Help! (again) what am I doing wrong? Shoot in 12 hrs.

[filmtovideo]

I'm planning on sending the contents of my 8GB P2 card to a brand new
Lacie 250 GB 7200 rpm hard drive on my shoot tomorrow.I've followed the
instructions in the
HVX-200 manual but I keep getting "1394 initial error" which the manual
explains as "connection error".

I've checked the Lacie on my laptop (MavBookPro) and it reads it okay and I went
into Disk utilities and erased it, even though it's brand new.

The camera is in 1394 Host mode and if I hold the MCR button down it goes from
MCR to PC and the PC lamp comes on but on the menu it won't move out of
settings (whether verify is on or off) and up to either format or copy to HDD. I
press the arrow but it does nothing.

I think that the "initial error" has to be corrected first but I've hooked the systems
up every possible way. 1. Connect 1394 cable, then power Lacie, then power
"unit" as the manual calls the camera. 2. Power Lacie (as the Lacie instructions
say, then connect cable and power unit. 3. Anything else that I could think of.

I just wanted to test copying P2 to hard drive, which looks so easy in the manual,
so that I can do that tomorrow.

Can anybody help? THANKS!

 

[Barry_Green]

Never encountered that. You're not trying to power the drive from the firewire connection are you?

 

[x002657]

I've copied from P2 direct to a "mobile" HDD,

I've copied from P2 direct to a "mobile" HDD,

but not a LaCie.
FWIW, I'm on XP Pro. I copied clips from 2 4GB P2 cards to a 320 GB harddrive yesterday, also a brand new drive.

First I formatted the drive THROUGH THE CAMERA, not the computer.

Is there footage on the P2 cards?

Curiously, even though I successfully moved the clips yesterday, I find I'm in the same situation as you: from PC mode, I now can't move off of "SETTINGS". I wonder if the camera is smart enough to know that either the footage has already been copied to the disk you have connected, or if there is no footage to copy. Barry seems to hint at this on page 95 of his book, i.e. there's no need to worry about overwriting exisiting files, because a new partition is created for each card that it copies over to the hard disk. Maybe the camera and the disk "talk' to each other so a "duplicate" partition cannot be created. Think about it: without new data, there would be no need for another patition.

I have a hunch that formatting the P2 cards, or erasing all clips, then recording some new test footage, might help. I suspect the camera will not transfer "empty" disks to the hard drive. However, before you try to copy any new test clips, reformat the drive from the camera.

Please report back with what did/did not work.

Good luck.

 

[filmtovideo]

Never encountered that. You're not trying to power the drive from the firewire connection are you?

Thanks guys.

I knew that the hard drive is not supposed to be powered from the Firewire
and that the hard drive has to be formatted from the camera and that the
P2 card has to be formatted and have footage on it. Did all that last night.

Today, instead of connecting the Firewire directly in between the hard drive and
the camera, I connected each to a Firewire (6 port) hub (which has its own
power.)

Somehow, with that in between, the camera saw the hard drive and I could
format, copy to and verify with the hard drive.

I also first tested a different Firewire that I use, even though the first
cable was the brand new one with the Lacie, and the situation last night
was the same with both.

I'll figure it out later, I hope, but at least it looks like I'm in business.

THANKS!

 

[x002657]

Glad to hear you're back in business.

Glad to hear you're back in business.

Tried again today; it worked.
When I did, I gave each end of the firewire plug a little push to make sure they were seated properly.It seemed the 4 pin end at the camera moved by about a hair's width, but if definitely moved. Maybe I just didin't have it seated properly. I can now get off the "SETTINGS" option. Will have to keep that in mind in the future, as I think I'll make offloading P2s to a hard drive my "sop" workflow until I can get a Cineporter.

 

[TwistedLincoln]

Today, instead of connecting the Firewire directly in between the hard drive and
the camera, I connected each to a Firewire (6 port) hub (which has its own
power.)

Somehow, with that in between, the camera saw the hard drive and I could
format, copy to and verify with the hard drive.

I'm going to have to try that. I've been getting a similar error, but I get a bit closer:

I set the camera to IEEE Host mode. I switch to PC dub mode. The camera sees the drive, but then says "cannot access target" When I check the "properties" menu, it does show the correct model and capacity of the drive. When I go to format it, however, it tells me that it cannot format. I can't do anything else at that point.

I have tried different hard drives, different cables, and differnet enclosures (both were dual USB 2.0/Firewire 2.5 enclosures). I've tried powering the enclosures via a battery pack, or via the USB power adapter hooked to my PC. Both enclosures work fine when used with either firewire or USB on my PC. And the HVX seems to have no problem streaming DV out the firewire port to my PC. I've tried everything I can think of.

Oh, and I recently bought a second HVX, and it does the same thing, so it isn't the camera... so what am I missing? I have changed out every possible part...

 

[filmtovideo]

I'm going to have to try that. I've been getting a similar error, but I get a bit closer:

I set the camera to IEEE Host mode. I switch to PC dub mode. The camera sees the drive, but then says "cannot access target" When I check the "properties" menu, it does show the correct model and capacity of the drive. When I go to format it, however, it tells me that it cannot format. I can't do anything else at that point.

I have tried different hard drives, different cables, and differnet enclosures (both were dual USB 2.0/Firewire 2.5 enclosures). I've tried powering the enclosures via a battery pack, or via the USB power adapter hooked to my PC. Both enclosures work fine when used with either firewire or USB on my PC. And the HVX seems to have no problem streaming DV out the firewire port to my PC. I've tried everything I can think of.

Oh, and I recently bought a second HVX, and it does the same thing, so it isn't the camera... so what am I missing? I have changed out every possible part...

Hi guys,

The shoot went well. Thanks for all the help.Regarding the problem of the
camera seeing the drive, I e-mailed a tech guy about how I had used the hub
and that worked when the direct connection wouldn't and he said:

"Now that you say that, it reminded me of something (the boss)had said to me
when the DVCPRO deck in the edit room was acting up. Panasonic had told her
that they use a proprietary variant of the Firewire standard, and they needed to
update the deck to make it work with Apple hardware, which uses Sony's variant
(as does 99.9% of the world). I suspect that the same thing might be happening
here, and that he hub provides the necessary translation between the Panasonic
and Apple flavors of Firewire."

I'm not sure that I understand but maybe that will help.

 

[x002657]

"Proprietary Standard"?

"Proprietary Standard"?

The shoot went well.

Glad to hear that.

Thanks for all the help.

You're welcome, (though I doubt my reply provided any help). Looking for help is probably the main reason we all come to this board. And Thank you for posting your results/findings.

"... Panasonic use a proprietary variant of the Firewire standard...

"...a proprietary variant of [a]...standard"??? WTH???
Isn't that some kind of contradiction? Learning that doesn't give me a "warm, fuzzy feeling". I can't help but wonder what other little gremlins might "lurk in the machine". I wonder if that would addect the CinePorter, and hope the folks at SpecComm knew about that when developing the it.

Also, I wonder if that could contribute to why the CitiDisk has turned out to be so ornery with the HVX.
(Just venting...pay it no mind).


Thanks for reporting back!

 

[Barry_Green]

Panasonic uses the same standard as everyone does.

What he may be referring to is that the DVCPRO data stream is a tad different than a DV data stream. You can't send a DV data stream to a DVCPRO deck, it won't recognize it (at least, the early decks wouldn't).