P2 Strategy

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dmchord

Active member
I've got a feeling I'm going to be getting P2 media for my HVX200A in the near future. It looks like I can get a 32 and a 64 for about $1600, and I just might be able to do it.

Shooting 24pN, this is going to give me about 4 hours of film time, so my question is, what if I'm shooting a wedding and (for whatever reason) I'm shooting way more than I need, and with a couple hours left in the evening I've got no more space on the cards?

What will I use to download one of the cards to an external drive or to my MacBook while I'm still shooting on the other card?

Thanks!
 
Dmchord,

Unfortunately you are the percentage of people that find themselves with a fully capable camera and computer for editing P2 footage, yet no way to offload the cards in the field. If your MacBook were the last generation of MacBook Pro's you could simply buy a Duel Adapter (a small p2 card reader that plugs into the ExpressSlot of the computer). You can then drag and drop or use a program like P2CMS to ingest the footage.

However, since you don't have a Macbook Pro, you need another option. None of your options are going to be super cheap, but they may be within your budget.

Your cheapest, most reliable, and most recommended solution is to buy an older Laptop PC that has a PCMCIA slot. You can still get used (or sometimes brand new) laptops with this feature for $300-400. You need to have a decent sized hard drive so you can offload as many times as you need. Then, just install drivers for P2, download P2CMS and P2 Formatter for windows, and you're all set. After your shoot, you can use a hard drive or an ethernet connection to move your files to your Mac editing system. In the field, this is going to be the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to offload.
(look up Barry Green's posts about this issue, it's really helpful and he has great suggestions for laptops)

The next cheapest solution is may be an obsolete solution for you. It's a product called the P2 store, and is basically a small portable hard drive and p2 card reader. It only has a 60 gig hard drive, and that pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the internal hard drive. You can also use this device as a p2 card reader for your computer (not sure whether it's firewire or USB) and this is really the drive's only purpose nowadays. This item can be had new for around 1300, and around 1000 used depending on where you look.

The next solutions get into the several thousand dollar range. They are Panasonic P2 card readers and formatters that do different things. One is a five card reader that plugs into your computer. Other more expensive options include portable readers with monitors and other gadgets. These are probably not what you're looking for at your level.

Anyways, those are your options. Maybe someday we'll have a Firewire 800 p2 offloader that is priced for the average user/professional. However, I don't count on it. Hope this helps. And search Barry Green's posts on this topic, this question has been answered in all those threads several times.
 
1) Yes, of course you can shoot to one card while offloading the other.
2) As cmb said, there are lots of options. The Macbook isn't really one of them. Used P2 Stores go for about $500, or a netbook solution can cost $400. Panasonic is supposed to introduce a "single slot reader" sometime in the next few months, but we don't have any idea what it'll cost or what it will connect to. If it's a cheap USB reader, that would be ideal, but we've been waiting 4 years for something like that to appear and it never has, so I don't think it'll be a cheap USB reader. Might be cheap, or it might be USB, but I don't expect both.

The thing about the P2 Store that cmb didn't specify, is that you could use it in connection with your Macbook. The P2 Store can be used as a directly-accessible P2 slot via USB, so even though the P2 Store's drive is only 60GB (which would, frankly, only fit your 32GB card), you can use it as a direct slot reader to pass through to a 500GB external drive, giving you massive amounts of storage relatively cheaply.

In a case like that, my strategy would be to start shooting on the 32GB card, with the 64GB card in slot 2. Then, when the 32 is full, the camera will roll over to the 64gb card seamlessly. You can then eject the 32gb card and start it transferring, while still recording on the 64, and you'll have hours of time to get that card offloaded before the 64 is full. So utilizing two cards and an offload station you could record uninterrupted for hours and hours.

If you want an all-in-one solution, I'd vote for a Lenovo ThinkPad SL. It's the cheapest laptop on the market that includes a P2-compatible slot. Today the SL410 is $499, but the whole model range is supposed to be updated/revamped very soon and the SL420 is coming. The SL410 has a PCMCIA slot (which can also take expresscards via an adapter) and a 160GB hard disk. You don't have to think of it as "going Windows", you can just use it as a dedicated transfer station, like a P2 Store in a different shape. Look in the "Articles" section for an article on how to use a Windows laptop as a slot reader integrated into an Apple post workflow.
 
See what I mean? Barry is the master.

But Barry, I did specify that he could use the p2 store as a card reader, but you explained it better.

And it's good to know Panny is thinking of releasing a card reader option. While Panasonic isn't the timeliest for releasing products, the products they release deliver. So I have faith this option will be the thing we've all been asking for.


Anyways, Barry thanks again for the insight.
 
i would suggest if you only have 2 cards, getting both the same size. that way one will be done offloading before the other one is full. example - on my typical shoot, a 16gig card takes 11 min to offload but AT LEAST 17 min to fill. so i know that for typical shoots, im never going to outrun my offload.

if you have one card thats twice as big as the other. you may find yourself with a filled second card before the first one is done transferring...

and as far as transferring in the field, i use an older mac powerbook G4 with PCMCIA slot. works great directly with P2 cards and has never given me an ounce of trouble. and is about the same price as the (also quite viable) windows options barry mentioned above. but this has been flushed out (even argued about) several times here on the forum before. do a search and sit back for a lot of reading ; )
 
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My laptop actually is a MacBook Pro that I got in December of 2007, and though I've never used it for anything, I'm pretty sure it has an express card slot. (In the shop getting the internal audio fixed.) The thing is, after reading cmb's first reply, I looked into the Duel Adaptor and I've read that it isn't compatible with Snow Leopard, which I just upgraded to a couple months ago. I suppose I could do an erase and install 10.5 again, but what a pain that would be!

So, just so I understand. A P2 card will fit into a PCMCIA slot, which I don't have. The Duel is a PCMCIA adaptor that fits into the express card slot? But it's not compatible with my OS. No one else makes this kind of adaptor?

___________

OK, I just jumped on another forum, and Barry and a couple other folks were talking about what cmb first mentioned - getting an old PC and using that to dump files in the field. When I first got my camera, I pretty much skimmed through all the P2 info in Barry's book (I'm reading it again, now) but I recall something about a 500GB external drive being the max.

So, say I needed to use the 32 twice and the 64 once. In the field, I plug the 32 into the PC while still recording on the 64. Plug the 32 back in to get the last of the shooting done. I'm pretty sure PC doesn't have firewire, so I get an external drive that has both USB and Firewire ports. (If such a thing exists.) When I get home, I dump the footage from the PC into that drive, then dump the other cards footage into that drive from the camera, right? Then I plug the drive with all the footage into my iMac workstation, bring it into FCP and I'm good to go?
 
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Yes, but it can be a lot simpler than that. You can get an external USB/FW drive and plug that into the field offload station (velcro it to the lid if you want a one-piece solution), and offload the cards directly to that external drive. Then unplug that drive, plug it into your desktop at home, and -- you're done. You don't have to offload to the internal system first.

Or, you can ignore the internal drive and still do it one-step. Offload to the field offload station, then plug that offload station via Gigabit Ethernet into your desktop and import the footage directly. If you set up file & printer sharing on the field offload station, and share the central drive, then you don't need to even bother with an external drive at all.
 
A P2 card will fit into a PCMCIA slot, which I don't have. The Duel is a PCMCIA adaptor that fits into the express card slot? But it's not compatible with my OS. No one else makes this kind of adaptor?
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yes. that is correct. currently anyway.

slow down. youre over (and under) thinking this.

first of all conversationally, there is no max drive size. what you may be referring to is max single file size on a FAT32 formatted drive (FAT32 being the cheapest and easiest way to make a drive windows and mac friendly) which as i recall is just under 4GB

yes. windows laptops (aside from sony) do NOT typically come with firewire ports. but usb2.0 is just fine for connecting external drives.
ive used a few of these and been quite pleased - bus powered as well which is an extra PLUS!:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/freeagent_go/
OR you could add any of the variety of firewire/esata expansion products to the windows machine. but that just adds another set of variables - so forget i mentioned it ; )

i use external drives with what they refer to a "quad interface" that means - USB, firewire400, firewire800 and eSATA. that way im ready for whatever presents itself.

to simplify your life i suggest one of two options:

1. get a windows laptop with pcmcia slot (barry and others have listed several in previous threads) and an external usb 2.0 drive. format the drive on the windows machine as FAT32 then you can move that external drive between your mac or windows machine to transfer the files.

2. get an old mac powerbook G4 with pcmcia slot and an external drive (with fw800 or usb 2.0 or whatever your imac has)
and you can move worry free between both mac machines.

what i like better about option 2 is that you can format that drive as mac compatible (or even as mac RAID for an extra level of performance or security) and actually use your transfer drive as your work drive. saving you both hassle and another transfer step.
my personal workflow is option 2 using this drive and ive been quite pleased:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/PerformanceRAID

but its really six of one, half dozen of the other. just depends on what you like.
 
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