DOC. Filmmaking w/ P2?

H

Hurley

Active member
Hey guys,
I just booked a pretty good sized gig for a documentary that would require traveling for about a month and shooting at various locations. My first probelm is to figure out the best way the shoot this in 720 and save the files. I'm trying to limit the amount of gear I take and also the trouble of stopping to load off the files (I don't know if I'll have someone who can do that for me.) Right now I've just got the camera and a 16gb card, I know that should give me 42 minutes in 720pn.
So, do I need to get a firestore and/or more P2 cards, a laptop and also an external hard drive to store all the files? Normally I just shoot and quickly off load on my computer but with traveling I can't do that as easily so I figure I'll need a laptop. I also don't want to have to stop to off load the files too much during the day because that could waste some valuable time. Is the P2 format ideal for a small crew on a documentary or would a tape-based camera be better? Whats everyone's experience with this type of situation?
Thanks!
 
Personally not a huge fan of the Firestore. Lot of doc makers are perfectly content with them but on the other hand I hear a lot of horror stories. My recommendation instead would be to buy two more 32GB P2 cards. With that much you should have enough storage space to shoot an entire day's worth without stopping to offload. Then you offload at night in the comfort of your hotel room. Getting a P2 drive which would allow you to leave all 3 cards copying while you sleep would be a great great idea as well. Otherwise you have to wait for each card to copy then switch to the next to offload.

-Noah
 
2 x32's and 1 x 16 would give you somewhere around 3.5 hours continuous recording at 720p/24pn. If you offloaded cards via a pcmcia slot on a laptop or a pc, your total offload time would be around 40 minutes total... So, you could offload at the end of the day in less than an hour.

Or, if you carry around a cheap pc laptop with you, you could offload one of those 32's if necessary and give yourself another 84 minutes or so of record time... 4.5-5 hours of record time for the day with one 16 minute offload during the day (something that could be done during a quick lunch), and 40 minutes of offload time at the end of the day.

Something to be said for the time saved. Now, you would likely want to offload to more than one external drive, or to data tape or something like that, and have some redundancy of course, which would add to your offload time, but it's still a major timesaver.

Other advantage would be if you were working with an NLE like EDIUS, for example, you could start working that footage immediately, even while you were offloading. More time saved... So that hour of offloading at night, doesn't even have to be spent waiting.

If you want security of footage, I would think about having enough p2 cards to get you through the day, as your footage is most secure while it remains on the p2 cards. Then, at the end of the day, you can offload to multiple hdd's for redundancy, or to a hdd and data tape or whatever, and verify all of your footage before wiping the cards clean.

I would highly recommend having multiple copies of your footage, whichever route you take. Redundancy will be very important, especially in a documentary type situation, I would think.

Later,
Jason
 
Thanks guys I see a lot of good advice here. I'm currently doing some research on prices to see which is better over the long haul renting vs. buying P2 cards. I was dumb enough to quote the client a rate without taking into account this problem. So maybe I'll have to negoiate something there.
Another quick question...I edit with FCP on a MAC but I only have a PC laptop. Can I get an NLE for my PC, upload the files to a external hd through the PC but then edit it on a MAC?
 
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