Hi all

I may have a reason to buy a HPX500 for use in a Drama and Doco situation, the main thing for me is coming to a sensible workflow, now the P2 store, obvioulsy is 60GB and I presume a little less after formatting, now would a sensible idea be to use 3x16GB cards and 1x8GB card (Total 56GB) and then to download that into a P2 store making a nice logical order (the question being is does the P2 store allow 56GB of data after the disc is formatted), I would make up 2 sets of 3x16 and 1x8 cards allowing minimal delay on set while data was loaded into the P2 Stores or indeed to other back up systems, I don't think I can trust Firestores so would prefer to stick to the P2 system.

Has anyone worked this way on a decent sized Drama production or to a medium paced Doco ?

All opions and help gratefully received.
Ian

I researched this alot before committing to the 500, which I've only been using for 5 days admittedly... I make documentaries, so I was very concerned about keeping up with the cards.. What I decided on, detailed here numerous times by myself and others, is using a laptop (I bought a used G4 PowerBook because they have the right slot and I'm a Mac guy) and several FW harddrives and/or a Granite case (that uses trays) and P2 Log Pro... Much cheaper than the P2 Store and much more capacity and you don't have to off-load clips twice (P2 to P2 Store to hard drive), which would concern me..

For a docu-dramatic show, of which I've shot many over the years, this should work as well.. It takes longer than you think to fill up four 16g cards, especially if you record audio double system (so you don't use the camera for audio only inserts)...

FWIW, here is my experience: I just shot a 22 minute pilot over 6 days. We used two HVX200's and only had 4 8G cards. We would only keep one card at a time in each camera. When a card was full we offloaded it through a G4 Macbook onto three 1T external hard drives. I had a dedicated person, my editor, offloading and logging footage while we kept shooting (FCP Project File was used for the 3rd 1T drive). We had plenty of time between setups to offload cards. We even had plenty of time for my editor to rough cut scenes. We shot a total of 200G in the six days.

Ian,

I think the P2store of 60GB is after formatting. The P2store is NOT formatted as a single drive of 60GB. Instead, it is partitioned into drives of 4GB each. A 8GB P2Card will occupy 2 P2Store partitions. This also implys if your P2Card is only 1GB in usage, and you do a copy from P2Card to P2Store, the result will be a 8GB space used up on the P2Store. Similarly, a 16GB P2Card will use 4 P2Store partitions, etc.