Dumping P2 to external HDD

S

sodotoguwangus

Well-known member
My laptop is a PC. My desktop is a MAC. Here is my question...

When I'm on location, my plan is to connect an external hard-drive to my laptop (windows based) so that I can dump the P2 cards as I fill them up.

However, my primary desktop editing system is a mac. Will this present compatibility issues if the video files were originally captured to my PC laptop? Or are the files universally accepted between platforms?
 
As long as you haven't converted the files in some way (ie, you've simply copied the data from the cards straight to a hard drive), it will work with either system. The laptop I use to store the data in the field is a PC, but I just burn DVD-Rs of each card to hand to clients. They can put those in a PC or a Mac and import into whatever editing system they use very easily. The P2 system really works great right out of the box.
 
Yes, this is no problem. We're using that exact situation on this Prudential infomercial. Offloading to PC laptops using an external FAT32 hard disk. Then take the FAT32 external hard disks to the editing facility, which plugs the drives into their Macs and imports the footage from there. Works fine.

Just make sure your drives are formatted FAT32.
 
Just make sure your drives are formatted FAT32.
Click to expand...

Barry, does this mean on the Mac they only use FAT32? and not NTFS?
If that's the case is there a file size problem on the Mac with FCP?
I'm a PC user thinking of moving to Mac. That's why I'm asking.

Terence
 
maybe a stupid question Barry, but by saying "...Then take the FAT32 external hard disks to the editing facility, which plugs the drives into their Macs and imports the footage from there.."
doesnt mean that you HAVE to copy it to your mac-system, it would also work to edit it directly from the external drive on the mac right?
 
Terence Lehane said:
Barry, does this mean on the Mac they only use FAT32? and not NTFS?
Click to expand...
That's my understanding, yes -- that Mac OS has no support for NTFS natively. Could be wrong, but that's the way I understand it.

If that's the case is there a file size problem on the Mac with FCP?
Click to expand...
Don't know what you're asking. There's a file size limit of 4GB in FAT32, so that would apply whether you're using the file on a PC or on a Mac.

I'm a PC user thinking of moving to Mac. That's why I'm asking.
Click to expand...
You'd use OSX for all your Mac stuff, and FAT32 for any drive that you need to be cross-platform compatible.
 
hvx_germanboy said:
doesnt mean that you HAVE to copy it to your mac-system, it would also work
to edit it directly from the external drive on the mac right?
Click to expand...
As of right now, no you can't do that. The Mac cannot edit directly from the hard disks, which is the penalty we pay for the way they've implemented their MXF support (by requiring an unwrap/rewrap process to turn the MXF files into MOVs.)

If they just would change that so that it supports MXF files on the timeline then yes, you could do exactly what you suggest.

You could do what you suggest on an Avid, or on a Canopus, or Leitch/Velocity or Liquid system; any system that supports native MXF's. But the Apple doesn't, at least not yet. I'm lobbying heavily for them to implement native MXF support on the timeline, and you should too -- everyone should send a letter or e-mail to apple requesting that feature. It's the one missing link that keeps FCP from being the ideal editing platform for HVX footage.
 
Mac os 10.4 added support for READ ONLY NTFS. It is also buggy and some drives will lock up the machine. FAT32 is readable by both MAC and PC. Just format the drive on the MAC because the PC will limit FAT32 to 120 GB (I believe).
 
Actually the PC limits it to 32gb, for no discernible reason. You can download a free application called "Swiss Knife" which lets you format FAT32 drives at whatever size you want; but if you try to format through Windows, it'll claim that 32gb is the biggest it can do.
 
There's a file size limit of 4GB in FAT32
Click to expand...

So there IS a file size limit on the Mac.
How do you Mac guys work around capturing full tapes. Even in DV that's much more than 4 GB. I can only imagine what the problems would be in HD. :(
 
So Barry if i would like to have the option to edit on mac(despite the unwrap mov. problem..) and from pc i would have to format my 1TB Maxtor G14W010 on a MAC with "Swiss Knife" right?

Sorry to ask again, but if i pay that much money for all the equipment, i want to be sure to have as much options open as possible(as i am a young filmmaker and i dont know when all this will pay off...!)

Thanks a lot for your superb support folks..!
Barry if you travel to germany once lets have a beer in berlin..!
 
I'm hoping to download the P2 cards to a OTG USB 2.0 drive, is that possible? Then how do I get it into FCP on a Mac? I'm not sure what do to with the .mxf file? I just got the HVX and I'm hoping to get the field drive set up so I can start shooting.
Thanks! I had to start my new project before the HVX arrived so I rented the Varicam, Snowboard: http://www.kidswhorip.com/videos/nke_ben.mov
Ski: http://www.kidswhorip.com/videos/nke_tucker.mov
I hope the quality is similar. Here's the drive I bought for field recording: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=AA30310
 
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