Client is Mac and I'm PC...

T

teamh3

Active member
Shot some stuff on my HVX-200 and transferred P2 data to my portable hard drive connected to my PC. Client is editing on a Mac on Final Cut Pro. I plan to give the Client the portable hard drive with footage on it.

How should I instruct the Client to deal with the PC formatted hard drive, so that it is readable on his Mac??

Hard drive is formatted in NTSF.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Hugh
 
Of course, the drive is already readable on the Mac. He's going to have to make .movs of all the footage on his scratch drive anyway, so it's already workable.

But Perrone is correct in that the better solution will be to give him a drive formatted as HFS+.
 
NTFS is not readable by any Mac I am familiar with... at least not natively. It works if the drive is formated FAT32, but not NTFS. Been there, done that numerous times. That's why I just gave in and bought MacDrive.
 
It definitely isn't writable, but I've read NTFS drives on Macs. But yes, absolutely, FAT32 or HFS+ is foolproof and should be used.
 
Hmm, maybe that's what it was. I knew I couldn't use it for workflow. FAT32 is nearly useless for HD video work though, so HFS+ becomes the most logical choice.

If a PC user is spending any appreciable time collaborating with Mac people, MacDrive is a no-brainer.
 
I've never come across a Mac that couldn't read NTFS drives. But we're talking about P2 footage here. He could easily format the hard drive as FAT32 and it would work just fine.

Leave it at NTFS and give it to your client.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll try to give Client NTFS drive first. I'll let you all know what happens.

Hugh
 
Your client will be able to pull files off your NTFS formatted drives no problem without doing anything- just wont be able to write to them (ie. metadata changes, shot marks, etc.).
 
NTFS drives are readable on a Mac and the files can be copied across to the Mac but the Mac can't write back to NTFS unless the Mac has a small piece of software like 'NTFS for Mac'. I have this installed and work happily with NTFS drives on my Mac.

If you were giving the files to me I would be happy to have them as they come off the camera. I copy the data from the P2 cards into separate folders each with it's own lastclip.txt file. Then in Final Cut using 'Log and Transfer' I select all the folders at once and transfer. Selecting all the folders (cards) together means that FCP will detect spanned clips and stitch them back together. The workflow works flawlessly.

Doing it this way means that I have the original camera files to go back to. If I just 'Log and Transfer' the files, FCP rewraps them as .MOVs. There's nothing wrong with this but if FCP creates glitches it is better to have the MXF files to go back to.

If your client is using Adobe Premiere on the Mac the MXF files will work directly on the timeline in the later versions, CS3 etc.

I can't say how the files should be used if your client is using Avid.

There is a small charge for 'NTFS for Mac' but it's worth every penny. Don't know why Apple doesn't include the utility or something similar within the OS. I'm sure it's not beyond the expertise of Apple to write such a utility, maybe there is an NTFS licence issue.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Dean
 
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