P2 Cards, and my computer?

M

Mettsaphor

Member
Hello! I'm new to this board as far as posting goes, but I've been reading it for sometime now and have got tons of great information on here.

Anyway, I have recently been looking into upgrading cameras from my JVC-Gy-HD100U, to a Panasonic HVX-200a or a Panasonic HPX-170, (still cant decide:)) and in doing so I have been wondering what, if any, upgrades I will need to make to my post-production of these cameras and there P2 card format run smoothly.

Here are my sepcs on my computer....

Intel core 2 duo E6600 2.4GHZ Dual core CPU
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 3.3) Intel 965 chipset Motherboard
Memory-Corsair 2GB DDR2 800MHZ PC6400 RAM
250GB Segate Barracuda 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 16 MB Hard Drives
3-320GB Western Digital caviar 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 16 MB Hard Drives
XFX GEFORCE 8800GT 256MB PCIE DDR3 620MHZ DUA DVI Video Card
CREATIVE LABS SOUNDBLASTER X-FI XTREMEGAMER Sound Card

with Windows XP PROFESSIONAL

I had it custom build in july of 2007, and have been editing with Adobe premiere 1.5 and Aspect HD. But I know that those programs are pretty out of date now haha.

So Finally my question(s) are,

Will my computer be able to handle these P2 cards fast and smoothly?

And what should I, if any, Editing program should I get so I can edit the P2 card format without problems? CS4?


Hopefully I have posted this in the right section!

Thanks in advance!

-Christopher
 
You could stand an upgrade of hardware, but as it is, you should be able to cut DVCPRO HD/720p just like cutting DV. 1080 will be a little choppier.

If you're comfortable in the Premiere environment, then CS4 would be your natural upgrade path. You can try demos of other programs, too -- though I'm not 100% sure that the available Edius demo would support P2, and you'd need the demo of Raylight to cut P2 in the demo of Vegas (:)), but it certainly costs nothing to try, and you'll still be able to get a feel for their interfaces and how they work.
 
More CPU (quad, if you can), more RAM. Premiere takes advantage of the video card, and while yours isn't tip-top anymore, it's still quite respectable. I'd put the money into the first two.

Also, if you can construct a RAID 0, it'll help with the footage, particularly the 1080 footage.
 
Awesome! This is just the kind of information I was looking for!!

I will deffintinely upgrade those things and look into setting up RAID 0.

Thanks again David!
 
You need to consider what your new workflow is going to be and allow for it maybe.
eg downloading and ingesting P2 from card to computer.

I use a laptop and external drives (in studio/location) then I transfer from external drive to internal drive for editing (CS3 and CS4).

You may decide to use the camera as the transfer device (not always convenient while shooting and may require more P2 cards) My ext drive workflow means I have backup /archive of original footage before I erase the card.

I use P2 Forge for Ingesting and location playback.
I use On Location for part of my studio monitoring as well as an HD Monitor (which I consider a must have)
 
Thanks Shooter! From all the reading i've doing I was considering using a laptop and external drives like you sugguested. It seems like the more economical choice since I already have both :)

My question is, do you have to have a program such as P2 Forge to dump the P2 files onto a laptop, and/or Ext drives? Or should I also load CS4 onto the laptop?

(as you can tell for all my reading I'm still very new to all this haha)

Thanks!
 
With a Windows laptop you can just drag and drop the files, or you can use something like P2 Forge, or you can use the free P2 Viewer program.
 
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