Nothing but P2 Issues...

My wild guess is similar to filmstox. I'm no expert in all of this but I would get squirly at the idea of burning DVD's right away and then backing up from the DVD's to another medium. DVD burning in general always feels a little dicey to me as I'm used to having disks occasionally fail.
Did he verify every burn?
Wouldn't it be safer to make sure you are safely on a garden variety hard disk and a back-up hard disk. Then later burn DVD's and/or DLT's once you have made sure that your footage was good?
 
When you copied the P2 card to another medium, did you perform a compare between the copy and original before erasing the card?

I wrote my own recursive script during a recent shoot (I was downloading cards to hard drive via PowerBook) that I run in terminal (would not wish that on anybody who does not already use it though) to compare each file byte by byte (using the unix cmp utility) and I'll be damned, out of 51 card loads, I did find two instances in which the copy I made did not match exactly (a couple of files were different).

Apparently Mac OS X Finder Copy is not doing byte by byte verification. This explains the "Apple Workflow" suggestion in http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=57651 to make a disk image of the card. I wonder, does P2 Genie do a copy AND verify? I cound not tell from reading the documentation online (maybe I missed something? it's not searchable text).
 
I am really sorry to hear such an severe problem,

i would definitly tell you to update the firmware, i still believe that p2 is much more reliable then tape (dropouts...)

I got no idea for your current problem (if you check one card-folder, how is the capacity of it?-in terms of: checking the upcoming video files-how much gb and checking the whole content folder-could it be by number that the missing viedo files are there, but just dont show up???)

I always copied my cards to my laptop (PC), tried to check that the data amount of the card is exactly the same as the "virtual" card-copy on my laptop, AND started playing each clip in p2 viewer (also when i didnt have to see the whole clips, just made sure that the clips work)

But if you got someone helping you copying the cards, he probably wount realize if a shot is missing, as he didnt join the shoot(cause he was dumping cards..) thats something you could make sure in telling him, how many clips you have on each card...

Hope that you will find a solution, definitly keep posting..hoping for success!
 
This appears to be an issue that was addressed at the Panasonic booth during NAB. Apparently this problem has happened more than few times. My understanding is that you must reformat the P2 cards after each use. Simply deleting files off the P2 card leads to fragmentation and ultimately corrupted files. The suggestion about using the cmp command from Terminal is also a great way to make sure your copies are properly made but if they are corrupted on the card the footage is still lost. Apple's suggestion of making a disk image is also a great idea. You may want to consider using HD Logger to direct capture to a hard drive which would sidestep the need to deal with XMF files/P2 cards plus provide longer capture times. The drawback being the tether.

I apologize if this sounds a little harsh (Sorry Jan) towards Panasonic but telling a major portion of your market that you have released updates but not on their platform is totally unacceptable. If you enjoy working on a PC then I'm happy for you but your customers don't all use Windows and they require service the same as anyone else. Especially considering that they invested $10K plus in your hardware and supporting hardware. Compared to a Varicam, that's cheap but it is still a lot of money. Support the Mac fully or lose our business as soon as something better comes along (Red camera). I wonder if Sony or Red would put out updates for the Mac? Hmm. It's bad enough that we have to spend additional money to ingest footage but I'll give Panasonic a pass on that one since it is partially Apple's responsibility to support XMF as well.
 
Then Panasonic has a management problem in the software division.

I don’t mean to be insulting to Jan, who is an angel for taking the time to contribute here and knows her stuff. But the software team is not being honest with her. Many of us on this list have programming backgrounds, and the factory’s statement to her that “it is more complicated than you think” makes us spit milk through our noses. It is LESS complicated than they are telling her.

The key lies in their transparent claim, “The factory is so PC oriented, it would be very hard to deal with maintaining a set of tools for both sides.” Maybe for a large application, but not for a driver update. Your programmers are merely being dismissive, Jan. They just don't want to be bothered.
 
Incident #1
This report is confusing. You write

one of the cards shows up with the dreaded red X, which means the clip is permanently defective.
Click to expand...

This implies that the card contains a single clip. But you say the card was an 8GB card. In FAT32, a full 8GB card must contain at least 2 clips. That means that only one clip had the red X. Right?

Even so, that red X would have appeared in the camera before the card was removed. Did your DP check tap-- er, excuse me -- check the clips in the camera display? If she did, she would not “render the shoot unusable”. You are still on location, it’s not an action shoot, so couldn't you reshoot that portion before killing the lights?
 
Incident #2
He transfered from the P2 cards and burned DL DVDs, verified that all of the folders were there
Click to expand...

I agree that verifying the folder structure should be enough; we shouldn’t have to confirm that the clip count matches the icon count every time we transfer a card.

The icon folder has six thumbs... But the video folder is missing three of the six clips.
Click to expand...

There are only 4 possibilities:

--The camera screwed up and didn’t write all the video.
--The card screwed up, and didn’t record all the data.
--The computer screwed up copying from clip to drive to DVD.
--Nothing screwed up. The whole interview is there in the 3 clips.

The least likely is that the camera screwed up.
The most likely is that the card needs a firmware update.
There is a slight possibility that DVD burning software is at fault. If the card is formatted one way, the computer drive a second way, and the DVD a third way, you could truncate data. You don’t say, for example, how many card folders your guy tried to squeeze onto one DVD. Is there one card for each DVD?

That the camera wrote 6 thumbnails but only 3 clips does not mean all the video is not there. There is a lot of split-’n-stich going on in the Panasonic software. You say the Start Date times are out of order, but have you played those 3 clips through?
 
Hi Hatch:

1. The card with the red Xs? All of the clips (I think that there were 3 or 4) have the red Xs. The strange part is I was able to import one of the really short :10 or :15 clips into FCP, then it played but all of the other long interview clips will not import. When I load the footage back to a card from the DVD or the HD and try to play it in camera, all of the clips show up with the red Xs.

2. One card burned to the DL DVD. I am beginning to think it could be the firmware update. I don't have a PC so I am trying to think about who I know who has a PC laptop with a PC slot. Will have to try to figure that out. Played the clips, the clips that the producer needed are definitely not there and they are not on the next card. They are gone into the ether.

Thanks for the advice.

Dan
 
I was just importing some footage that I shot from a P2 to a local drive in the field. All of my footage has been transfering fine, except one p2 file. It will not give me any thumbnails, in fact, it crashes my FCP 5.1! I NEED this footage! There are no red x's, there are 8 clips available to import, just won't let me do it. One thing I noticed is that it is only 2.5 gig big. I will always fill my 4gig and 8 gig p2 card before transfer.

What is going on here? My worst fears of going tapeless are coming to reality.
 
puredrifting said:
I am beginning to think it could be the firmware update. I don't have a PC so I am trying to think about who I know who has a PC laptop with a PC slot.
Click to expand...

Hi,

The firmware update is only for working with the older cameras, and nothing to do with the HVX. No need to waste you time on this.

Dan, Can you send me a copy of this Contents folder that has the problematic clips?

Thanks,

Jan
 
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