P2 Card to Ex HD

M

Matt Case

Member
I'm running some basic tests with my new P2 card and new HVX200. My ideal workflow is to dump P2 data directly onto a firewire HD pugged into a laptop.

Are there any known issues going directly from the card to the external drive (without having to drag the files onto the computer first), or should this work (in theory) without any interruptions or dataloss?
 
What I do

What I do

This is the same workflow I use when shooting Bands live. I have a Laptop powered up and a Bus Powered USB Drive for the storage. Drag and drop right to the USB external drive. Do a search on the board for lots of the same workflow.

D.L.
 
You can copy files directly from the camera's P2 cards to the external hard drive if you set the camera to 1394 Host in the Other Functions menu. No laptop needed.
 
Does it have to be a specific type of Firewire drive?

Is there anything else similar on the market to these passport drives that would work:
http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=262

wdfPassport_Portable_2.jpg




EDIT: Found this one which is Firewire but will it work?
http://www.cooldrives.com/ulcoal2usb20.html

pio25enclosureall.jpg
 
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The main thing to keep in mind is that you are limited to 15 partitions when transferring in this manner. Each time you offload a card, a partition is created on the drive. It will be whatever size the card is, regardless of how much footage you actually shot on the card.

You can use usb on the go drives though, and avoid this.... I think. I never have done it, and I am just going from memory. Someone may need to correct me on this.

Jason
 
i have tried a usb2go drive yesterday. its working but its really slow:
32min for transfer of 16gb.
i dont know a possibility to switch of the veryfying in the usb host mode
of the hvx.

regards
thomas
 
If you put a p2 card into your laptop via PCMCIA slot and transfer to an external USB bus powered HD, it should transfer faster than doing from camera, right? And if you do it that way, will it still partition the drive, or can you just drag and drop any way you want? That's the impression I was under.
 
The only time drives get partitioned (as mentioned above) is when doing a transfer straight to an external firewire drive. Nothing will get partitioned* when offloading via a laptop. Either by usb (firewire if you're on a mac) or by using a laptops pcmcia slot. Then, you are just pushing data around. No partitions.

And, yes. Transferring via PCMCIA slot is the optimal. Much faster. I transfer full 8 gig cards in about 4-5 minutes. With 720p/24pn that is 4x-5x faster than real-time capture. That's the way I do it all the time. So much faster, and keeps the camera free.a

Jason
 
Does partitioning on the drives effect anything like amount of space that will be available or speed of transfer? I have 250GB ex hard drives and will be filling to capacity via the PCMCIA drag-drop into the drives. My workflow depends on me being able to fit about 240GB on each 250GB hard drive. Also, the success of my next shoot will depend on the speed at which I can off load my card data onto an external hard drive, dump the data from the card, and then check my data to ensure it's all there. I will have 2 runners cycling card data from our 3 HVX200s into this PCMCIA, laptop, hard drive workflow. I'll be monitoring the workflow, but I'm concerned about space and speed. My initial tests confirm what Jason Ramsey is saying, very fast transfer rates at the 720p/24pn setting. But I don't know how multiple loads and partitioning is going to effect the drives. Any thoughts?

My gear:
3 HVX200
8 GB P2 cards
2 Powerbooks
3 LaCie 250GB external porshe hard drives
(and 3 back up drives)
 
Matt Case said:
Does partitioning on the drives effect anything like amount of space that will be available or speed of transfer? I have 250GB ex hard drives and will be filling to capacity via the PCMCIA drag-drop into the drives. My workflow depends on me being able to fit about 240GB on each 250GB hard drive. Also, the success of my next shoot will depend on the speed at which I can off load my card data onto an external hard drive, dump the data from the card, and then check my data to ensure it's all there. I will have 2 runners cycling card data from our 3 HVX200s into this PCMCIA, laptop, hard drive workflow. I'll be monitoring the workflow, but I'm concerned about space and speed. My initial tests confirm what Jason Ramsey is saying, very fast transfer rates at the 720p/24pn setting. But I don't know how multiple loads and partitioning is going to effect the drives. Any thoughts?
QUOTE]

I don't follow the multiple loads question? If your workflow is - shoot then offload one P2 card, then ingest into laptop onto external USB Drive. You will never have any issues with partitions or decreased capacity (except for the data you put there). If you are trying to ingest more than one P2 card via some adapter, then the copy rate will be decreased. I have no issues with ejecting one 8 gig card while continuing to roll live, slap that into a laptop and copy over to a ext. harddrive. In about 4 minutes I eject card and that goes back to camera.

I hope I'm helping...man it's been a long day.

D.L.
Click to expand...
 
If you are using a laptop to offoad cards to an external drive, there are no partitions that will be created. It's just pushing data from one place to another. Think of it as taking xGB's of data and moving it from one HDD to another.

If you want fast offloads, that will allow you to use the full size of a hard drive, and that will not tie up the use of the camera during transfers... use a laptop with a pcmcia slot. plug your external drive into your laptop and transfer

For me:
8 Gig P2 card in laptop to eSATA HDD's = 4-5 minutes for that 8 gig card. If you are shooting 720p/24pn, you will not run into any time issues. there. 2 minutes to walk over to a laptop and put your card in. 5 minutes to transfer the data. 2 minutes to walk back and stick the card back in camera. There is plenty of time in there to work out whatever else you need/want to do. Be it transfers to multiple drives for redundancy, or verifying the data before you format a card, etc. I don't know how usb or fw might/might not bottleneck the transfer speeds ( I doubt much, if any), but for eSATA it is 4-5 minutes for 8gigs, for me.

No worries on partitions, or anything like that. Just think of it as moving data from one place to another. No different. It's data.

Test, test, test, and workout your workflow ahead of time. Make sure you and whoever is involved are comfortable with the workflow you have decided will be best for your project. The most likely cause of potential problems will be human error. Which is where redundancy comes in. And, of course potential for spinning HDD's failure. Again, redundancy. Backup.

Hope that is answering your questions/concerns.

Jason
 
Just finished a shoot and ran into a problem using an external drive that was formatted as MS-DOS 32FAT. Posted a query over in the "technical" forum to see if anyone had run into this. What happened was we got a cheap FW400 drive (La Cie) and we pulled over about 8 (8 and 4 gig) cards worth of footage onto it. All files transfered fine and everything is there, but the FCP import or P2 Log import does not recognize these folders as P2 volumes.

Thought I'd throw that piece of information out here since you're talking about cheap (USB) harddrives. I would say it would be a good practice to always reformat a new drive and one I plan to follow from this day on. :-)

Meanwhile, not meaning to double post or anything, but if anyone has any solution to my problem of ingesting the MXF files on this particular drive, would be much appreciated. I'm hoping when I get back from this shoot, I can find someone with an Advid or Vegas or some PC NLE that can do this for me.
 
2 more cents from the peanut gallery.

2 more cents from the peanut gallery.

There are 2 different workflows being discussed here, and I fear it's getting confusing. One workflow is: camera connected to a laptop with an external drive conected to the laptop; the other workflow is: camera connected directly to an external drive with no laptop involved in the offload.

The first workflow (using a laptop) involves a situation where the external drive might be constantly connected to the laptop and serves as an additional hard drive for the laptop, beyond the laptop's primary hard drive. In that situation, "offloading" does not affect partitoning of the external drive. It should be a matter of "drag and drop" from the camera to a hard drive - any hard drive - connected to the laptop. That drive is under control of the laptop, and partitioning of that drive is not affected by the camera, specifically because the external drive is under control of the laptop's operating system rather than controlled by the camera.

The second workflow (no laptop involved) creates a new partition on the external drive whenever a P2 card is offloaded. (This is where an external drive is dedicated specifically and only to the purpose of "getting clips off the P2 card(s)" (or unloading them) for what might be called "intermediate" storage, that is, until that drive can be connected to a computer back in your studio at a later time). That drive is controlled by the camera; and it must be formatted through the camera. This is also the workflow that limits that external drive to 15 partitions. If using this workflow, each partition becomes the same size as the card that is offloaded. (Provided the drive is large enough to hold that much footage).

There have been numerous posts describing this in a variety of ways. Barry's book is probably the most clearly-written example, but search for other posts under "Workflow" if you need more examples.

Hope this helps.
 
Let's say I get a cheap PC laptop, just so I can dump the P2 cards onto an external portable harddrive connected to this laptop. Later on, I would connect that external portable harddrive (that was on the laptop) onto a Mac G5 tower and transfer the footage/files on to the editing drive on that computer.

What software do I need to do the dumping onto the PC's laptop's external harddrive, and what format do I format that drive in. (needs to be recognized by the G5)
 
You don't need any software, although P2 Genie makes the process easier, especially if you don't have an assistant to manage the offloading.

You can format the external drive using FAT32 or NTFS, the Mac can read either. It can only write to FAT32 volumes, however.
 
x002657 said:
There are 2 different workflows being discussed here, and I fear it's getting confusing...
Click to expand...

as i sayed before, there is a third workflow.
at the moment i use a usb2go hdd (with external power 5 volt).

no partitions, you can offload until the disk is full.
the drive must be formatted in fat32. ntfs miss the usb2go funktion.
the hvx must set to usb device mode and you have to press the usb2go button of the usb2go hdd case and then wait...

in my case, its need 32 minutes for 16gb.

but iam still interested in a firewiresolution, because then i could switch off the veryfying for faster transfer.

does somebody know such a 2.5" firewire case with a external power supply?
regards
thomas
 
I agree with THoff, although

I agree with THoff, although

going through a laptop as you describe would require you to lug around both the laptop AND the external drive you would connect to it. Does your job require lugging around both?

Using what I call "the second workflow" (no laptop), you only have to lug around an external drive and the firewire cable to connect it to the camera.

And snpx is right; a third workflow (also without a laptop) would be using USB2GO, and it's only slightly less convenient than firewire. I offload directly to a firewire drive dedicated to offloading (the second workflow) and always use verify. More speed would be welcome, but I'll suffer with it until I can get larger P2 cards or I finally get my Cineporter.

RE1000 said:
Let's say I get a cheap PC laptop, just so I can dump the P2 cards onto an external portable harddrive connected to this laptop. Later on, I would connect that external portable harddrive (that was on the laptop) onto a Mac G5 tower and transfer the footage/files on to the editing drive on that computer.

What software do I need to do the dumping onto the PC's laptop's external harddrive, and what format do I format that drive in. (needs to be recognized by the G5)
Click to expand...

x
 
x002657 said:
going through a laptop as you describe would require you to lug around both the laptop AND the external drive you would connect to it. Does your job require lugging around both?

Using what I call "the second workflow" (no laptop), you only have to lug around an external drive and the firewire cable to connect it to the camera.

And snpx is right; a third workflow (also without a laptop) would be using USB2GO, and it's only slightly less convenient than firewire. I offload directly to a firewire drive dedicated to offloading (the second workflow) and always use verify. More speed would be welcome, but I'll suffer with it until I can get larger P2 cards or I finally get my Cineporter.



x
Click to expand...
The "non laptop" camera to external harddrive seems like a great idea. (unless you need to do very long tapings at one time)
I was gonna get a laptop and offload that way, but i think i would do the no laptop > external hd solution.
Thanks to x002657 and Cynic821!

EDIT: Now I need to find a battery powered external firewire drive, rats! Another thing to search for! (post some suggestions if you can)
 
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x002657 said:
And snpx is right; a third workflow (also without a laptop) would be using USB2GO, and it's only slightly less convenient than firewire.
Click to expand...
why do you think that the usb2go solution is less convenient than the firewire one?

what i dont know fore sure is, if there is a veryfieing with the usb2go way. ?

i would like to discuss with you firewire vs. usb2go.
by the way, i have not found a firewire 2.5" hdd case with external battery.
when somebody found one, please tell.
of cause you can use your old ipod, when it has the firerewire port.
but you can not upgrade the hdd inside, because of the firmware.
so the space is very limited. with 15 partitions of the p2 size that are build by the firewire workflow, the internal hdd is to small.
this i like from the usb2go, the needed size on the hdd depents only on the size of the footage, recorded on the p2 cards.
 
USB2 being "slightly less convenient" is based

USB2 being "slightly less convenient" is based

on the description found on page 96 of Barry's book. There, he lists these potential disadvantages:
1) firewire can perform verification; many or most USB-OTG drives don't or can't perform that function.
2) with firewire you can examine the contents of the drive and see what's already been copied; when using a USB-OTG drive, you'd need to attach it to a computer to examine its' contents.

He does, however, point out the more efficient use of space on a USB-OTG drive, i.e. creating a subdirectory for each card rather than a new partition. He adds that it's easier to find a battery-powered USB-OTG drive than a battery powered firewire drive. That, in itself, could be a huge benefit when shooting outside your studio.

Speaking for myself, I've used only the firewire option, (primarily because I like the verify function), as the project I've been using this for is an hour's drive from me and if I mess up a copy, there's no way I could re-shoot it.

It's a documentary of a 1/10th scale bridge being built, from design, to fabrication, i.e.actually cutting, welding, and grinding steel, to actually building it, all in preparation for an engineering contest. I only get on site once or twice a week. If I miss something and ask to re-shoot it, it might require that pieces be "un-welded" and I'd slow down the team that is building the bridge. They're facing a strict deadline, and I don't want to be the cause of them missing the deadline.
 
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