Quickest/easiest way of getting HVX P2 footage onto my MAC

D

DoubleHigh

Member
Hi,


Borrowing a HVX and will have to learn on-the-run.

Can someone tell me the quickest and easiest way of dumping the footage from the HVX P2 cards to my MAC without a firestore or other peripheral, so I can format the card to be re-used?

Can I just hook up a USB or Firewire cable?
If so, what software do I need?

TIA
 
Hook up via firewire. Push the small round button on the back of the camera once to go into playback mode. Then press and hold the button and the camera will give you a blue screen and start the firewire connection. You should see the P2 cards show up on your desktop as "NO NAME" (you'll have two "NO NAME" disks if you have two cards in the camera. I usually just make a folder called "reel1" or something and drag the whole "no name" file into it. For the second card I just make "reel2" and do the same. Keep everything, don't try to dig through the folders to get pieces. You need the directory structure to keep your metadata intact. You can view this in Final Cut, or Panasonic's P2 viewer. In Final Cut, go to "Log and Transfer" and then hit the tiny plus icon at the top of the window, navigate to your transferred card (in "reel1") and hit okay. Boom! There are your shots...
 
You'll need a firewire 4pin to 6pin cable. Final Cut Pro 5 or 6 (if 5 then it should be up to date 5.1.4) hard drive space, the camera and the P2 card.

Once you are ready to download you can do a couple things. What I do is: Turn on the camera in P2 mode and insert the P2 card (make sure you write protect the card). Then press the small black button on the back of the camera to switch to VCR "playback mode". Press and hold the same button for a second or two and the words "ieee 1394 Device Disconnected" or something like that. 1394 means fire wire (if it says usb then you can use usb). Then connect the camera via firewire to your computer and in a few seconds to a minute a "NO NAME" drive will show up on your desktop. I usually just "click, alt and drop into the drive I want to copy to. This will make a copy of the card which then later can be loaded into FCP. But if you want to download the footage itself right away then skip the copy process and open FCP change your sequence and capture setting to match what your recording (ie. DvcPro HD 1080 24pA, or DvcPro HD 720p 24p). Then open up "log and transfer" for FCP 6 or "import: Panasonic P2" for FCP 5. Your card should already be loaded and all you do is drag the whole card or selected clips into the import window and presto.

It's not the simplest thing in the world and I suggest practicing a couple times to avoid costly errors but I guess that is exactly what your doing if I read your post right.

Good shooting,

JP
 
Just FYI: I don't think any of the above will work unless you have P2 drivers installed on your mac...
 
ullanta said:
Just FYI: I don't think any of the above will work unless you have P2 drivers installed on your mac...
Click to expand...
It is not necessary to load any P2 drivers on a Mac to use the 1394 transfer mode. I know, because I have transfered many P2 cards this way, and no P2 software has ever been installed (unless there's something built in to FCP I don't know about, in which case, it doesn't make any difference anyway).

Added: The above instructions ar correct. Howver, before you do any of that, go into your menus and make sure you have set "1394 Device" mode (not "Host").
 
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