Automated P2 Card Backup--A Dream

T

terry_g_johnson

Member
One additional feature might add tremendously to the appeal of this camera in a continuous shooting environment:

Configuration: Two P2 cards plugged into the camera and a USB HDD (Ipod?) or notebook computer attached via USB.

Software feature: As soon as one P2 card is full and recording has begun on the second card, a background software routine downloads the data from the full P2 card to the USB drive or notebook. When this transfer is complete there should be two options available:
Auto Mode: automatically erases the card data which would make the backed up card available for recording when the other card is full.
Conditional Mode: notify the operator that the card has been backed up and offer the choice of erasing the data on the card or retaining it.

The challenge for Panasonic is that the camera be capable of transferring to the USB port while recording to the other P2 card.

The advantage of this system over the firewire (1394) method is that Meta Data will be not be lost. Also any USB drive or notebook computer which is fast enough might possibly be used. This could be a hands off automated process and there would be no need to have timely human intervention and it would not risk distracting the camerman or moving the camera while exchanging P2 cards. These cards are located right under the eye piece.

The camera is wonderful and I should be ashamed to ask for more...
 
Holy Hell, that would be awesome.

Just plug up your 60 gig iPod and have the P2 card auto offload onto it why the other is recording until....

a) you are done recording
b) your iPod (or other device) is full
c) your camera of iPod's battery is dead

OR you just wanted to do a backup of the P2 card which would be useless to me because I feel pretty confident that P2 cards will not suffer from dropped frames or something more rare because it is solid state.
 
That would be great, but my anticipated workflow is confirmed, and nearly as good...

Have a powerbook/iBook with superdrive on set. Shoot 4GB P2 cards. When you fill one, throw it into the laptop with a blank dvd. Run an Applescript (it'd be easy to write, though I imagine it'll be even easier as an Automator action in Tiger) that automatically copies the contents of the card to a hard drive AND burns a dvd. Then you have redundant backup, on different media types, and all you had to do was double click an icon.

Between Apple and Panasonic, HD production is certainly getting alot easier.

Will
 
I really like Wiyum's idea of a direct burn to DVD media in addition to having a hard disk backup!
 
But can you burn fast enough before the other p2 card fulls up and you need to do it again. Guess the DVD burns could be queued up and it just goes through them when it's able to.

A better solution (That rumours are already flying around about) is direct writing to Firewire or USB. Just plug the drive in and not worry about P2 at all. Keep metadata, don't need P2 either.

Aaron
 
terry_g_johnson said:
One additional feature might add tremendously to the appeal of this camera in a continuous shooting environment:

Configuration: Two P2 cards plugged into the camera and a USB HDD (Ipod?) or notebook computer attached via USB.

Software feature: As soon as one P2 card is full and recording has begun on the second card, a background software routine downloads the data from the full P2 card to the USB drive or notebook. When this transfer is complete there should be two options available:
Auto Mode: automatically erases the card data which would make the backed up card available for recording when the other card is full.
Conditional Mode: notify the operator that the card has been backed up and offer the choice of erasing the data on the card or retaining it.

The challenge for Panasonic is that the camera be capable of transferring to the USB port while recording to the other P2 card.
Click to expand...

This question/idea was already brought up in another thread, and the answer from Barry was no, the camera cannot do this.
 
My solution utilizies the HVX's uncompressed outputs which will be fed into an MPEG4 encoder linked to a WiFi transmitter that streams the signal to a secure router which has a FDDI line that runs to a RAID system mounted to a steadicam (even if the camera is shoulder mounted). For redundancy, the sound guy will wear an identical RAID system in his backpack (which can also serve as a backup to his Nagra). I'm still working out the details, but I think I can deliver this for under $30k! Let me know if you're interested.

PS- I was just kidding... the steadicam won't be a requirment.
 
terry_g_johnson said:
One additional feature might add tremendously to the appeal of this camera in a continuous shooting environment:

Configuration: Two P2 cards plugged into the camera and a USB HDD (Ipod?) or notebook computer attached via USB.

Software feature: As soon as one P2 card is full and recording has begun on the second card, a background software routine downloads the data from the full P2 card to the USB drive or notebook. When this transfer is complete there should be two options available:
Auto Mode: automatically erases the card data which would make the backed up card available for recording when the other card is full.
Conditional Mode: notify the operator that the card has been backed up and offer the choice of erasing the data on the card or retaining it.

The challenge for Panasonic is that the camera be capable of transferring to the USB port while recording to the other P2 card.

The advantage of this system over the firewire (1394) method is that Meta Data will be not be lost. Also any USB drive or notebook computer which is fast enough might possibly be used. This could be a hands off automated process and there would be no need to have timely human intervention and it would not risk distracting the camerman or moving the camera while exchanging P2 cards. These cards are located right under the eye piece.

The camera is wonderful and I should be ashamed to ask for more...
Click to expand...

I must have missed it, but that's what I thought they were aiming at the whole time. Any other way seems kind of silly. It doesn't even have to be a continous shooting situation for this feature to be needed. Critical framing alone is enough to warrant such a feature.

Would anyone like to spend time setting up a shot only to have the P2 fill up in the middle of a scene and then pull it out, moving the camera and then try to find the framing to exactly match previous work? This eats up time & energy that is better used for the creative process than the corrective process....and it causes unneeded frustration.

Panasonic needs to add this feature or the machine might have trouble finding customers once production stories start circulating.

Pulling cards out all the time will do a few things: wear out the connections and disrupt the camera shot. Who wants that?

Hope this is resolved soon or I'm just misunderstanding it.
 
How about us who don`t want cables, FireWire, USB`s, streaming, downloading during a shot?! I have to move the camera around, without thinking about cables all the time. I`m thinking about the link between the HVX200 and a portable computer. I feel I have missed something essential here. I have an assistant who can put the footage from card #1 to the computer, while I`m recording unto card #2. But you have to have a box, machine, something to do that. Don`t you?!?!
 
well the only way this will happen is a wireless P2 card/PCMIA card that transfers during shooting to a HDD with another wireless adapter...dream on....
 
IMHO Panasonic will only implement this system if they are more interested in selling cameras than P2 Cards...
Click to expand...
Panasonic's far more interested in selling cameras than P2 cards. Cameras drive business, they drive loyalty, they drive upgrades, they lead to installing Panasonic decks and other Panasonic gear.

The cards would be nice to sell as well, but they're willing to license the P2 technology to anyone who wants to make it. So you will likely see Kingston P2 cards, and PNY P2 cards, etc.

Panasonic's already signed up Focus to develop a DVCPRO-HD version of the FireStore. With that, you wouldn't ever need to buy a P2 card, and you could shoot HD and DVCPRO50. But you'd still need the camera...

Again, you don't need any P2 cards and you could hook it up directly to a laptop or desktop and stream data directly to them. Not convenient for the field, but usable in a studio/locked-down scenario.

Panasonic wants to sell cameras. Selling lots of P2 cards would be a bonus, but like I've said, I can see where people wouldn't ever need more than two or three of them, over the life of the camera. It's most definitely *not* a "razor and blades" type of business model.
 
It is important that Panasonic or Focus provide for a USB transfer to the external storage device because Meta Data is lost in a firewire transfer. Meta Data must be preserved in order to realize fully the advantages of the HVX Camera over competing designs. It would be helpful if Jan or someone familiar with the Veri Cam could expand on how Meta Data can be used to retain data pertaining to the clip. I have found that digital camera (Nikon D70) recorded Meta Data which can now be viewed with Photoshop CS is very valuable.
 
Jan's been talking about metadata for quite a while, and she's repeatedly said that by dubbing to tape, you lose all the metadata, which is really not what you want to do. By archiving to DVD or DLT or SAIT or HDD or one of those technologies, you keep all the cool metadata.

But the VariCam doesn't store metadata, it's a tape-based product. The SPX800 is the camera you're looking to, for more info on metadata, as it's an existing P2 product that's been out for about a year.
 
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