Laptops with PCMCIA slots

cornell584 said:
Okay, thanks Barry. So... if I understand the workflow correctly:

1. Shoot and store onto the P2 cards.
2. With the P2 cards still in the camera, connect the camera to a laptop (with a firewire port) using a firewire cable, subsequently offloading and saving them to the laptop's internal hard drive.

That's it? Then re-format (empty) the cards and shoot/store/offload again?
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Yep. Although if you're on a Windows system, you don't want to use firewire, you want to use USB instead.

Also, if you want to use firewire drives, you don't even have to have a computer involved; you can just plug the camera directly into the drive and the camera can control and offload its cards onto the drive.
 
Thanks, Barry.

Out of curiosity, the laptop I was going to purchase was Windows-based (to save money). Why don't you recommend using the Firewire here? Should I just get a cheap laptop then and buy the PCD2 and then offload via USB 2.0?

Secondly, once I get home and connect the Windows laptop to my Mac Desktop running Final Cut Pro, what is the fastest/best way to transfer from the Windows laptop to the Mac desktop? What kind of cables/transfer?
 
Because the camera manual specifically says that when using a Windows-based system, you are to use the USB Device mode. When using an OSX-based system, that's when you use the 1394 Device mode.

As for the fastest way to transfer -- in the field, offload your footage to an external USB drive. Then unplug that drive, and plug it into your desktop. Voila.
 
Okay, great Barry -- thanks.

So if I wanted to be able to view the footage as well (even though we're going to try to get an external monitor in the field), I should get a Windows laptop and the AJ-PDC2, is that right? The external USB 2.0 drive (by itself) you mention above would just be a place to temporary store it before I offload it at the house onto the Mac desktop correct?
 
You can use P2 Viewer to view the footage in the field. You can use the PCD2 with either an OSX or Windows system, that's your choice. And yes, the external USB2 drive is your temporary data vault. Because you'd be using an OSX computer, you can't edit the MXF files directly (assuming you're using Apple's editing software) so you'd have to translate the files into Quicktime files, which would be then stored on your desktop. So you'd do a Log & Transfer from the external drive onto your local scratch disk.

Or you could just get Raylight or Calibrated software, and then you could actually edit directly off the external drive, if you wanted to. In a situation such as that, it'd still be wise to make a copy of the footage somewhere; you should always have at least two copies of your footage so not everything is riding on just one drive.
 
Hello ..!

Hello ..!

Can you tell me the Brand New laptops available with PCMCIA card ..! As need to get a new one ..!

Thanks in Advance..

Sheltan



Barry_Green said:
Thought it might be useful to keep a list of new, currently-available laptops that use the PCMCIA slot. Lots of people seem to be under the idea that you can't buy a new laptop with a P2-compatible PCMCIA slot, and (having done so twice in the last year) obviously you can, so here's a list.

If you are aware of a laptop manufacturer's lineup with a PCMCIA slot that isn't on this list, let us know.

All these laptop lines offer PCMCIA/CardBus slots, and many of them also offer ExpressCard slots (for example, the Sony SZ or Lenovo ThinkPad R61 each offer both PCMCIA and ExpressCard slots).

These are all brand-new laptops that you can buy today, that all include a P2-compatible PCMCIA Type II slot:

1. Lenovo ThinkPads (T61, R61, X61, and X61 Tablet series)

2. Sony SZ VAIOs

3. Sony AR VAIOs

4. Panasonic ToughBooks

5. Dell Latitudes (except XT)

6. Dell Precision mobile workstations (except M6300)

7. Gateway C-141X and C-141XL series

8. Hewlett-Packard (HP) 530 series

9. HP/Compaq 6515B, 6715B, 6510B, 6910p, 8510, 8710p series

10. Acer Ferrari 5000 series

11. Acer 6292 series

12. Acer TravelMate 4720, 5520, 5720 series

13. Acer Extensa 4220, 4620, 5620 series

14. Acer Aspire 5050

15. Fujitsu LifeBooks, many various models

16. Fujitsu Tablet ST5112, T4220, T2010, P1620

17. Toshiba Portege M700 series, R500 series

18. Toshiba Tecra A9 series, M9 series

19. Toshiba Qosmio G45

20. Averatec 1100

21. Winbook GL35, GL20P

22. Micron MPC 7410M, 7110M, 7125C, 7220M, 7235C, 7320M. Looks like the whole lineup offers it.

23. Micron MPC TransPort T1300e, T2500, T3200. Looks like all TransPort models offer it.
Click to expand...
 
sheltan said:
Can you tell me the Brand New laptops available with PCMCIA card ..! As need to get a new one ..!

Thanks in Advance..

Sheltan
Click to expand...

Pretty sure the answer to your question is none, unless you can find one on the list that is still new. The PCMCIA technology was phased out years ago.
 
1. Lenovo ThinkPads (T61, R61, X61, and X61 Tablet series)
Click to expand...

HTML: 
http://www.buy.com/prod/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-r61-notebook-intel-core2duo-t7300-2ghz-2gb-ram/q/loc/101/217573743.html

Just went on sale today at Buy.com! A nice deal actually after looking into it, this computer allows a second hard disk so you can handily dump to multiple drives at internal SATA speeds which in my experience is about 10min per 32gb P2 card. Also the extra drive slot is ejectable so you can quickly swap hard disks. The stock hard disk is a bit low capacity, also the ejectable second drive requires a special cartridge
HTML: 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811996024&cm_re=ultrabay-_-11-996-024-_-Product
that you put the 2.5"x9.5mm drives(everything except the newish 1tb drives I think) into so this is a slight fixer-upper situation.

Personally I have been using a Toshiba Tecra A9 for over two years now that has a built in PCMCIA slot, I can dump P2 fast to my onboard hard disk but getting it out is always slow unless I can get myself to a GB ethernet connection. Otherwise USB2.0 is terribly slow at about 29min per 32gb card, and if I get an expansion USB3.0 or Firewire800 card, then I can't dump straight from a P2 card anyway.

I shopped the G4 Macbook with the PCMCIA slot built into it, which is actually pretty similar in price, and its fantastic in my opinion because it has a Firewire800 slot built into it, but I don't know how to dump footage for PC editors out there. Admittedly I haven't researched much into "how to make PC drives work on a Mac" so if you can enlighten me, please do. From a PC standpoint, I bought Macdrive
HTML: 
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive
and it allows my PC to utilize any Mac drives on a PC as well as format a PC drive into native Mac formats. Before you tell me thats the solution for the previously mentioned problem, keep in mind I don't like asking my clients to go purchase additional software, even if it is cheap as dirt, phenomenal, and essential.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone!
 
I just borrowed a HVX 200a and I'm trying to download the p2 cards on an ancient PowerBook g4 that has a PCMCIA slot. I'm running OS 10.4.11 and it only has 1 GHz memory. I tried downloading the P2 drivers from Panasonic but it doesn't show up in my Applications after going through all the steps. Is my computer our of the specs for the program? I tried to pay attention to all of the choices for drivers and think I got the right one. Using 16GB cards - and I can see the files in the folders.

I'm not wild about using the USB cable because I want to keep shooting on card B while download card A. Ideas on what I'm doing wrong? Thank you.
 
Hi guys,
I'm hoping you can tell me if this laptop can handle 1080 playback and AE CS5.5.
Display15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080) [$50.00]
Video & Graphics Card1GB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GT 540M GPU withOptimus Technology / Embedded Intel HD Graphics
CPU Processor2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-2430M Processor ( 3MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz)
Thermal CompoundStock Standard Thermal Compound
Operating SystemGenuine MS Windows® 7 Home Premium 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
Memory8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 2 X 4GB [$50.00]
Primary Hard Disk Drive750GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive [$50.00]
Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
Wireless Network CardInternal 802.11 B+G+N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module
Primary BatterySmart Li-ION Battery Pack
Here is the site the laptop is from : http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_customed&model_name=NP5160
 
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