emergency: P2 File Transfer

N

Nonsense

Active member
This question may have been aswered a hundred times on this website but here it is:

I'm ACing a feature being shot on the HVX-200. We are shooting on 2 4 gig P2 cards. One of my jobs is to transfer the files from the P2 card to an external hardrive. To do that I insert the card into a laptop computer. When the P2 icon appears on the desktop I drag the "contents" folder and the "lastclip" document into a unique folder (appropriatley labeled) onto the external hardrive icon. Everytime I transferred the information over I checked the size of the file and made sure it was exactly the same amount of bytes as the files on the P2 card.

Anyway, when the director tried importing the footage today into final cut (a supposedly updated version) he couldn't get it to open (and yes he tried importing it as a P2 document).

My question is, did I do something wrong?

Should I have been tranferring over the information some other way?

I know I have all the information on the external hardrive so what am i doing wrong?

I would appreciate all the advice I can get.

Thank you very much.
 
If the data didn't get corrupted during the transfer, then what you did is the correct process for offloading P2 cards.

What version of Final Cut? FCP 5.1.1 or FCP 5.1.2 are recommended. FCP 5.0.4 is the absolute minimum. FCP 5.1.2 has the best P2 support, but is occasionally unable to open P2 clips or detects the wrong framerate.
 
Thank you THoff, again.

I will check what version of FCP the director was using tomorrow.

The only way I was checking for file curription was to make sure that all the data was tranferred. To do that I just made sure that the original file was excactly the same size as the transferred file. Is there a better way to do that other than viewing the footage?


Thanks again.
 
We are running final cut 5.1.2 and it wouldn't import the P2 footage. Anyone have any ideas?

Should I try opening it in another application?

Thanks.
 
THoff said:
If the data didn't get corrupted during the transfer, then what you did is the correct process for offloading P2 cards.

How can I make sure the data didn't get corrupted without vewing the footage?
Click to expand...
 
Nonsense said:
How can I make sure the data didn't get corrupted without vewing the footage?
Click to expand...
The only way to be SURE would be to run a file-compare utility that does a binary checksum type of operation, to compare what's on the card with what's on the computer. The P2 Store and the HVX itself can do this type of process; I have to assume there's some sort of utility for the Mac that can do it as well.

This would be an excellent feature for P2 Genie. If P2 Genie had data verification, then it would alleviate all concerns about using a Mac for P2 card offloading.
 
If the MXF files are there and file sizes seem to correspond then you should be ok... can you get somebody with and Avid Xpro set-up... it see's the native MFX files...

Cheers
 
Check your clips folder and make sure you have coresponding XML files for each clip, as this is the last thing copied when copying P2 data. If they are not there, FCP will not import.
 
First off, let me thank you all for being such a wonderfully supportive community.

I just got back from meeting with the director.

The footage was viewable (big ASS sigh of relief). Apparently the person who was helping him with FCP yesterday simply had NO idea what was up. Minor panic attack on my part what with the nightmare stories I've heard before.

I continue shooting tomorrow and take all of your advice for preventing corruption during the transfer process.

Thanks again everybody!

marshall
 
Nonsense said:
Apparently the person who was helping him with FCP yesterday simply had NO idea what was up.
Click to expand...

Does anybody actually do preproduction PREP anymore? wow.:huh:
 
Sorry to sound like a commercial...but *many* people use P2 Log for QC...checking the transferred footage before clearing off the cards.

Oh, and during your next panic attack, you'll be happy to know the new P2 Log Pro has a clip repair wizard as well as XML and lastclip.txt repair built in. We can often fix up P2 volumes that FCP won't open..
 
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