Corrupt P2 files

[Mathew Knight]

Hi there. did my first HVX job recently. For a TV commercial shooting 1080/25p. recording to firestore and P2 cards (2 x 8Gb Cards transferred to external hard drive via PC laptop). the shooting process was very smooth. Shot quite a lot of footage (about 90mins).

Everything has turned out fine in the end but we had some trouble on 1 clip (out of 120) when importing to final cut pro HD (mac

On the set everything worked smoothy. Recording onto firestore & P2 cards. Cards go to latop, P2 genie copies to external drive. using P2 viewer we checked the footage on the external hardrive.

But on the last shot of the day (2nd to last as i ran off 5 secs of hand over the lens-old habits die hard) which was just a peice of voice over. When we use P2 viewer to watch it the viewer crashes. But I saw the thumbnail, and looked at the folder on the external drive. So I thought its fine, just a P2 viewer thing.

Back in the edit suite (Mac G5, big fast drives etc, Final cut pro studio HD) we plugged the firestore in and did a file/import/panasonic P2 and imported everything on the firestore. It took about 30mins to bring in. At the end a message came up saying 'one or more clips were corrupt and couldn't be imported' (something like that).

So we looked at the 120 clips (in FCP) and almost everything was fine (and looked fantastic).

But one clip (the second to last) had an audio drop out. Half a word was missing. That was the only problem. So we imported that clip again from the firestore and the audio dropout was the same.

So thats not too big a deal, but a bit of a worry.

but of course no problem, because we also backed up everything from the cards to an external hard drive (PC laptop running P2 Genie & P2 viewer, 250Gb external drive ??).

So I go to our external hard drive and try to import the card that contained the clip with the problem. It won't import, everything just freezes up halfway through. So I try to copy the folder to the mac desktop. Same thing freezes up.

Now i can import some of the other cards on the external drive, but the card with the clip that has the audio dropout won't copy.

So in the end i spend about three hours trying to replace that one clip with the audio drop out. The only way I could do it was to plug the firestore into the camera (And of course the clip in questions plays perfectly on the camera). And So i record from the firstore onto the camera p2 card and transfer this to a (different) external hardrive and we bring that in fine.

So that is my real problem. My backup drive which is my safety net has totally failed to restore a clip that was corrupt from the primary drive. Lucky for me the clip wasn't too important and that after much diffuculty was retrieved.

But what if it was the main shot for the commercial ?
Tens of thousands of dollars to re-shoot ?
At the production companys expense ?

Not worth a great looking image.

Now this is my first proper job on the HVX and for commercials I can't have issues like this. If the workflow is not reliable then i won't be using the HVX anymore.

Sure this problem was no biggie but what if we had 50 out of the 120 clips that were corrupt or with drop outs ?

From reading the archives I can't really figure out a definitive solution. perhaps if i imported to final cut using P2 log this would help. If i used the 'disk image' method this may be better.

But how come I have a problem with the same card on both the firestore & the external drive ? There must have been something corrupt on that card.

I know this is hard to give a magic bullet answer but I need to solve this problem before i can continue with this system.

if anyone can suggest where in the workflow my problem may be, or what I can add or change about the workflow to eliminate this problem that would be much appreciated.

 

[hatchmo]

perhaps if i imported to final cut using P2 log this would help. If i used the 'disk image' method this may be better.

Neither would help you. HD Log (P2 Log's big brother) handles cases like this worse than FCP: It doesn't even tell you there was a problem. And the "Disk Image" method is just voodoo.
I've read your post 3 times now, and I can't figure out which bad clip came from which device. Was the bad audio on the Firestore from a clip folder that was copied from a card? Or was it from video that was recorded directly to the Firestore? It's not clear. At one point, you say:

I have a problem with the same card on both the firestore & the external drive

Do you mean the card was copied to both the Firestore (which is an external drive) and to a third device, an "external drive"? So, I'm guessing about your workflow here, when I say the whole thing sounds like a disk problem. Or a cable problem. But not a camera problem or a bad card. I'd proceed by testing the drives, starting with the Firestore.

 

[Mathew Knight]

Neither would help you. HD Log (P2 Log's big brother) handles cases like this worse than FCP: It doesn't even tell you there was a problem. And the "Disk Image" method is just voodoo.
I've read your post 3 times now, and I can't figure out which bad clip came from which device. Was the bad audio on the Firestore from a clip folder that was copied from a card? Or was it from video that was recorded directly to the Firestore? It's not clear. At one point, you say:

Do you mean the card was copied to both the Firestore (which is an external drive) and to a third device, an "external drive"? So, I'm guessing about your workflow here, when I say the whole thing sounds like a disk problem. Or a cable problem. But not a camera problem or a bad card. I'd proceed by testing the drives, starting with the Firestore.

The camera recorded directly to the firestore. And this firestore was then imported into final cut.

the camere also (at the same time) recorded to an 8Gb P2 card which was then copied to an external drive using the laptop (once each card was full). So on the external drive I have 10 different card folders (we shot 10 8Gb cards). These 'virtual' card folders are named in P2 genie "Homeshow-card_001" Then 002,003.

These folders work perfectly in P2 viewer as 'virtual cards'. I can play all the footage full screen on a laptop (with 4 channels of audio).

But one folder (the external hardrive copy of P2 card 10. Named "...010") Would crash p2 viewer when you tried to play with it. But it was just one clip, on one card. But.....

it was the same clip that had an audio drop out in final cut after being imported from the firestore.

But of course the firestore played the clip fine when you plugged it into the camera.

 

[hatchmo]

OK, got it. Let me noodle on this for a while. That is exceedingly odd. No wonder you're fearful.