Workflow with P2 and AVCHD

Erik Naso

Erik Naso

Veteran
I’m going to start an edit today and feel my workflow needs some help. I will have three P2 media cards from a HPX370 and a couple AVCHD from an AF-100. I’m trying not to transcode everything first so should I copy the P2 cards to my scratch disk from the external hard drive I have them backed up on? Whats the best workflow for P2 or any card based media.

Next.

I’ve been told that I can't save the P2 cards as an archive. Takes up to much storage on a shared RAID. I need to pick what footage I want to archive and delete the rest. I have no idea how to do that without transcoding it first. Is it posable to delete clips from the P2 card? I don’t like this idea but management is handing it down.
 
Erik Naso said:
I will have three P2 media cards from a HPX370 and a couple AVCHD from an AF-100. I’m trying not to transcode everything first so should I copy the P2 cards to my scratch disk from the external hard drive I have them backed up on?
Click to expand...

I would copy the contents of all footage to whatever drive you will be working off of, preferably a fast drive or speed RAID setup. Organize footage by type (so how I would do it is make a folder underneath the project folder called "Footage" and then under that have "HPX370" and then "Card_1" and so on, and then under "Footage" would be another folder called "AF100", ect.), and then import into Premiere...which I'm assuming is your NLE, so please correct me if I'm wrong about that. I had a project I did just that on and I didn't have any problems mixing those two footage types without transcoding.

I’ve been told that I can't save the P2 cards as an archive. Takes up to much storage on a shared RAID. I need to pick what footage I want to archive and delete the rest. I have no idea how to do that without transcoding it first. Is it posable to delete clips from the P2 card? I don’t like this idea but management is handing it down.
Click to expand...

You can absolutely do this. First you'll need P2 Viewer if you are on a Windows platform (again, I'm assuming since I think that's your setup, but if I'm wrong I can adjust accordingly). As a side note, you might also need the P2 Driver for the Viewer software to work as well.

Create a folder for the clips you want to archive, and then open P2 Viewer and then select "Tool" in the menu and then "Setting Virtual P2 Cards". Make sure there are no previous entries listed, and if there are, just delete them (and be VERY careful not to let it delete the contents. Make sure the checkbox for that option is cleared out). Then set two virtual P2 cards, one the folder of your footage that you will be pulling from, and the second is the empty folder than will hold your clips for archiving. Once you have these (and only these) folders selected, then click "OK" and go to the "View" option on the menu and set your primary bin to be the location of your footage, and the secondary bin to be the empty folder for your archive. Then just drag and drop the clips from the primary bin to the secondary bin that you want to backup. Verify the clips are there (best to use two different sources, i.e. playback in P2 Viewer and then load up the footage in the NLE and make sure it looks fine) and you're good to go.

One thing to keep in mind is that the filenames may not transfer between bins...I'm not exactly sure they won't, but you might want to test this if you want it to stay tied to an edit (i.e. you're archiving a whole project as opposed to just select pieces of footage).

As a side note, I use this method all the time to combine cards. It's just nicer to have one big P2 folder than a bunch of different "Card_1" ect. folders, and the Viewer will even fix card spanning up for you too if you do that. Just an FYI in case such a idea interests you.

If you're doing this on OSX, you can use P2CMS to do similar, but I'd have to walk myself through the process again in order to write it out. You can even Log and Transfer in Final Cut Pro and it doesn't transcode, it merely re-wraps DVCPRO HD into single Quicktime files, which makes it easy for manipulating individual shots. Only downside is that you lose performance working with these files in Premiere as the Quicktime engine is still 32-bit that Premiere has to go through.
 
If you just want to delete clips from the actual card, the easiest way to do it is to delete them in the camera.

You can do it one by one, or you can use the Shot Mark to mark everything you want to delete, select to view all marked clips, and then delete all of them at once.
 
Thanks David.
These are all archived P2 cards that have been saved in their native file format. I just create a folder for each card "Card_1" and copy all the folders that are on them. Perfect duplicate.
 
Last edited:
Thanks Gary.

I would copy the contents of all footage to whatever drive you will be working off of, preferably a fast drive or speed RAID setup. Organize footage by type (so how I would do it is make a folder underneath the project folder called "Footage" and then under that have "HPX370" and then "Card_1" and so on, and then under "Footage" would be another folder called "AF100", ect.), and then import into Premiere...which I'm assuming is your NLE, so please correct me if I'm wrong about that. I had a project I did just that on and I didn't have any problems mixing those two footage types without transcoding.
Click to expand...

I was thinking that would be the case. Basically copying the cards over to my RAID from the external back up drive. Wasn't sure if that would take up less space than transcoding but native AVC-INTRA 100 is a smaller than ProRes so its probably a wash in the end.

You can absolutely do this. First you'll need P2 Viewer if you are on a Windows platform (again, I'm assuming since I think that's your setup, but if I'm wrong I can adjust accordingly). As a side note, you might also need the P2 Driver for the Viewer software to work as well.

Create a folder for the clips you want to archive, and then open P2 Viewer and then select "Tool" in the menu and then "Setting Virtual P2 Cards". Make sure there are no previous entries listed, and if there are, just delete them (and be VERY careful not to let it delete the contents. Make sure the checkbox for that option is cleared out). Then set two virtual P2 cards, one the folder of your footage that you will be pulling from, and the second is the empty folder than will hold your clips for archiving. Once you have these (and only these) folders selected, then click "OK" and go to the "View" option on the menu and set your primary bin to be the location of your footage, and the secondary bin to be the empty folder for your archive. Then just drag and drop the clips from the primary bin to the secondary bin that you want to backup. Verify the clips are there (best to use two different sources, i.e. playback in P2 Viewer and then load up the footage in the NLE and make sure it looks fine) and you're good to go.

One thing to keep in mind is that the filenames may not transfer between bins...I'm not exactly sure they won't, but you might want to test this if you want it to stay tied to an edit (i.e. you're archiving a whole project as opposed to just select pieces of footage).

As a side note, I use this method all the time to combine cards. It's just nicer to have one big P2 folder than a bunch of different "Card_1" ect. folders, and the Viewer will even fix card spanning up for you too if you do that. Just an FYI in case such a idea interests you.

If you're doing this on OSX, you can use P2CMS to do similar, but I'd have to walk myself through the process again in order to write it out. You can even Log and Transfer in Final Cut Pro and it doesn't transcode, it merely re-wraps DVCPRO HD into single Quicktime files, which makes it easy for manipulating individual shots. Only downside is that you lose performance working with these files in Premiere as the Quicktime engine is still 32-bit that Premiere has to go through.
Click to expand...

This is great info Gary! I'm on a Mac so I will have to find P2 viewer Mac version or P2CMS. I need to do some dry runs with this to make sure I don't screw it up.
Do you think Premiere CS6 will relink the files after I create a new archive with only the media that I wanted in this new P2 archive?
 
Erik Naso said:
Thanks David.
These are all archived P2 cards that have been saved in their native file format. I just create a folder for each card "Card_1" and copy all the folders that are on them. Perfect duplicate.
Click to expand...

Well, you should be able to do more or less the same thing in P2 Viewer. Delete the items you don't want, rather than creating a new virtual card, then Premiere won't need to re-link anything.
 
David Jimerson said:
Well, you should be able to do more or less the same thing in P2 Viewer. Delete the items you don't want, rather than creating a new virtual card, then Premiere won't need to re-link anything.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can do this, just make sure you have a second backup of the entire contents in case you accidentally delete something.

P2CMS is the only thing you can run on newer OSX versions and it's a slight PITA that if you're on Lion it won't playback DVCPRO HD footage (not sure about AVC-Intra).

I totally thought you were Windows-based for some reason. I have done it before, but I mostly use P2 Viewer under Windows 7 because my backup archive is NTFS. If you need any help doing it through P2CMS, let me know and I can fire it up and go through the process again for clarity.
 
Thanks guys. Really helpful!!!!!!

I have P2CMS installed and started deleting bad takes from one card. This is pretty easy and will trim down the archive without transcoding. Thats HUGE!
I did have to install the AVC-INTRA Decoder in order to playback the clips. I was getting only audio in playback.
Have to read the PDF to get my arms around it more.
Can I create a new P2 card from consolidated media?
 
Erik Naso said:
Looks like it's just an export of clips to a new location and the software creates a CONTENT fold with all the vitals and the .MXF. This is great!
Click to expand...

Yeah, makes dealing with the P2 format a lot easier. Hence why I usually combine spanned cards and such. Also makes it nice to pull content for your own reel when you've shot a ton of stuff for something...or archiving, as in your case.
 
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