Hi Guys, I may be going on a production with Travel Channel in the near future, we would like to use the HVX-200 for the show, but I need to know if there is any way to transfer the video off of P2 cards without using the camera or a P2 store. The computers that will be will be going on the trip are 15" C2D MBP's. The planned work flow is: 1) Shoot on two 8GB P2 cards, 2)When one card is full it gets dumped to HDD's via computer, 3)During that time another 8GB P2 card is in the camera. On this trip there will be two teams of shooters. Each will have a MBP, HDD enclosure, and several 250GB Seagate HDD's. Does anyone have any suggestions and does anyone know of there is a way to pull files off the cards without a P2 camera or store device.
I have never used this camera before, so if something will not work please help me!

Thanks,
John Christensen

I believe you can plug the cards into a PCMCIA slot to read them.

Duel Systems has a PCExpress to PCMCIA adapter coming out, I saw one demo'ed last month. You can either buy one of those when it comes out, or hook your camera up to your macbook pro via firewire and import the footage that way (takes a lot longer than pulling it off the card directly).

THe macbook pro's can't take the P2 cards in stock form because they're PCMCIA and the MBP's only have PC Express slots, but if you get the adapter, it's just as fast if not faster than a native PCMCIA slot. They're working the bugs out now, but the one I saw demo'ed worked beautifully.

If you can't wait and need the fastest download, then I'd take a couple of powerbooks. If you're shooting in 720, the powerbook can play the footage back directly, though I don't think it can play 1080 (i haven't tried yet)