I just got the P2 Genie and am still learning how to use the P2 Genie software with my P2 Store.

Basically, I will be bringing in my footage to my hard drive via P2 Store then copying to my ext. HD and am unsure how the P2 Genie helps or the best way to back up files with my intel macbook pro.

Any ideas?

Want to have my footage in the best shape for this long ducumentary project that I am working on -- which may take a few years -- so that my future editor doesn't hate me for not backing up things in the best possible light....hope this makes sense.

I am a newbie, so I apologize in advance for helping walk me through this.

I've used P2 Genie on a few projects with the P2 cards and a Powerbook.

We hooked up two identical new hard drives to the PB, set P2 Genie to backup to both drives simultaneously. I kept one drive, the producer/director kept the other. One drive was used for ingest onto the work drives, then it was unplugged and both offload drives are kept in safe storage at different locations, unplugged until needed again.
Worked very well, no problems to speak of. (Should work just as well with a P2 Store)

If you go with this method, make sure you power-up the offload drives for a few minutes every month or so, especially if you are not going to ingest until you have all the footage compiled.

And make sure you have a cataloging system for the drives that works for you!! It can be a huge pain searching through folders full of clips with names like "00060E.mov."

P2 Genie is a dream. . . pure and simple.

When you fire up P2 Genie, you can specify, very easily, WHERE you want it to download the files (just specify a the NAME of your external drive and away it goes). Hit the start button and away it goes.

Those P2 files are .mxf files, however, and can't be used by FCPro. But FCPro easily imports the files and creates new .mov files.

I can't say it enough. . . P2 Genie is a dream. . .

:-)