Offloading laptop station - questions

Phenixone

Phenixone

Well-known member
I'm a mac user and I'm planning on buying a Laptop PC to use as an offloading station.

My selection would be a Toshiba Protege R500, it has a PCMCIA (PC Card type II) and it is really small and light (12.1", 1.72 pound) (LINK !)

The only thing is that it only has a i-link (4 pin firewire) and no firewire 800.

To offload ny content I was then thinking of using a network drive such as the Lacie 2Big disk NETWORK to use with the gigabit port on the laptop.

What do you think ?

Computer is a bit pricey but still under the $5k AG-HPG20 from panasonic.

Barry ?
 
Looks like that would work fine. Do you need to use it for in-the-field playback? Because Jason.Adams' Lenovo system is a lot smaller and lighter and 1/5 the price, if all you're looking for is a field offloader.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=176057

Now, if it's meant to be a main computer system, don't bother with the netbook, but if all you're looking for is a field offloader, that's a pretty sweet setup.

For getting footage off, you can of course use the gig-E network drive, or (if you can stand having one more piece of equipment in the list) you can just offload directly to an external USB hard drive, and then disconnect that drive from the offload system and plug it into your edit system.

If you go with the Lenovo system, it doesn't have gig-E, it only has 100mbps, so you'd want to get a USB->gig-E converter. It'd only be half the speed of true gig-E, but way faster than 100mbps.
 
All I'm looking for is an alternative to the Duel Adapter on my MacBook Pro, which died again yesterday in the middle of a shooting ... looks great when you say that you need your camera off the set to offload your full p2 card ... any cheap/easy/reliable solution would work. All I need is a lightweight solution to use with RAID1 disks.

Jason's solution sounds great ! but is it really reliable (i'm so afraid of adapters now ...)
 
Well, I don't have any experience with the Addonics, but it looks like it'd be infinitely more reliable than the Duel just from the manufacturing aspect of it. No big doofy cradle and cable, just a physical adapter connection. But, again, I don't know, we'd have to get some end user reports.
 
I have used this in the field many times. The addonics netbook combo has performed flawlessly. I would say if you are really concerned get two addonics. You can just about get two for the price of one Duel. The only thing that might mess up the workflow is physical damage to the adapter. get a back up they are cheap.

Using a PC is going to be easier as an offloader. They do these things really well anyway. Remember offloading is not a creative task its an IT task. That is the PC's bread and butter.

Mac for all the things they do well. P2 is just not one of them. I think some of the instability will go away when you switch platforms.

AND PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS do not think I am saying PCs are better then macs. I have just seen really solid performance from this set up so no threadjacking with the great debate. thanks
 
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I think that would be fine. The only variable is VISTA. It looks like you can get an XP version or a vista version. I have not tested vista so I would recommend the XP. But I have tested the addonics on a few XP notebooks with good results.

USER dnt has reported success with the addonics and 2140 HP. The 2133 looks vary similar. So long as it has an express card slot and xp it should work.

I posted a quote below from another thread.

dnt
Junior Member

Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 3


icon1.gif

Do not know about S10 but netbook HP 2140 work fine with addonics adapter. I use it for offloading P2 cards
Click to expand...
 
I've been using a Lenovo T500 for 9 months...has a PCMCIA and express slot. I use a second internal drive that is easily removed (swapped with the dvd drive). A 16gb card takes about 5:30 to copy to the 2ndary internal drive. For the second archive I copy to an external usb drive which takes around 12 minutes to copy. The usb is faster than the fw400 port.

I use shotput pro, p2viewer and the p2 format station and am running vista ultimate 32-bit.

I've had no problems with the setup. However, I had hopes of using the express slot for esata at the same time as the pcmcia slot for p2 but have not been able to get that to work. I've just ordered a gigabit net/nas drive to try that route.

Using a netbook intrigues me but I like having the slot built in and the size difference between my 15" and the netbook is just not worth it, although the thought of having a backup for that cost IS worth it.

I do very much like having the internal removable drive on the t500.

Bob
 
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