Does anyone know how to transfer data from HVX P2 card to Firewire Drive in the field without the use of a laptop as an in between. I have been trying but when I connect the drive to HVX it is not recognized. I have poured over pages 84-85 in the manual with no help.

Welcome to the forum, Paul. This process is well described in the manual and Barry's book but I don't have either on hand so I can't point you to the correct page/s.

What you're talking about is HOST mode, and the camera needs to have "1394 HOST" selected in the menu before it can recognize the drive. Once you get the menu setup correctly, here's the process:

- With both camera and FW drive powered off, connect the drive to the FW port on the camera. (The drive needs to have it's own power supply)
- Turn the FW drive on FIRST and wait a few seconds for it to spin up and become active.
- Turn the camera on next and put it into THUMBNAIL mode
- Immediately after the thumbnails come up, press and hold the MODE button again and you'll see "1394 HOST" come up on the screen and flash, and in a few seconds you'll get a screen that shows the drive information on the bottom.

The available menus from this point become involved; you need to first format the external drive (make SURE you're formatting the DRIVE and not your P2 cards) and from there you can select each slot one at a time and transfer off.

Re-read the manual and look at other posts on this forum for more details about HOST mode transfers.

I have done exactly what you have said, but for some reason the drive isn't recognized. Maybe I should try another drive. But thanks for replying I have been on the phone with Panasonic and they say it is possible to do.

in this thread at another forum site:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=86076


Reading the entire thread would probably be most helpful. It doesn't mention specifically how to set the camera to HOST mode, (which is pretty easy), but once you've done that, this pretty much explains what happens, what to expect, and how to do offloads.

Hope it helps.

Paul,

I just re-read your thread title: "P2 straight to FW drive..." and I want to make sure you fully understand what you're trying to accomplish:

If what you're trying to do is simply transfer clips that already live on the P2 cards and transfer them onto an external FW drive then it is HOST mode that you want, and if you can't get it to work then you're probably just not completely understanding the process - unless you've got a defective drive or camera.

However, if you're talking about SHOOTING directly to an external FW drive, you cannot do that. In fact the only device that allows that (currently) is the Firestore.

So, are you talking about acquisition - shooting to an external drive, or transferring exisitng clips from the P2 cards onto that same drive?

BTW: if you can't get HOST mode to work I'd suggest taking the camera and your drive to your local Panny dealer and have one of them walk you through it.

I also seem to recall (don't have the reference) that the drive has to be formatted FAT32 and is limited to 60Gb, perhaps the camera takes care of this in formatting.

I finally figured it out and it had nothing to do with the workflow. When I plug my D2 Etreme into my computer it automatically turns on. I found out that when connected to the mac it has a powered bus. So in the field to turn it on I just have to push the blue button in the front of the drive (which I thought was just a light), I didn't know because I have never had to manually power the drive on. It works perfectly now. Thanks to everyones help. Now I am going to try and figure out how to import the footage off the firewire drive into FCP.

Now I am going to try and figure out how to import the footage off the firewire drive into FCP.File|Import|Panasonic P2

FCP interface worked like a charm. Finally something easy occured. I hear the FCP6 is even more P2 friendly?

...I hear the FCP6 is even more P2 friendly?

Not exactly; the P2 Import interface has been redesigned a bit but P2/MXF is still not native to the timeline. Yet. HD Log however has released a new version which is supposed to be faster at doing the MXF-to-QT conversions than before and adds more functionality - and clip naming features - than before.