Barry_Green
Moderator
The Ultimate Affordable P2/PCMCIA Card Reader For Mac Users?
Ever since the HVX200 came out, we’ve heard a common complaint coming from one (large) core group of P2 users: Macintosh users. Why? Because, as of 6/9/08, no new Macintosh portable computers include PCMCIA slots, and no cheap sub-$500 PCMCIA card readers exist for Mac desktop computers. And while you could get a $119 Duel Adapter to work with your Macbook Pro, what do you do for your Mac Pro or iMac or Mac Mini or doesG5 desktop computer? Or what about your slotless Macbook?
The premium solution has been the Panasonic PCD20, a US $1,980 five-slot P2 reader device that connects through either USB or FireWire 800. The PCD20 is a very nice solution in that it supports five cards mounted simultaneously and works with both Mac and Windows, but at almost $2,000 it was out of the league of many lower-budget users. And while there are many cheap PCMCIA-to-USB reader devices on the market, none of them will work with P2 cards, now or in the future. A cheap reader does not and cannot exist.
As such, Mac users have been stuck with using the Duel Adapter with their Macbook Pros, or continued to work with aging G4 PowerBooks (which do feature the PCMCIA slot). Neither solution is ideal; the Duel Adapter is large and clunky and temperamental, and the G4 is old and slow (it takes about 1 minute per gigabyte to offload a P2 card in a G4 PowerBook; modern Windows laptops are twice as fast). Compounding that frustration, there are other little complications: Mac offloading could occasionally result in a “glitch” happening in the footage on rare occasions, and some early P2 functions were only available on the Windows platform (such as the ability to update the firmware in a P2 Store, or on P2 cards, or the ability to format P2 cards, or even to be able to view P2 content in the field without having to install Final Cut Studio). In fact, as a workflow consultant who has implemented workflows for many Mac-based clients, I have to tell you, just about everything was faster, quicker, easier, more integrated, and seamless with P2 workflow on the Windows platform. Yet many users resist migrating to a Windows system, instead preferring the design of Apple’s products and preferring to work in Final Cut Pro.
For those users, it can still grate on their nerves that there’s not a relatively affordable, $500-priced P2 card reader.
Until now.
Sort of. :thumbsup:
In our quest to find the cheapest reliable/ usable/workable P2 card reader, we were continually amazed at how comparatively effortless the P2 workflow was with a Windows laptop, vs. the minor hassles encountered with the Mac workflow. And if there was an inexpensive, $500 reader available, how revolutionary that would be.
And then we put two and two together. The answer was staring us in the face. The Windows laptop.
Okay, I know half the Mac users probably just left the room when I typed that, but for those of you who are still here, read on. The Windows laptop may seem like overkill as a simple slot reader, but – so? It does the essential tasks. It offloads P2 cards. It can name P2 cards and format P2 cards and erase files off P2 cards (all without having to “unlock” any files or execute a “force delete”). It can transfer cards very quickly, twice the pace of a G4 PowerBook. It can offload cards directly to an external USB or FireWire hard disk which can then be plugged into your Mac seamlessly. It can run P2 Viewer or P2CMS, both of which let you preview, play, and annotate all your clips – and all without having to install another license of Final Cut Pro. So what if it runs Windows? So what if it’s also a full-fledged computer? The requisite elements we’re looking for is a device that reads P2 cards, offloads cards, and lets your desktop Mac read P2 cards, right? Ignore everything else that the Windows laptop does, and focus on the key checklist:
1) Does it offload P2 cards in the field? Check.
2) Does it let you play back your clips in the field? Check.
3) Does it let you edit in the field? Check.
4) Does it let you offload those clips to a Mac-compatible FAT32 drive? Check.
5) Does it let you format cards, for hot-swap recording? Check.
6) Does it let you name your cards, for easier organization and card management? Check. (this means you’ll never have to see “NO NAME” again).
7) Does it let you delete files, individually or altogether? Check.
8) Does it run P2 Genie? Check.
9) Can you use P2CMS’s database features and offload-verification features? Check.
10) Is it battery-powered for easy field use? Check.
11) Does it let your desktop computer read P2 cards? Oooh… now that’s the question!
I’m happy to report on item 11 that, yes, the Windows Laptop Offload Station does indeed “go to 11.” You can directly connect the laptop right to your desktop Mac through a Gigabit Ethernet connection, and share the slot on your Windows system with your Mac. The P2 slot shows up on the Mac desktop as a drive (we named it “PCMCIA slot”). Your Mac now has direct access to the contents of the P2 card. And the Gigabit Ethernet connection claims to be actually faster than a P2 card, so you could potentially get 100% P2 performance through this scenario (note: you won’t get it with “fast ethernet” which maxxes out at 100mbps, you need to make sure you have a full “Gigabit Ethernet” connection to make this workflow practical).
Seems promising, but does it work? We put it through its paces. We connected a Lenovo R61 laptop to a 20” iMac running Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 (sorry, don’t have FCS2 on this iMac). We then tried all the standard workflow tasks:
1) We copied the contents of a 4GB P2 card through the Gigabit Ethernet connection, mounting the P2 card in the Windows laptop’s PCMCIA slot and then sharing that drive onto the Mac desktop. We opened up the disk icon and copied the CONTENTS and LASTCLIP.TXT folder onto the iMac’s internal drive. It worked just like you’d expect, at top speed too: about 2 gigabytes per minute. A full 4GB card offloaded directly through the slot onto the Mac’s hard drive in barely over 2 minutes.
2) We ran P2CMS. It worked. We registered the contents of the card and all the icons showed up. We could export them, ingest them to the database, everything. It all just worked. We tried playing clips in P2CMS using the “playback by P2 Viewer” function, and it played fullscreen 1080P footage immediately.
3) We ran FCP 5.1.4 and used the Import->Panasonic P2 function. The clips showed up in the P2 importer window. We could play them back immediately, live, right off the card, in realtime. We imported a few clips.
4) We then deleted those imported clips and tried the ultimate test: editing straight from the P2 card. And it passed with flying colors.
Wait – editing from the P2 card? In FCP? Yes, without going through Log & Transfer or through File->Import->Panasonic P2. We didn’t use Raylight though (which would have worked, I’m certain). This iMac didn’t have Raylight installed. Instead we used the MXF import component that gets installed when you install Panasonic’s P2CMS. This lets you drag video or audio MXF files directly to the timeline in FCP -- unfortunately it doesn't provide for bringing the audio and video in simultaneously, but Raylight does, and that'd be my recommended workflow anyway -- we were just making do with what we had.
Our goal was to find out if editing from the cards was possible or practical when using a networked Windows laptop as the live slot reader. In a word? Yeah. In two words? Hell yeah.
We started out with one stream, and ended up dragging five separate 1080/24P clips onto the FCP timeline, stacking them, and setting the four upper layers to 50% opacity so we could see all five clips simultaneously. We hit play – and it played. Realtime, immediate playback, five streams of 1080/24PA footage in a 1080/24P sequence. Playing back right from the P2 card, networked to the Mac through a Gigabit Ethernet connection. No stumbles, no stutters, no hiccups, no hassles. We then went for a sixth stream, but that proved to be too much – the timeline render bar turned red, and the preview window told us the footage needed to be rendered. So, six streams of 1080P footage? Nope. But five, yes. Five streams.
So, there you have it: an inexpensive field *and* office workflow system that solves just about every frustration and shortcoming in the Mac side of the P2 workflow. If you can stand to touch a Windows system, you’ll get an effortless, reliable P2 offload station to take in the field, as well as a desktop P2 card reader for your desktop or Macbook. It may seem like overkill to buy an entire laptop, but so what? The cheapest P2 slot reader that Panasonic sells is $1800 (the P2 Store), whereas you can get a dual-core Windows laptop for about $550 that does the job even better – and does so many more jobs as well.
For shopper convenience, the laptop I used was a Lenovo R61. The Lenovo series (as of the time of this writing) offers a number of intriguing benefits for use as a P2 offload station and can be bought for around $500. The main bonuses to the Lenovo that make it serve so well as an offload station are:
1) It includes a Gigabit Ethernet connection
2) It includes a PCMCIA P2-compatible card slot
3) It includes an ExpressCard card slot
4) It has a fast SATA internal hard disk
5) You can easily and cheaply add additional internal SATA hard disks.
The ExpressCard slot makes the Lenovo all the more interesting: not only do you have the PCMCIA slot, but you also have an ExpressCard slot. You could use that for a SATA or FW800 connection, or, perhaps better, you could get a $69 Addonics PCMCIA-to-ExpressCard adapter (or re-use your old Duel Adapter) and turn that ExpressCard slot into a second P2 slot! Now you’ve got a two-slot reader for under $600.
This workflow could work with just about any Windows PC that includes a PCMCIA slot, of course. I recommend checking out the Lenovo lineup if you intend to use it for field offloading, because Lenovo offers the UltraBay option. My Lenovo is currently sporting a 160GB internal drive, and an additional 320GB internal drive in the UltraBay dock. That gives me almost half a terabyte of storage online, internally, with no clutter of separate drives and cables and power supplies. And two drives means instant/easy redundant copying at full SATA speed, for instant duplication for safety. If shopping for a Lenovo, google around for discount coupons, I’ve found 10% and 15% discount coupons readily available from the www.lenovo.com online store. You should be able to put together a very capable offloading station for well under $700, and a basic system for around $500.
I can’t comment on any long-term hiccups or hassles or limitations from using this method; we only really plugged it together to experiment. I don’t know if there are any limitations that will crop up, but I hope some enterprising DVXUser members will adopt this workflow and put it through its paces and share your findings with us.
So – what DOESN’T the Windows laptop do? Well, it doesn’t run Final Cut. If your workflow demands that you edit on your laptop in Final Cut, this isn’t the option for you (unless you want to Hackintosh your Windows laptop, but let’s not go there in this article). You could run any of many other editors, including Premiere Pro, Vegas, EDIUS, SpeedEdit, or Avid, but you couldn’t actually run FCP. So if your workflow absolutely positively demands that you cut in the field using FCP, maybe this isn’t the ideal solution for you. But if that’s not a showstopper for you, I highly recommend experimenting with this Windows laptop approach for any and every Mac-based production house that’s struggling with the limitations I talked about in the first three paragraphs of this article.
If you're having difficulty setting up the permissions and sharing the files so that both computers can work with them, check out this migration article, which has some good tips on network connectivity between the different platforms, specifically in the "transfer your files to mac" section:
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-convert-from-pc-to-mac
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