Let's Get the OS X P2 Bug Fixed!!!!!

bbalser

bbalser

Veteran
Here is the URL for the Final Cut Pro feedback page. PLEASE, ALL FCP USERS FILL THIS OUT!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

FACTS-
1- Majority of HVX sales were to FCP users.
2- Majorigy of FS-100 sales were to FCP users.
3- OS X has a major P2 bug that actually hinders our ability to continue making a living with FCP in a resonable manner.

So let's get fired up, let's all hit Apple with compaints about HVX-200 P2 data corruption by OS X. Yes, it's an OS X problem, not FCP.

Let's hit them again and again and again with this form! Email anyone at Apple you know, whatever you can do! Comlain loudly in Apple Stores about this problem! Let's let Apple know that there's a problem, a MAJOR problem, and we need it fixed NOW! Not with v.6 at NAB, NOW!!!!!

I for one, who makes a living editing with FCP and the DVCPRO-HD P2 format, and a trainer, have had about enough of this BS from Apple. It is simply unacceptable at to let such a problem go unacknowledged for so long!

Thank you for your time...
 
I agree with BenB. I don't use FCP but I when I worked for apple they seem to not respond until they get large amounts of people complaining about a situation.
 
Isaac_Brody said:
What exactly is the P2 bug in final cut?
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It's not in Final Cut. It's in the OS, apparently.
How is data getting corrupted?
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Macs don't always successfully copy the data from the cards every time. Sometimes some bits get corrupted. It looks like DV tape dropouts, although it can get pretty bad. It happens when you import footage from the card, it happens when you copy the card onto the hard disk, it can happen if you're just playing the footage back from P2 Log.

But any corruption, even a single bit, is unacceptable. Mac users should be screaming at the top of their lungs to get this fixed.
 
Barry_Green said:
But any corruption, even a single bit, is unacceptable. Mac users should be screaming at the top of their lungs to get this fixed.
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Oh my god. How can people trust their Macs at all? So how do you work around this? Do you basically just copy your footage to mac, check it to see if it's fine and then blank your cards? Or can this corruption happen at anytime? Say after you copy it and check it and it's fine and then when you're playing back a few days later? How have people adjusted their workflow to overcome this?

I want to shoot with the HVX in a few months but losing a days work...well I just don't want to risk that.
 
What I do:

Copy the card/FS content to the Mac

Import into FCP

The bug seems (to me) to occur on import to FCP, when things FU, I just re-import from my "original" folder.

A PITA when it happens, but I am - so far - among the lucky ones who have never actually lost work due to this.

Gunleik
 
gunleik, it also has happened to me using P2 Log. I've personally seen P2 Log claim files were corrupt and unreadable. I've had FCP import just fine those exact same files. And with FCP, claiming a bad file, and P2 Log can import it just fine. Problem also has happened to me importing directly from P2 card or FS-100 with both P2 Log and FCP.

It's not happening on every Mac, and not all the time. But it is there and a major problem for a "Pro App" that some of us make a living with.

Beta testing the 3.0 firmware of the FS-100, recording into QuickTime Native mode, is my personal work around. BUT you don't get clip spanning, which I really miss.
 
Forgot. Seen in P2 log, too

And I sent in the form
A "pro" solution shouldn't be like this.


Gunleik
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Oh my god. How can people trust their Macs at all? So how do you work around this?
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It's not every time, and it's not every Mac. But it is always on the Mac when it happens.

How do you work around it? I simply refuse to use a Mac to offload footage. Offload on a PC, you're guaranteed 100% success. Take that drive to a Mac and plug it in, import the footage to FCP, it's all fine. Offload to a Mac? You may successfully do so, or you may get hit with the glitch. 80% of the HVX users are on the Mac, and while we do see a new report of the "glitch" every week or two, that's still a very small percentage of overall users. So it's not like it's widespread and rampant, but it is there and I find it unacceptable.

We don't know what the problem is. I tried to start a thread to get to the bottom of it, and basically we got some good feedback before the inevitable "never happens to me" posts started popping up.

Do you basically just copy your footage to mac, check it to see if it's fine and then blank your cards? Or can this corruption happen at anytime? Say after you copy it and check it and it's fine and then when you're playing back a few days later? How have people adjusted their workflow to overcome this?
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It happens when accessing the footage on the card, whether through Finder or FCP or P2 Log or whatever. If you successfully copy the footage off the card with no corruption, then you won't ever have a problem with that footage.

If someone wanted to be thoroughly sure, they could import the footage, then watch every frame of it, and once they're satisfied that it got copied correctly, they would then reformat the card. But that's just asinine. You should be able to trust it 100%. I've copied terabytes worth of cards on many different PCs and never had a single bit of corruption. Kevin Railsback doesn't even have to copy footage onto his hard disk on his Powerbook in order to see it corrupt the data; just playing the footage live from P2 Log will show corruption at times.

The thing that shocks me is that people don't seem all that concerned about it. I did a training/workflow session for a certain company whose adherents will only ever use Macs, ever; wouldn't consider touching a PC. I tried to lay out the workflow, but it was getting quite complex, and they said "we're just gonna import from the cards." I said "but: you run the risk of getting the glitch if you do that." They said "what glitch? We do it all the time, there's no glitch." So I said "little speckles of corruption, that look like DV tape dropouts? you never get those?" and they said "oh, yeah, we get those all the time. We just cut around it; we're shooting two cameras so we can cut away if that happens."

WHA?!?!?! Why not scream from the rooftops and demand that the problem get fixed, instead of cutting around it? IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. The PC works. It's proven that the cards can be transferred to hard drives, or edited from, without *ever* glitching. So why can't the Mac? Apple should find the problem and fix it. Anything less is ridiculous.

I want to shoot with the HVX in a few months but losing a days work...well I just don't want to risk that.
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Use a PC laptop to offload, you won't lose a single bit. You can edit on a Mac if you want; just unplug the external drive from the PC laptop and plug it into the Mac editing station. That all works fine. If you want absolutely safe guaranteed footage transfers, use a Windows laptop to offload the cards.
 
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Also submitting through the Send Feedback to Apple option within FCP can have an effect as well.

-Noah
 
I sent this bug to FCP a while back...well, two weeks.

My solution? Not to use FCP 5.1.2. I used 5.1.1 to import. But, if you are using 5.1.2 there is no way to revert to 5.1.1. I happen to keep older versions of FCP on my system just in case I need to work with older formatted project files, and need to keep them in that format, so I have 4.5, 5.0.4, 5.1.1 and 5.1.2.

But yes, that corruption bug is annoying. Add all these nice new bells and whistles and break the basic function of the import tool. Dumb.

http://lfhd.blogspot.com/2007/01/p2-import-with-512-is-busted.html

This is the entry on my blog where I ***** about this.
 
So are we getting competing arguments here? Is it an OSX issue, an FCP issue, or a combination of both? Ben's earlier comments are OSX related, Barry's also seem to indicate OSX issue, but now Shane is saying its all cool if you stick with 5.1.1. Again this is something Apple should be figuring out, not us, but just curious if anyone has any more insight into where the problem really is?

I use 5.1.1 and so far have not had a problem. However, I've not come close to processing as much HVX stuff as most other people around here I imagine. And actually my ah "work around" is to dump all the footage straight from P2 cards to tapes (firewire from HVX200 to AJ-HD1200). Not a viable solution for most I'm sure, and well quite counter-intuitive for the tapeless workflow (but we're doing offline/online, so makes it better for us actually).

cheers.
 
I'm 100% certain that it's not an FCP issue, for two reasons:

1) I've transferred hundreds of cards to hard disks on a PC, which have been then imported successfully into FCP without a glitch ever.

2) Kevin (n8ture) gets the glitch when putting the card in his PowerBook slot, and playing clips using P2 Log. FCP doesn't even enter into the picture at that point, it's not even running, and the glitch still happens.
 
Actually, Apple has no idea if you launch the page from within FCP or not. It's just a web page. But a very important one, one all us FCP users should be filling out once a week.

BETTER YET, fill it out EVERY SINGLE TIME you have a clip that won't import. And tell them your friend's PC imports it just fine (after you actually do it, don't lie).
 
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