reasonable p2 card reader

J

jeeyof

Member
hey guys,

im thinkin of gettin some p2s but i see that the dump drives r pretty pricey for me. would it be safe to just use the camera itself for dumping footages ro is there any other reliable and proven alternative for p2 readers other than the dump drive? thanks
 
The camera works perfectly fine as an offload unit though it can't be used for anything else while you are doing that. Any old laptop with a PCMCIA card slot would be best.
 
Here's a desktop P2 card reader for $100:
http://www.amtron.com/reader/p2card_reader.htm

It goes in the 3.5" floppy bay, or for $6 more you can mount it in a 5.25 CD-ROM bay. Also requires an available PCI slot.

I haven't used this, but have been looking to buy it. If anyone else has used it, please post results here.

I have a older laptop with a PC-slot for reading P2 cards, but the hard drive on the laptop is only 30 gigs, so I'm also looking to buy an external hard drive. The main problem with all this is if I'm shooting out in the woods or somewhere else without AC electric outlets nearby, I'll need an external hard drive that's bus powered. Anyone have suggestions on this?
 
dogman-x said:
Here's a desktop P2 card reader for $100:
http://www.amtron.com/reader/p2card_reader.htm

It goes in the 3.5" floppy bay, or for $6 more you can mount it in a 5.25 CD-ROM bay. Also requires an available PCI slot.

I haven't used this, but have been looking to buy it. If anyone else has used it, please post results here.

I have a older laptop with a PC-slot for reading P2 cards, but the hard drive on the laptop is only 30 gigs, so I'm also looking to buy an external hard drive. The main problem with all this is if I'm shooting out in the woods or somewhere else without AC electric outlets nearby, I'll need an external hard drive that's bus powered. Anyone have suggestions on this?
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Nearly any 2.5inch external hardrive is bus-powered. Look at site like fatwallet.com as they post good deals everyweek.
 
I can't believe that after all the time the camera has been out, there's still no reasonable firewire p2 card reader available.
 
does anybody uses the dual system adapter? i just wanna hear some feedback before i go and buy it. thanks guys
 
Noah said:
I can't believe that after all the time the camera has been out, there's still no reasonable firewire p2 card reader available.
Click to expand...

There's a technical issue involved. Cardbus slots are basically extensions of the PCI bus, rather than their own technology itself. So creating a USB or Firewire drive is more than just creating something akin to a compact flash card reader -- you'd be basically creating a USB PCI bus. Not simple.

There are plenty of PCI cards that allow you to plug Cardbus devices directly into your desktop PC -- but since PCI slots are typically in the rear of a PC, they're not very convenient for P2 offloading.
 
The DuelAdapter has gotten almost all positive reviews from users in this forum. In fact, Panasonic's own web site mentions it as the defacto way to load P2 cards into devices with expresscard only slots.

dogman-x, why not just upgrade the internal drive? For $100, you can get a pretty sizeable drive from someplace like newegg. Installation isn't tough.
 
there's very good and cheap option - download footages directly from camera, using USB or firewire port, it works for me :)
 
Thanks for the clear up TwistedLincoln. Unfortunately I have filled all the PCI slots on my computer. incase, the camera itself may work for you, but it's not practical for me. I like to load the footage on the computer as I shoot and can't afford to take the entire camera rig over to the computer for 20+ minutes at a time. This makes the entire set stall for that time.
 
The AJ-PCD10 seems to be exactly what you are looking for, too bad I dont think it is reasonable. The P2Store would probably be a better investment as you can use it to store the cards on a drive while you are shooting or if the computer is near by you can use it to directly transfer from the card to the system. Neither one of these is affordable, but if you have a new MBP I would go with the DuelAdapter.
 
Yeah, the AJ-PCD10 with only one slot and under $500 would be fantastic. Unfortunately enough time has passed from when the camera came out, that if such a product was going to exist, I think it already would. I don't like the P2store because it's only usb. I might as well get the most base MBP with a DuelAdapter and with my student discount it'll be less that $300 more and I'll have a brand new computer as well.
 
Noah said:
I might as well get the most base MBP with a DuelAdapter and with my student discount it'll be less that $300 more and I'll have a brand new computer as well.
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Or get a bare-bones Windows laptop for $300 to $400. That'd be even less expensive than your requested one-slot firewire adapter!
 
Being a mac guy I didn't really think about that... hmm... would it be easy enough to network the pc laptop to my mac pro desktop so that there aren't too many steps in between the card and FCP?
 
Networking should be extremely easy, or you could just use external hard disks.

I think this is the single most overlooked, underrated option for someone wanting an inexpensive "card reader".
 
Noah said:
I might as well get the most base MBP with a DuelAdapter and with my student discount it'll be less that $300 more and I'll have a brand new computer as well.
Click to expand...
My conclusion as well. A laptop is much more versatile than a P2Store. A laptop also works well if you are shooting outdoors away from electricity.

But then how long does it take to get the large DVCPRO files from the laptop to the desktop? Ethernet isn't that fast, at least not with my laptop. Then theres the issue of having your laptop clutter things up while the files are transferring.

So I'm thinking of an external hard drive for the laptop, and then transfer files from that to the desktop via firewire. But it has to work if you are shooting outdoors away from electricity, so I'm looking at a bus powered external hard drive that get's it's power from the USB or Firewire port.

I'm also thinking this is an easy way to share data if multiple people are editing the same footage. You can loan somebody your external drive to copy files, but you don't want to loan out your laptop.

For $155, I can put together a 250GB external drive that gets power from either USB or firewire:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16817347013
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16822149070

Am I missing something? Any problems with this approach?
 
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