puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi all:
In the past month, we have run into two unexplained potentially project killing P2 issues and nobody seems to have a clue as to why they happened or how to prevent them from happening again.
Incident #1
Did a single camera interview. Shot five cards, shot them in 720 24PN. Four of them work perfectly but one of the cards shows up with the dreaded red X, which means the clip is permanently defective. We have no idea what might have caused this but basically it renders the shoot unusable. Very frustrating.
Incident #2
We recently did a large tabletop shoot for a high profile film. Brought in a great DP, shot it in our studio. We shot with the HVX-200 to 8GB P2 cards. We shot in 1080, not sure which flavor but it was definitely 1080. Everything on the shoot went well, the producer then handed the P2 cards to our P2 person who does all of the transfers, backups and archives. He transfered from the P2 cards and burned DL DVDs, verified that all of the folders were there, then dumped the cards for other shoots. He then archived the DVD to DLT tape. Our normal backup/archiving procedure here is DVD-R DL and DLT tape and to hard drives whenever we can but we ALWAYS archive to at least two of these three formats.
Here's where it gets weird. An editor is trying to edit the piece together and is bringing in the P2 files into their editing system (FCP 5.04). Some of the files that the producer shot were "not there". We went back to the DVD and looked and found the following, which is very strange. The icon folder has six thumbs, the audio folder has the expected 24 files, the clip folder contains the correct number of .xml files. But the video folder is missing three of the six clips. They are just gone. I am confident that our P2 guy did not error in transfering the media from the cards, we always, always, always only copy over the content folder and the last clip.txt file. We would never go in and only transfer certain files or the folders they are in.
How can this have happened? The producer is quite upset and the P2 guy and I are stumped. Are the thumbnails created at the same time the video clip is written to the P2 card? Because the thumbnails are there so we would like to think that the clips were there and were written to the card. We just can't figure out how the three out of six files could have disappeared if all we do is copy over the content folder and the last clip.txt file? Also, in looking at the times of day in the metadata, the three files that are missing are not missing chronologically, they are missing in random order.
The producer is going to have to do a reshoot and all of us here are very spooked to even use the P2 cameras now. Almost everything we do is a one shot deal, most of the people we interview cannot afford to give us a re-interview, we shoot props, Oscars, tabletop with material that cannot be re-obtained. We own three of the HVX-200s, 6 8GB cards and three P2 stores and my boss is even talking about dumping it all and just shooting HDV (be still my stomach!)
Any advice to figure out what might have happened and how we can prevent this from happening again? We are close to having to dump all of our P2 gear if we cannot figure out why these random things are happening and how to prevent them. Seems strange since we shot a pilot with the three P2 cameras, shot hundreds of cards and backed up, edited and used all of the footage without incident. We have the P2 workflow down, it's just glitching for us and we don't know why.
Love the cameras but if we can't get 100% reliability with the P2 cards/files, we are going to have to dump it and go with (shudder) HDV.
All the best,
Dan Brockett
In the past month, we have run into two unexplained potentially project killing P2 issues and nobody seems to have a clue as to why they happened or how to prevent them from happening again.
Incident #1
Did a single camera interview. Shot five cards, shot them in 720 24PN. Four of them work perfectly but one of the cards shows up with the dreaded red X, which means the clip is permanently defective. We have no idea what might have caused this but basically it renders the shoot unusable. Very frustrating.
Incident #2
We recently did a large tabletop shoot for a high profile film. Brought in a great DP, shot it in our studio. We shot with the HVX-200 to 8GB P2 cards. We shot in 1080, not sure which flavor but it was definitely 1080. Everything on the shoot went well, the producer then handed the P2 cards to our P2 person who does all of the transfers, backups and archives. He transfered from the P2 cards and burned DL DVDs, verified that all of the folders were there, then dumped the cards for other shoots. He then archived the DVD to DLT tape. Our normal backup/archiving procedure here is DVD-R DL and DLT tape and to hard drives whenever we can but we ALWAYS archive to at least two of these three formats.
Here's where it gets weird. An editor is trying to edit the piece together and is bringing in the P2 files into their editing system (FCP 5.04). Some of the files that the producer shot were "not there". We went back to the DVD and looked and found the following, which is very strange. The icon folder has six thumbs, the audio folder has the expected 24 files, the clip folder contains the correct number of .xml files. But the video folder is missing three of the six clips. They are just gone. I am confident that our P2 guy did not error in transfering the media from the cards, we always, always, always only copy over the content folder and the last clip.txt file. We would never go in and only transfer certain files or the folders they are in.
How can this have happened? The producer is quite upset and the P2 guy and I are stumped. Are the thumbnails created at the same time the video clip is written to the P2 card? Because the thumbnails are there so we would like to think that the clips were there and were written to the card. We just can't figure out how the three out of six files could have disappeared if all we do is copy over the content folder and the last clip.txt file? Also, in looking at the times of day in the metadata, the three files that are missing are not missing chronologically, they are missing in random order.
The producer is going to have to do a reshoot and all of us here are very spooked to even use the P2 cameras now. Almost everything we do is a one shot deal, most of the people we interview cannot afford to give us a re-interview, we shoot props, Oscars, tabletop with material that cannot be re-obtained. We own three of the HVX-200s, 6 8GB cards and three P2 stores and my boss is even talking about dumping it all and just shooting HDV (be still my stomach!)
Any advice to figure out what might have happened and how we can prevent this from happening again? We are close to having to dump all of our P2 gear if we cannot figure out why these random things are happening and how to prevent them. Seems strange since we shot a pilot with the three P2 cameras, shot hundreds of cards and backed up, edited and used all of the footage without incident. We have the P2 workflow down, it's just glitching for us and we don't know why.
Love the cameras but if we can't get 100% reliability with the P2 cards/files, we are going to have to dump it and go with (shudder) HDV.
All the best,
Dan Brockett
