p2 cards/ Firestore FS100 / pcmcia readers

[mattadamsapple]

I just got my camera a few days ago and am trying to figure out the best/ most cost efficient way way to shoot and capture HD footage.

BTW I love this forum. I was going to get a canon before someone told me about this wonderful camera. ..ok enough talk...time for questions....

Since I can't capture any panasonic native formats on the firestore drive, I don't really see the need for it if I can load the p2 cards directly on to a laptop...what would be the benefit of using the firestore drive??

Can I get an pcmcia card reader installed onto a macbook pro and have the laptop act as my hard drive instead of purchasing the Firestore drive??

Would I have to use an adapter like an esata card reader??

How long approx would it take to download an 8gig p2 card on a 2/.4ghz macbook pro with an esata adapter??

Why did macs take the pcmcia card out?????

Thanks for reading/replying and if you get a sec... check this out...

http://www.mattadamsapple.com/

I just finished it yesterday!!!!

-matt

 

[THoff]

You can record the equivalent of PN on the FS-100. You leave the camera in P (non-native) mode, and instruct the FS-100 (with firmware V3.0 or later) to drop the duplicate frames, giving you what is essentially a PN file.

If you want to offload P2 cards on a laptop with an ExpressCard slot, you need the Duel Systems PCMCIA/Cardbus to ExpressCard adapter. This lets you offload to the laptop or an external drive connected to it. Offloading times that I have seen reported vary, but seem to range from 4 to 6 minutes for an 8GB card.

PCMCIA/Cardbus are disappearing in favor of a physically smaller slot with higher bandwidth. Typical technological progress.