Delete P2 contents on computer?

Shane Ross

Shane Ross

Veteran
I swear that I used to be able to insert a P2 card, copy the contents off of it, then drag them to the trash and the empty the trash by holding down the option key. I KNOW I did this. This is what we did for the first project I did, Mexican American War. My producer remembers this happening too.

But now...I can't. I have to reformat the card in the camera, and that shuts the camera down for a few and isn't helpful when you need to do continuous shooting.

Anyone help with this? Remember this? Or am I coo-coo?
 
What size card are you using? I have 4 and 8s and shot all day today using the process you described. I could be dreaming but I thought I had read not being able to delete like this was with the newer 16 cards.
 
Let me guess-- at some point, you updated the firmware to support 16/32gb P2 cards, right?

For reasons unknown, the new firmware removes the ability of the camera to deal with a blank card -- if the directory structure it wants isn't there, it won't work.

See this thread for details: Stop Deleting the Contents Directory

The one thing that was never answered in this thread (and keeps me using the old firmware), is if you can just delete the contents of each folder, and leave the folder structure intact -- or do you actually have to reformat the card via P2 Viewer or the camera?

It wouldn't be to difficult to write a batch file / script to automate deleting the files themselves and leaving the directories intact -- or simply to delete everything and then recreate the directory structure.

But if one MUST format, that is seriously inconvenient.

Any chance you could test this out for us, since you already seem to have the problem? I've been tempted to upgrade one of my two cameras for testing purposes, but if it turns out there is no workaround, I'd hate to be stuck (as to my knowledge, you can't downgrade the firmware... haven't confirmed that either, come to think it).
 
Ahhh ! I so have the same problem...my little HVX was all happy then i had my friend use it for a shoot on the vomit comit and he updated it to work with there 16gb cards.... i have all 4gb cards which are fine for my stuff...

It is reallllly frustrating to not be able to do that now...

id love to know if anyone finds a fix or workaround !

Cheers
DAniel B
 
Well, these are 4GB cards...and the camera is a loaner from Panasonic, so I am sure that it has that firmware update. So I wasn't dreaming. I remember doing this for my first tutorial on the P2 workflow with FCP 5.0.4.

I'll test your theory Twisted. But I have the feeling that it won't let me toss the contents of the CONTENTS folder. The Lastclip file I can toss. It is the CONTENTS folder that it has issue with.

Darn, this was a very convenient thing.
 
The only thing I can manually delete is the Lastclip.txt file. Nothing inside the Contents folder will go into the trash. Not the folders, nothing inside the folders. And when I use Disk Utility to format, the camera doesn't recognize the card.

Gah...why did they do this?
 
Is it my understanding that the PC version of one of Panasonic's apps, ie perhaps P2CMS, will format in the PC?
 
I have a similar issue -- I use GNU/Linux to offload using the camera in USB Device mode, so I can't use anything other than the camera itself to format the cards....
 
Barry_Green said:
P2 Store and P2 Gear and the camera can all format cards.
Click to expand...

Good point. It's a shame the P2 Gear still sells for $3,600+, or I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

BTW, can you confirm or deny that it isn't possible to downgrade your firmware? I'd probably be willing to do back and forth between the new and old firmware as circumstances allow.
 
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