Problem with P2 import

R

r1ck

Member
Hi guys, I shot a 2 hour program the other night on 2 cards. The first card is a 32 gig E-Series card that is fairly new. I haven't had this issue yet with it but for some reason Premiere Pro CS 5.5 won't import the files. I have tried to drag the contents folder in and I have tried to drag files in separately. I pushed record once and it captured the whole show. I then dragged all of the contents onto my harddrive. But it won't import the files off the 1st card. The 2nd card imported file. That was an older 16 gig regular P2 card.
I have tried to import into AE and tried to import the files into Media Encoder. They just won't load. The programs basically all freeze on import and the programs crash. I need these files to import and they have to work. It is crucial. I do have files from a B Cam, but the files on this P2 card was used as the main camera with the wireless mic running thru the P2 camera, so I need these files especially for the audio! Any suggestions??
 
OK, First off, Mount the 1st P2 card and offload the entire card to the computer.
Mount the second card and do the same.

Now back up all the media on to another drive for archiving.

Now launch your editor and nav to the folder where the media is.

Look into using P2CMS or ShotPut pro to offload and verify your media.
 
I am still getting used to the workflow with the P2HD in Premiere Pro CS 5.5. I was shooting 480i and editing in FCP 6, just upgraded and switched formats. Anyways, I deleted the contents folder that was giving me trouble from my folder and re-imported the P2 card again. Luckily I didn't delete the files off the card yet... I then re-imported the files from the 2nd import into Premiere and they imported fine! I haven't had this issue before but I guess that from now on when I use more then 1 card, I should import the cards one at a time instead of trying to import both cards at once onto my hard drive. Everything seemed to be fine except that I couldn't import the files into Adobe. I tried a simple free file converter from the App store and that didn't convert the files, even though I didn't want to convert them in the first place, I just needed some workable footage. The only thing I didn't try was to import the files into iMovie, which that would have been a whole other step and waste of time at this point. So Thanks Chris for your suggestion, I should have just thought of this myself but again, I am still figuring out bugs in the system. Overall I am very happy with the workflow of PP and my HPX-170.
 
Adobe is great with P2.
Just open browser and drag em into your project and you start work with them right away, unlike FCP where you have to re-wrap them and create mov files for editing.

Always off load ALL cards from the same shoot Before you bring the files into the edit as you can have shots (files) spanned across 2 cards.
 
Good point, as I said, I am happy with the workflow so far. The last version of Adobe that I had used was CS 1.5 before I switched to FCP which I believe was 4.5 and 5 at that time. It seems as though there were more features in CS 1.5 in Premiere and now they make you do more in AE, but it has been so long and I am still getting used to the switch. There are some features that I miss from FCP 6 and there are some features that I like better in Premiere. But that's just the way the job goes. I don't have the budget to buy every editor out there. At some point I think we may buy Motion 5 just because it is so in-expensive to have a whole different program to do motion graphics in instead of just a couple plug-ins in addition to AE. But I haven't had the need to buy Motion yet.
 
I shot on the HPX 170 over 2 P2 cards. I hit record one time and the program went for just about 2 hours. I shot in 720P/24PN mode. I had a lav mic taped to the podium mic to capture the announcer. I left this cam as a wide establishing shot for the most part. The P2 cards that I have are: in slot 1 I have a 32 GB E Series card (which I have only had for about 3 months or so, bought brand new from B & H) and in the 2nd slot I have a 16 GB R Series card that I bought brand new with the camera about 2 years ago now.
So when I hit record once, as you know it breaks up the clip into multiple clips to span across the 2 cards. So my problem yesterday was that I had mounted both cards via firewire onto my iMac and dragged the txt files along with the contents folders onto my harddrive, both at the same time and that was giving me my problem. After they finished loading onto the harddrive I opened up Premiere Pro and dragged in the contents folder of both cards that had been moved onto the harddrive. The 16 gb card files loaded fine. The 32 gb card files didn't load. The program crashed and wouldn't import. I tried to import into AE and Encoder even though I didn't want to convert the files, but still they wouldn't import into AE or Encoder either, same problem, both programs crashed. So based on Chris' suggest, I did the following... I deleted the txt file and contents folder from my harddrive of the card that wouldn't import. I then re-mounted that card and dragged the txt file and contents folder into a new folder that I created on my harddrive, different then the one with the contents of the 16 gb card. So then after the files finished moving onto the harddrive I imported the contents folder of the 32 gb card into the project that I had created in Premiere. So now both cards are loaded and imported (the contents folder of both). So a couple of things to note that I found out with this problem: move the files from the cards one at a time, don't drag them offload the cards at the same time and 2nd, make a different folder on your harddrive for each card. Don't place 2 contents folders in 1 folder, it is OK to make sub folders, but don't put them into the same folder. I don't know if 1 or both of these were the reason for the problem importing, but now the files have loaded fine in Premiere and now I can edit with my b-cam footage and I have the audio I need.
 
Also another quick side note, don't EVER re-format your cards until you are sure that the files will load into your editing program.. Even if you think you are in a hurry to get to another shoot and you have dumped the files onto a hard drive or external. Always take the time to check and make sure that they will import into an editor, even if it's not the editor that you intend to produce the final project in. As long as it loads into a program on one computer, if you have trouble loading it on your main computer after, you can always export the files from the one computer into an editable format for your main computer/program...
 
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