you install the p2 driver from your driver disk supplied by Panasonic? When you say you just stuck the card in your pc, I'm assuming that you have a pcmcia slot. If that is the case, you will want to have the card (Blank and formatted in camera first) inserted in the pcmcia slot. Then run the driver installation disc. Choose the proper driver for use with a pcmcia slot, and follow the instructions as yo go through the installation process. After this is done, you will be able to film to your cards, and copy the contents over properly.

You cannot just click on any file of the p2 card contents and expect it to play.

If you have downloaded the free p2 viewer from panasonics website, you can view the contents of the cards that way. Or you can view them with your NLE, provided your NLE has proper .mxf/p2 support that does not first require conversion into an intermediate codec/wrapper.

Hope that helps.

Oh, and one other thing: If you happen to be working with a laptop on battery power. Laptops sometimes turn off the pcmcia slot to conserve power when operating on battery juice. Either change this, or plug it into the wall first.

Jason
 
Thanks Ted, I will try again to just transfer the entire Content folder to adobe Premiere and/or Pinnacle studio 10.
 
Jason, I read what you said and it had me wondering whether my Pinnacle Studio and adobe premiere has .mxf/p2 support. See my Avid is messing up so i use the above mentioned now to edit.
For sure i did format the card first in Camera and i did install the p2 driver from the CD that came with it. See i was able to watch the footage on camera when i was done using the remote. I even see the stills from each clip in ICON view in my content folder. The problem is none of my editing softwares will open it.

I am gonna try the free p2 viewer from the panasonic website, If that doesn't allow me to view it, then i will try to re format the card in camera and see what happens.

Thanks so much
 
The problem is that adobe (and I don't think pinnacle studio, either) have support for p2. You will need raylight, which is a 3rd party plugin that you can get that will allow you to work with p2 dvcprohd in your NLE.

Currently (on the PC side) EDIUS Broadcast has full support for the HVX. And Avid Xpress Pro has fairly thorough support.
Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas have no support for dvcpro or p2. You will need raylight or aspect hd. They will convert the mxf's into an avi that you can use to edit in Adobe, if need be. Raylights latest version will even let you drop the mxf files from the p2 card directly onto the timeline, without the need to convert first. Which is a vast improvement, and a godsend for some people.

Jason
 
Wow Jason! I had no clue. Thanks, I do have Avid but it's giving me issues right now, hopefully i will get it fixed and be able to use it soon. In the meantime, do they sell raylight or aspect hd online somewhere because i don't have much knowledge of them and as i mentioned, I am in Jamaica and i wouldn't know where to start looking.
 
It sounds like you are looking at the clip files, which are XML documents carrying information about the clips. The actual video is in the VIDEO folder in the form of MXF files, and the audio is in the AUDIO folder (4 MXF files for each video file), and the icons you saw are in the ICON folder. If you haven't installed the P2 viewer, the MXF video files will probably look like generic files.
If you're already having trouble with Avid, just wait til you start trying to get P2 files into it :) See the following link for P2-to-Avid workflow.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=57544
More on using the P2 viewer:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=51447
 
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