New HPX 170 Owner: Can Copy P2 Cards to Macbook Pro without FCP?

M

Moto Guzzi Bruce

New member
This is my first post guys and I know very little about Panasonic cameras, but here goes. I just bought a HPX 170 from B&H and I would like to use it this entire weekend to cover a motorcycle rally. There's no point in taking the camera with me if I can't download the P2 card directly to my new Macbook Pro, because I only have the 16GB card and that will get used up real quick. I have two connectors, a firewire 400/800 and a USB 2.0, but I don't have FCP installed yet.

My questions is: can I get the video files from the P2 card in the camera to my laptop without having Final Cut Pro yet? I won't be able to get FCP for a few weeks.

Bear in mind:

I don't have an external HD (yet).
I don't have a "dual adapter" (whatever that is).
I don't have a P2 card reader (whatever that is).
I don't have P2CMS (whatever that is - seems real important because everybody mentions it).

I would appreciate any responses.

Thanks and may I say this site is awesome!
 
FCP is not necessary in order to copy cards onto the computer. In fact, if you want to get technical about it, a computer isn't necessary either -- the HPX170 can directly control a hard disk and copy files onto it.

If you're using an MBP, you're going to be using the camera as a card reader, in 1394 DEVICE mode. You can use P2CMS (a free download from Panasonic) or just use the finder to drag and drop the contents onto your hard disk. There are good reasons to use P2CMS, but many people have used drag 'n' drop without error.
 
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