P2 Store alternative??

R

RyanBellaCine

Well-known member
Ok, so we've got our HVX200 and twin 8Gb cards here now. and we have a workflow issue. Actually 2.

1st up is the downloading in the field. What we don't want to do is spend the 1200 or whatever it was for the P2 Store from Panasonic because when it comes down to value, 60GB of storage space in a modified USB2.0 hard drive is just not very cost effective In our Opinion. Might as well buy a whole computer for that price. BUT we edit with FCS on Mac. And Apple now now doesn't include any PCMCIA ports on their new laptops...


We tried a Addonics DigiDrive Pocket UDD PCMCIA reader but it basically didnt see the files on the P2 cards at all.... Didn't make any sense to me that i couldn't but it is what it is....

There has to be some way to get files off a P2 card to a new Intel Macbook/PowerMac without having to subject ourselves to the overpriced P2 Store from Panasonic?!?!?!! Anyone have any thoughts?



2nd probably has already been discussed I admit i haven't don't a real search on the subject yet.. But since i was posting on the first issue i figured i'd throw in this one and see who bites.....

P2 cards are 8gb.... DVDs are 4.7.... oops... can't really do a direct back up to DVD now can we. Not to mention the issues That arise when some files are spread across two P2 Cards...... And dual layer DVDs are way overpriced at the moment, so thats out the window..... Any thoughts? It was considered just to archive a bunch of hard drives on the shelves, but not all of us (namely the boss) have been sold on the idea of mechanical hard drives sitting on the shelf for long term. I guess its a strange idea to get use to after many many years of tape and CD/DVD backups...
 
You are asking the age old question.....well as long as P2 has been out. We are all in the water shed, starting from the ground up with this new technology, seeing what workflow can work in our situation today, waiting for newer, better products to come along so we can sleep peaceful at night. It is a scary thing to think about archiving, and ingesting footage onto something you hope will not have any issues.

Blu-ray, DVD, LTO, HDD, Holographic drives? Which do you invest in....that will still be around next year? That is still to be determined.

There are so many different ways that this new technology is being used, and there is not one perfect solution. It really depends on what you need to accomplish.

The p2's will not fit in the new macs.....but P2 store and the FS100's do. (The P2 store records native, so 60 gigs go a long way....) There are adaptors being made now for P2's to work in the new Mac Book Pro, just not out yet.

The old powerbooks ingest the P2's (I use this for studio work)

I am keeping all my footage on drives right now, still waiting for the perfect archive solution. I don't sleep to good at night thinking I don't have a backup because of expense, so I have to find a solution soon.

As you know there are about 50 other combinations that people are using that I haven't put in, I just work with what works for me...but that is the great thing about this forum, sharing ideas, maybe one will come along that you can use.

I believe though, in the near future we will be looking back laughing at how we had to work around our situation....it is just a headach at times now.
 
That Addonics is likely not 32-bit.

I archive to DL DVDs at $1.50 each - cheaper than video tapes and optical. The drive cost less than $100.00
 
Forget the mac laptop. Buy a cheap PC laptop and get tlorenzo's P2 Genie software for it. You'll be looking at a grand total expense of maybe $600, and it'll WORK. You'll get 100% reliable transfers with no "glitch" or "failed to import" clips.

Use the PC laptop and import the files to an external FAT32 hard disk. Plug that external drive straight into your Mac and go to file->import->Panasonic P2. We've shot a couple of terabytes of HVX footage this way, all edited on the Mac/FCP system, and it's all been absolutely flawless. (actually we didn't have P2 Genie, we just did the copying from windows explorer, but P2 Genie gives the laptop functionality comparable to the P2 Store, at about 1/3 the price).
 
Barry, thats actually one solution I was looking at shortly after writing my post. We do have a Dell laptop we could use for ingesting in the field. Probem we need to solve though is the laptop is sick... Got a dying hard drive. It didn't occur to me that this "office runt Dell" could be our solution until i was working to get it, well, working at all.

So as soon as we get a new drive approved, ordered, and installed I'm going to give that a good test run. Im not so sure we would even need to go the P2 Genie route, We basically want to archive the raw P2 data files and then just import with FCS when needed. Wouldn't that work just fine or is there a catch that im not thinking of? No real need to view the files in the field on the laptop. and all the transfer post work can be done back at home base.....

So instead of a 1200 dollar firestore we can hopefully have a solution for around 80 bucks. The rest of that money will sure find its way to something else we've been itching to get for the department. (or fixed)

Thanks guys for your comments. Too bad we couldn't use our new macbook. We'll have to find another excuse.... Meanwhile the boss keeps it in hiding. :~(


®yan
 
That will work fine, there are no hidden gotchas or catches. Just be sure to use FAT32 hard disks to copy the footage to, and it'll import into FCP just fine (in fact, it'll import into FCP a heckuva lot better than it would if you used a Mac laptop to import the cards!)
 
I think I missed the discussion about the use of an iPod as a capture hard drive. The HVX "first look" article stated that it was possible to use one as such...how does one go about doing this, and what are the drawbacks?
 
PC laptop

PC laptop

I can vouch for Barry's suggestion. I did a concert last night and we downloaded our P2 cards directly into an HP laptop, went w/o a hitch except for one card which we think was corrupted.

My first paid gig with the HVX by the way. Camera performed beautifully and it looks like we got some great footage.

JP
 
HappyGobo said:
I think I missed the discussion about the use of an iPod as a capture hard drive. The HVX "first look" article stated that it was possible to use one as such...how does one go about doing this, and what are the drawbacks?
Click to expand...
It's not a "capture" drive, it can be used to copy the contents of the P2 cards onto. So you wouldn't use it for live capture. You'd have to stop recording, plug in the ipod, switch to PC mode, and execute a file transfer of your footage from the P2 cards onto the ipod.

So the drawbacks are: you can't be using the camera as a camera while you're offloading, and you can't use the ipod as an ipod anymore -- the process requires you to format the hard disk, which will erase everything on the ipod (including the operating system). You can archive your ipod on your mac before formatting it, and then restore it later.
 
Barry_Green said:
That will work fine, there are no hidden gotchas or catches. Just be sure to use FAT32 hard disks to copy the footage to, and it'll import into FCP just fine (in fact, it'll import into FCP a heckuva lot better than it would if you used a Mac laptop to import the cards!)
Click to expand...

hi barry is there a specific reason why the external hard drive must be formatted as FAT32? i am not sure if the external hard drive i am about to get (it's a mac external hard drive) will be formatted that way. i'm assuming it will have proper software to format it that way if necessary? if not, what type of external drive should i get?

thanx
 
FAT32 is readable by both Macs and PCs.

Macs don't work with NTFS, and PCs don't work with Mac OS. So FAT32 is the common bridge between them.

I've never used it but apparently you can get something called MacDrive which will allow the PC to read/write MacOS drives.
 
There seems to be some problems getting the P2 Genie (windows) to offload onto a Mac-formatted drive by using MacDrive! My guess is that MacDrive "short-circuits" Windows in some obscure way to allow this and that poses some problems when using that drive with P2 Genie.
 
vidled said:
Well, that's semi-true, I believe: NTFS drives can be READ in OS-X 10.4.1 (and upwards) but not written to.
Click to expand...

Exactly! 10.4 will read NTFS drives as "read only".
 
Well if that's the case, I might just recommend using NTFS drives instead of FAT32 then. Macs don't seem particularly happy with FAT32; it works but there seem to be more read errors etc. I wonder if they're more reliable with NTFS?
 
Yeah, I have been planning to do a test for a while.
Partitioning a firewire drive in two, with a FAT32 and a NTFS partition.
Could be interesting to see what fares the best...
 
Fat 32 because of a few reasons...

1. It can contain single files of large sizes, where i think Fat 16 is limited to 2GB i think?? Something like that.

2. Mac OS can read/ write Fat 32, Cannot write to NTFS.

3. WinXp can read/ write to Fat 32, But not to Mac OS extended.

That is why External hard drives (including USB pens) need to be Fat 32 when swapping cross platform.


EDIT: oh whoops didn't notice the page 2.... oh well.
 
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