Hi,

I'm looking to rent an HVX to play around with, but I want to confirm something about the P2 cards.

Can I simply insert the P2 card into my laptop's PC card slot (sony vaio, win XP) and drag (copy) the .mxf files onto my PC harddrive using Windows Explorer. I'll then stick the P2 in the camera delete the footage and begin recording again.

I've downloaded the P2 viewer from Panasonic to instal on my laptop.

I later plan to transfer from my laptop to my editing PC via LAN.

This seems like a logical thing but I haven't seen this type of workflow explicity stated.

Otherwise I guess I can connect from the camera to laptop and dump the footage via USB onto the harddrive from there.

thanks,
Alex

It is that simple. Just make sure that you get the entire CONTENTS folder and LASTCLIP.txt file....not just what is contained within that folder. Drag the CONTENTS folder onto an external backup drive, and then you should be safe to delete the footage from the card.

thanks for the reply.

Yes it is that simple, but one more thing -- you have to install the hardware driver (which is on the CD that comes with the camera, or available for download from the Panasonic website). A P2 card is treated like an external storage device, and the appropriate driver will need to be installed in order for your system to recognize the card.