I know this has been discussed before, but Panasonic has now updated their web site and I found this statement in their FAQ.

"Can I use the FireWire output to record directly to a FireWire drive or Apple iPod?
Yes, we have done tests on original iPod models over FireWire by putting the camera into the "Host Mode," though its performance is a little slow. However, the latest iPod models do not have a FireWire port. On a standard 1394 drive, it would be a bit faster."

Does this mean you would not need a Firestore and an off the shelf firewire drive could also be used to record to? It says RECORD DIRECTLY to a firewire drive, or is this just a miss print and they actually mean transfer P2 contents to the drive.

Hopefully they clear this up with the announcement today.

Also here is the link for those of you who want to see the FAQ

http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/hvx200faq.asp

I was at a panasonic presentation yesterday where they presented the camera. I must say the camera looks like a winner if people will be open minded enough to adopt the p2 technology. That questioned was asked at the workshop, and sales dude was uncertain. However, now that you mentioned that a firewire port in part of the new ipod, it may be possible. I just don't know if the ipods drive will spin fast enought to capture the video. You may be able to transfer the footage from the p2 card to the ipod once it's captured, erase the card and keep shooting. It all depends, on if the ipod will allow the p2 card show up as another drive to extract information from it.

That's Insanely Amazing,
But I wouldn't get my hopes up...Something tells me either you cannot record directly in Host mode or the drives are too slow...Maybe it's gonna be ideal for a storage solution... Self powered Drive

Her's another question though...
Even though the Vpods are USB only if you were to plug in and Dump a P2 directly ontop a Vpod, would you be able to preview it on the screen?

if they had faster HD's AND Firewires they could even be used as a real time monitor...(The reason I think of this is that I want to use a 35mm adaptor that is gonna flip the image)

I thik this is one of those things that is close but not gonna really be an option

This has to be a mistake. they wouldn't be referring to fast and slow if it was recording of a live stream. It has to be downloading data from the p2s', who's speed will depend on where it's being dumped. Though with the new video ipods , it's still interesting , I still don't see any advantages over a pwb - and even less , a pwb w/7200 drive.

except with a PowerBook 7200 you can capture directly...

It would be super cool to just dump the files on a Vpod
(but I think this only works with a Firewire drive)
and view them instantly


wishwishwishwash

My hope, or dream as it may be is that I could record long form to a 300GB lacie or other such portable hard drive in a location that I could have power for it, presentations and such where its just basicly locked to the tripod.

I know the ipod isn't fast enough for HD, nor would a video ipod play back any video that was recorded to it (it has to be in a specific codec and resolution for the Vipod to play back any video on the screen). But it might be a posiblity for SD or at the max probably DVCPro50.

But I won't get my hopes up too high until I hear from someone that has actually has a camera in their hand.

They've updated their FAQ now.
Apparently it was just bad writing.

But, looks like you CAN transfer footage from the P2 cards to a firewire drive.
That's new news.

here's the link to the new FAQ (http://shop.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=95592&modelNo=Content12072005012903035&surfModel=Content12072005012903035)

"Can I use the FireWire output to transfer previously recorded content from P2 cards to an external hard drive or Apple iPod?
Yes, we have done tests on original iPod models over FireWire by putting the camera into the "Host Mode," though its performance is a little slow. However, the latest iPod models do not have a FireWire port. On a standard 1394 drive, it would be a bit faster"

Notice it no longer says "record directly"

They've updated their FAQ now.
Apparently it was just bad writing.

But, looks like you CAN transfer footage from the P2 cards to a firewire drive.
That's new news.

Actually, Jan confirmed this tidbit back in May... :) The camera has the ability to transfer data from the inserted P2 cards to a directly connected firewire HDD (and I'm assuming data can flow the other direction too). No direct recording or capture to a firewire drive though -- the attatched capture/record device must be "intelligent".

John - that was my point but I believe only to dvcpro50. If you want 100mbps , you'll have to download off the p2. Correct me , please , if I'm wrong. The truth is, if I'm doing a shoot , and offloading my files to a hd , then , I would use at least two backups . The ipod strategy might be ok , for a third! I'd probably prefer a powerbook w/firewired hd running off a hub to both the pwb and hd. Both having 7200rpm disks .This gives one a backup if anything goes wrong. thanks

- Jeff Kilgroe wrote:

"...The camera has the ability to transfer data from the inserted P2 cards to a directly connected firewire HDD (and I'm assuming data can flow the other direction too). No direct recording or capture to a firewire drive though -- the attatched capture/record device must be "intelligent".
__________________

By "intelligent", you're including recording live to hard drive thru an NLE in "capture mode", yes?

The Panasonic site FAQ sez...

"Q: How can I record for durations longer than the P2 cards’ capacity?

A: In three ways; you can continuously record over from one P2 card to the next and hot swap them for unloading, or you can use the FS-100 mentioned above, which is an external FireWire drive. You can also open your capture window in your NLE and capture via FireWire to your external drive."

By "intelligent", you're including recording live to hard drive thru an NLE in "capture mode", yes?

The Panasonic site FAQ sez...

"Q: How can I record for durations longer than the P2 cards’ capacity?

A: In three ways; you can continuously record over from one P2 card to the next and hot swap them for unloading, or you can use the FS-100 mentioned above, which is an external FireWire drive. You can also open your capture window in your NLE and capture via FireWire to your external drive."

Yes, you can capture right out of the firewire port to your NLE. By "intelligent", I meant that whatever device is doing the live recording must be able to interperet or digest the video stream coming from the camera. The camera itself doesn't provide any ability of its own to stream a live feed directly to a filesystem connected to the firewire port. Hence you need something like the Firestore that understands DVCPRO and DV video streams.

IMO, Panasonic simply crippled the camera in this way and there's no reason a direct live recording could not and should not be available via firewire direct to a standard firewire HDD or other capable storage device. The interface is already there in that the camera facilitates copying from the P2 media to the firewire connected device.

My hope, or dream as it may be is that I could record long form to a 300GB lacie or other such portable hard drive in a location that I could have power for it, presentations and such where its just basicly locked to the tripod.
Put a laptop between the camera and the drive and yes, you could do exactly that. The camera cannot stream data directly to a hard disk (unless it's an "intelligent" hard disk like the FireStore) but if you use FCP or Avid or Canopus or some other DV100 capture application, you can stream through that capture application right to the hard disk.

Actually, Jan confirmed this tidbit back in May... :)

Yes Jeff, but back in May it was only doable with a USB drive.
Now we're being told we can transfer files with firewire drives.
:)

Yes Jeff, but back in May it was only doable with a USB drive.
Now we're being told we can transfer files with firewire drives.
:)

Heh. Touche'

Either way works for me. All my external HDDs have both interfaces. ;)

Heh. Touche'

Either way works for me. All my external HDDs have both interfaces. ;)

I'm with you.
Just semantics.

Ok, so the HVX can't stream directly to a firewire drive unless it goes through a laptop or intellignet drive (FS-100).

That's fine... BUT, can the HVX transfer clips directly to a hard drive after recording WITHOUT a laptop, thus acting kind of like the P2 Store? I love the idea of the P2 Store, but I find it a bit hard to justify spending $1800 on a 60gb hard drive. If it was 250 or 500 gb, well... count me in.

Ok, so the HVX can't stream directly to a firewire drive unless it goes through a laptop or intellignet drive (FS-100).

That's fine... BUT, can the HVX transfer clips directly to a hard drive after recording WITHOUT a laptop, thus acting kind of like the P2 Store? I love the idea of the P2 Store, but I find it a bit hard to justify spending $1800 on a 60gb hard drive. If it was 250 or 500 gb, well... count me in.

Yes it can. After you're done shooting, you can transfer the contents of your P2 cards over to a firewire or USB2 HDD that is directly connected.

The P2 store is a great idea - you can have someone offloading cards while you continue shooting and cycling cards. But $1800 is way too much. For that price, they should give you a "free" 8GB P2 card with it.

Excellent!

Yes it can. After you're done shooting, you can transfer the contents of your P2 cards over to a firewire or USB2 HDD that is directly connected.



I am almost positive that you can only transfer to a "firewire" hard drive from the P2 in the camera. I thought Jan confirmed that the USB port is only for connecting to a PC so the HVX can be mounted by the PC as a drive. I do not believe that the HVX has the logic board on it to control a USB hard drive.

Can anyone verify this?

Yes, you can transfer files to a USB2 *or* Firewire HDD.

Look through the following thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=43132&highlight=USB+hard+drive

This has to be a mistake.

I think we double checked our wording and restated it. Host mode would transfer over 1394 to the iPod, but the camera cannot stream to it.

Best,

Jan

I think we double checked our wording and restated it. Host mode would transfer over 1394 to the iPod, but the camera cannot stream to it.

Best,

Jan

What about USB2? Can it transfer to a USB2 drive in host mode without a PC?
Since the new Ipods are USB2 only they would not work if 1394 is the only protocol that the HVX can transfer across. Old Ipods would. Can you clarify some of this please Jan....Barry.....anyone who knows for sure. I currently have a small portable USB2 drive and was about to undertake the task of finding a new 1394 drive. But if USB2 works for offloading P2 data then I am set for now.

Thanks

What about USB2? Can it transfer to a USB2 drive in host mode without a PC?
Thanks


Sorry Marty, it only does Host over 1394.

Best,

Jan

What about USB2? Can it transfer to a USB2 drive in host mode without a PC?
Since the new Ipods are USB2 only they would not work if 1394 is the only protocol that the HVX can transfer across. Old Ipods would. Can you clarify some of this please Jan....Barry.....anyone who knows for sure. I currently have a small portable USB2 drive and was about to undertake the task of finding a new 1394 drive. But if USB2 works for offloading P2 data then I am set for now.

Thanks

According to Barry and others at NAB, USB2 is supported as well. I could swear that Jan confirmed all this a while back. But I guess we'll see if we get further clarification.

As for recording to an ipod, why would you really want to do this? I can put a 7200rpm 100GB 2.5" HDD into an external enclosure with USB2 and Firewire interfaces that can be powered by battery or via the USB/Firewire bus. And it's basically the same size as the 2.5" HDD based ipods and cheaper. Then again, if you already own the ipod and want to use it for extra storage, more power to you. :)

Just to clarify my position. I never planned on using an IPOD at all. I do have a USB2 portable drive that I could use but for months now I have been under the impression that it would not be supported in HOST mode. But recently (in this thread) it was stated that you could use USB2 or 1394 to offload P2 data. So I needed to verify and according to Jan's response it is indeed only 1394.

Again, my references to IPODs was only as a response to people talking about it. references were made about it saying the new IPODs would not work because they are only USB and have no firewire...which only reinforced the 1394 only option.

Beyond all of this, the only attractive thing about an ipod is it's size and battery. I have been looking for a battery operated 2.5 inch 1394 enclosure. If anyone can recommend one that would be great.

Thanks!

thanks Jan - it's always nice to have you check in and straighten things . Kurth

I have been looking for a battery operated 2.5 inch 1394 enclosure. If anyone can recommend one that would be great.
I'm interested as well. Anyone?

Let me make sure I understand -

If I bring my laptop with me, I can stream DVCProHD directly to it via firewire?

Let me make sure I understand -

If I bring my laptop with me, I can stream DVCProHD directly to it via firewire?
Yes, provided you have a video capture application that works with DVCPRO-HD. Using this configuration you wouldn't need any P2 cards at all.

Latest experiments:

When you plug in a drive to the HVX, the first thing it needs to do is format the drive. This is an instantaneous process which basically results in deleting all partitions and rendering the drive as one large unallocated pool. Because of this, YOU DO NOT WANT TO USE AN IPOD. Use the ipod as an ipod, all is well and good. But you don't want to use an ipod as an external firewire drive for offloading P2 cards. If you format the iPod as a drive to be used by the HVX, it will wipe out everything you have stored on your iPod (including the operating system).

So basically, use a dedicated hard disk allocated specifically for the task. When you tell it to copy a card over, it creates a new partition on the hard disk equivalent to the size of the card, and then automatically copies the card contents over. Each card gets its own partition. And, it can perform a "copy-with-verify" so that after it's done, it reads the contents back and compares them against the P2 card's files, to make sure that the copy worked properly.

Finding a battery-powered firewire enclosure has proved difficult, which is why people keep coming back to the ipod idea. But there's an alternative that's extraordinarily cheaper: you can use a USB On-The-Go drive. I got a cheap little $35 enclosure from MWave which is USB2 On-The-Go, plus has a built-in 1.6-hour lithium-ion battery. Put a laptop drive in it and you'll have a portable, battery-powered P2 offloading system for under $100.

The camera cannot act as a host to a USB device, it can only act as a host to a firewire device. But the USB On-The-Go drives can act as host. So plug the drive into the camera, and push the "copy" button on the drive, and the drive will quaff the contents of the P2 card in slot 1 (or, if there's no card in slot 1, it'll quaff the contents of the card in slot 2). This is a far cheaper, faster, and more rational way to get a battery-powered hard disk than an ipod would be.

Drawbacks are that it doesn't seem that fast, and you don't really get any tangible feedback as to what's going on. When you use the camera as a firewire host you can see menus that tell you what's happening, a bar graph that shows the progress of the copy, and you can perform a limited bit of browsing on the hard drive to see the status of the copied cards. With the USB On-The-Go device, all you get are a couple of flashing LED's, and no way to verify that what you copied is good or not.

The copy speed is dependent on the speed of your hard disk. I have an old Fujitsu 4200RPM 60GB drive in the enclosure now, and it took 9 minutes to copy the contents of a 4GB card. I just ordered a Hitachi 7K100 TravelStar 7200RPM drive for use in this scenario, and I'm expecting it will cut that offload time in half.

I'm wondering if the On-The-Go drive is actually performing a "verify" step. It took 9 minutes to copy a 4GB card, but when I plugged the USB-OTG drive into my desktop and copied the card contents from the USB-OTG drive onto my desktop it only took four minutes. So why did it take 9 to copy from the camera (seeing as the P2 card it's copying from is about twice as fast as my desktop drive)? If it was doing a verify operation, that would explain the additional time it took, as well as give me some more confidence in using this OTG option. Right now I don't know how much I trust it, but I will say it's tantalizing.

I still think a laptop is a far superior offloading device. Second choice would be a self-powered firewire enclosure, but there don't seem to be any battery-powered firewire enclosures on the market anymore. So the USB2 On-The-Go thing looks like it'll work, and it's cheap: with a cheap drive, you're at $100 for a battery-powered 60GB system, with the fastest drive on the market you're looking at $200 for a battery-powered 80GB system.

But let's just rule out the ipod, that's just not a good choice; it's too slow, and if you format its hard disk you lose all the ipod-ness of the ipod, and it costs three to four times as much as a dedicated hard disk system anyway!

Thats great news Barry (and bad news as well) but thanks for the clarification.
Looks like I'm back to bringing a laptop to set and dedicating a Production Assistant to handle that job.

- ShannonRawls.com

The laptop is a far superior choice; not only does it give you the fastest and best way to offload, but it also gives you a million other things (like having Microsoft Word handy, or your production database, or Excel, or all sorts of stuff), plus you can do direct capture on the laptop, plus you can burn DVDs of the captured footage, plus someday we'll (hopefully) be running HD Rack from Serious Magic and getting live waveform/vectorscope/monitoring...

... plus, when using the laptop to offload the cards, you don't have to ever stop shooting...

... a laptop's by far the best solution. Especially since you can get one for less than the cost of the cheapest P2 card! ;)

Is this fast enough to connect the Panasonic to a laptop/desktop?

FW4P-FW4P-75EXT
Extended Distance Firewire Cable 75Ft

Retail Price:
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You Save: $79.00
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Product Description:

Comprehensive IEEE1394 cables, commonly referred to as Firewire (Apple computer) or i.link (Sony) cables have become more and more popular in the last few years. Most computers and a growing number of professional and consumer video products have now utilized these connections for easy interfacing between video and computer products.They come in three pin configurations; 4 to 4, 6 to 4, or 6 to 6.As with all our premium cable assemblies, these cables are covered under our exclusive lifetime warranty.

Warranty: Lifetime

Weight: 1.1 lbs

Color: Black Matte

try this place....
www.bixnet.com

Case-USB2FW-2.5 hd enclosure (usb and firewire interface)
Bat-PM85-22 battery pack - has usb power connector to power hd enclosure plus all sorts of connectors to power video and still cameras.
Outputs 5 to 11 volts, includes charger

Just add 2.5" HD and have fun.

"Yes, provided you have a video capture application that works with DVCPRO-HD. Using this configuration you wouldn't need any P2 cards at all"

Avid Xpress HD can do this right?

Any other apps? I know Vegas cannot.

try this place....
www.bixnet.com

Case-USB2FW-2.5 hd enclosure (usb and firewire interface)
Bat-PM85-22 battery pack - has usb power connector to power hd enclosure plus all sorts of connectors to power video and still cameras.
Outputs 5 to 11 volts, includes charger

Just add 2.5" HD and have fun.

Betsy asks: This would work for high definition video? You could plug the panasonic directly into it? Don't you still need a computer between them?

Barry says:

"The laptop is a far superior choice; not only does it give you the fastest and best way to offload, but it also gives you a million other things (like having Microsoft Word handy, or your production database, or Excel, or all sorts of stuff), plus you can do direct capture on the laptop, plus you can burn DVDs of the captured footage, plus someday we'll (hopefully) be running HD Rack from Serious Magic and getting live waveform/vectorscope/monitoring...

... plus, when using the laptop to offload the cards, you don't have to ever stop shooting...

... a laptop's by far the best solution. Especially since you can get one for less than the cost of the cheapest P2 card! ;)"

Barry, what's the slowest, cheapest, oldest apple laptop that would do the job? What do you think the minimum specs would be for direct to camera recording, bypassing the accursed P2 cards altogether?

I'm no expert on Mac laptops at all; someone else would have to answer that.

Barry, what's the slowest, cheapest, oldest apple laptop that would do the job? What do you think the minimum specs would be for direct to camera recording, bypassing the accursed P2 cards altogether?

My guess is any 15-inch G4 laptop with atleast the capability to have 2 Mbs of RAM and a 7200 rpm hard drive. And atleast 1 Ghz.

Anything else will really bog down DVCProHD100 throughput. Need a fast internal, and need a cardbus slot for a second firewire bus to capture to if needed.

Betsy, I was referring to just copying files from the P2 card to the portable HD, you would still have to import the files via a supported app on a laptop or desktop, but at least you wouldn't have to carry around the laptop while shooting. Some of those setups are small enough to carry around in your shirt pocket.
batteryspace.com has some excellent portable power options too.

Another option not mentioned is the latest crop of Pen oriented Computers, that have the screens that fold down for writing and drawing. I think the latest ones have centrino processors powerful enough for capturing, just make sure you get at least at 5400rpm drive.

Sorry, Pen is old school...tablet pcs is the new term.