P2 freelance workflow...

[Chris Baldwin]

I posted this in another thread but no one responded so I'm sorry to repost but its my number 1 hurdle to buying this camera and I need to figure out an answer.

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I'm extremely eager to get a definitively proven, flexible, fast, and affordable workflow for this camera. . .for the freelancer.

Is there any way of using a firestore/cineporter to record to and then making a copy to an external hard drive without a laptop?

What's the fastest the transfer will occur? And will the copied drive mount exactly as a P2 card? Is there a way of doing this with the same reliability statistics that Panasonic demands out of their P2 and complementing smart Hard Drive partners?

I work as a freelance shooter for production companies and news stations. How do I go into the field with enough storage to shoot for a full day(6 hours lets say totaled up) and give my clients media for editing that day?

Looks like top speed is 1 gig a minute of transfer speed... which is actually real time for the capture of the Highest quality HD formats with the HVX.

It seems like I would need at a minimum two 100gig smart hard drives that capture in lew of P2 cards and then at least a realtime(1gig/1min) transfer procedure to some sort of one button firewire or USB2 external hard drive that doesn't need a computer to transfer. The ipod is an interesting idea becasue of size but I'm intrigued that the posts are suggested that there are products out there that will accomplish all this for much cheaper and faster.

I have no idea of which slew of products will accomplish this and I'd love to pool our resources and come up with a list to do so.

I've just spoken to one of Specialized Communication's product specialists for the Cineporter named David. I relayed my need as a freelancer to be able to give my clients media immediately following a shoot. I told him that I still need to be able to shoot a full day's worth of content (probably up to 6 hours max), and then give a client an exact copy of the media. I'd prefer this to be on a hard drive of some sort with the fastest transfer speeds possible(PCMCIA???). He aggreed that obviously affordable hot swappable hard drives that can be removed from the cineporter and mounted on any NLE system exactly like the P2 is the most attractive; especially if the swappable drive is affordable enough to purchase a few of them for longer shoots or multiple clients.
He began to discuss some sort of USB on the go solution that they had been considering but said they hadn't finished working out what solution to this problem they'd chose. I relayed that I feared the transfer speed over USB or even Firewire 800 would just be too slow considering a full day of production demands much more than baby-sitting a drive transferring media at close to real time.

I need to give my clients media at the end of the day without waiting more than an average amount of time it would take to wrap a shoot setup(tops-1 hour). And I need enough storage to compete with a "tape-based" content acquisition shoot.(probably max of 6 hours a day)

And finally as a freelancer I need to be able to afford the whole setup: camera, Smart Hard Drive, and multiple client media drives.

It seems the folks making the Cineporter understand all of this very well. That's good at least. But they are undecided as to give us USB on the go, exchangable hard drives, or lead us towards burning to blueray... If the 200 gig Cineporter was between $500-1000 great I'd buy two three four maybe over time and rent them to clients at the end of a shoot to transfer to their systems overnight...OR better yet try to convince them to buy their own and I'd supply the camera. But they aren't and this leaves me without a practical solution for giving my clients media the same day we capture it.

I'm desparately trying to stay ahead of the competition here and to help push the P2 - non-tape based workflow and I would LOVE to get a new HVX200 but I need to be able to find a freelance system that I can sell to my clients.

What are the solutions?

Thanks!!

[Shannon Rawls]

Too many question marks in your post. I got confused after paragraph #3.

Ask again...by the numbers.....in a more simple fashion.

We're camera geeks, not poets. *smile*

(nice website by the way Chris)

- ShannonRawls.com

[Ram Ganesh]

There are 3 types of options:
1) Simple P2 cards (4G=$600)
2) P2 substitute Harddrives (Cineporter $2199, Focus $1500)
3) P2 offloading options (CitiDisk $999, Usb2Go drives)

For 1 & 3 you need a P2card. For option2, you dont need a P2card.

Cineporter doesnt have swapable drives yet - but they said they will look into it. Once they do it - then thats your best option, you shoot, then give the disk to client.

As of now, you can get 2 4G P2cards, then get a USB2GO drive, and dump footage & hand it out to clients....

[Leigh Wanstead]

Hi Ram Ganesh,

Would you please give me some links about USB2GO drive? How much is USB2GO?

TIA

Regards
Leigh

Originally Posted by Ram Ganesh

As of now, you can get 2 4G P2cards, then get a USB2GO drive, and dump footage & hand it out to clients....

[Ram Ganesh]

check this thread by Barry:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=42072

Edit: I see Barry replying to this thread this very minute.. so u will get better answers :)

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Chris Baldwin

Is there any way of using a firestore/cineporter to record to and then making a copy to an external hard drive without a laptop?

Don't know yet. The FireStore has the ability to chain multiple units together; perhaps it will have the capability to dub to another unit.

For the CinePorter, they're still listening to suggestions. I've asked them for several ways to get a similar functionality. There are at least three promising prospects:
1) It has a USB2.0 port on it. That means you could use any USB2 drive to copy/offload the entire contents of the CinePorter, automatically, with no computer needed. It'll take time though.

2) It appears to the camera as a P2 card, so theoretically you should be able to use the camera to offload the CinePorter's contents onto a firewire drive. That'll also take time, limited by the transfer speed of the Cineporter's drive and the destination drive.

3) (and this one is really interesting): it'll have a multi-drive option, and if we can implement a data-redundancy RAID, then theoretically it could be writing to two drives simultaneously. If you could extract the duplicate drive you could hand a client a copy of the footage instantly.

What's the fastest the transfer will occur?

Depends on the speed of the drives you're using. If using Firewire, firewire could be one bottleneck; at 50 megabytes per second maximum transfer speed, that limits you to maybe 90 seconds per 4gb card. But there are few if any hard disks that can sustain 50 megabytes per second, so you're more likely limited by the speed of your drives.

And will the copied drive mount exactly as a P2 card?

It'll mount as a hard disk. You can explore it using the P2 Viewer just like you could explore a P2 card, and you could import the contents into FCP just like you could import a P2 card.

Is there a way of doing this with the same reliability statistics that Panasonic demands out of their P2 and complementing smart Hard Drive partners?

Don't know. FireStore is the only company developing a drive in partnership with them.

I work as a freelance shooter for production companies and news stations. How do I go into the field with enough storage to shoot for a full day(6 hours lets say totaled up) and give my clients media for editing that day?

Six hours of footage per day? Doesn't sound too practical with P2 or hard disk storage at this time.

It seems like I would need at a minimum two 100gig smart hard drives that capture in lieu of P2 cards and then at least a realtime(1gig/1min) transfer procedure to some sort of one button firewire or USB2 external hard drive that doesn't need a computer to transfer.

Well, that could probably work, yes. The USB-To-Go workflow might work for that, but we'd have to find a faster USB-To-Go option; right now the little enclosure I'm using takes 9 minutes to offload a 4gb card.

I relayed that I feared the transfer speed over USB or even Firewire 800 would just be too slow considering a full day of production demands much more than baby-sitting a drive transferring media at close to real time.

It's not the cable that's the bottleneck though. It's the drives. You'd need something like a three-drive RAID to get enough hard disk speed to keep up with the firewire800 data rate.

I need to give my clients media at the end of the day without waiting more than an average amount of time it would take to wrap a shoot setup(tops-1 hour). And I need enough storage to compete with a "tape-based" content acquisition shoot.(probably max of 6 hours a day)

I don't think it's going to be very practical. Six hours of high-def footage is a lot. You may have to look at some sort of HDV option for that workflow at the current time.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I agree. While a tapeless workflow sounds great, for the type of work you are doing, HDV would be better, I think.

[Pierre Petit]

were's the bottleneck with the usb2go option?this post is a bit old and i could not find any more reference to the usb to go option. Is theyre a faster option available now? My pc supplier seem to only sell 2.5inch usb2go i guess that could be the reason for it being so slow...

[Bill Pryor]

I don't think this is the camera to use in your situation, unless you're shooting DV with it. If you have to give the media to a client at the end of a shoot, that's a big problem. What if he takes the hard drive to his editor and somebody screws it up and the files get deleted?

I've been going through similar thoughts and I can't see the P2 workflow actually working in an efficient and cost effective manner for me either--although I really like the camera and the footage I've seen from it. In addition to the location work and technology needed to deal with what's been shot, there's the other end, ie., how to come up with some "original tape" type footage. Whether it's Blu-ray or DLT or whatever, that still requires a lot of additional work and a person to deal with it who won't foul it up. I don't shoot 6 hours a day as you do, but there have been numerous times I've been on the road for a week and returned with 10-15 hours of tapes. And I often do interviews that can run an hour or more.

As others have pointed out, P2 isn't for everybody. The tempation for me would be to buy the camera and shoot DV with it until such time as P2 becomes more practical, but that would be putting faith in the fact that it would actually become so in a reasonable time period. I think for me to consider P2, there would have to be 32 gig cards available for under $1K (not all that inconceivable--CF and SD cards now sell for under $100 for 2 gig cards, and I've seen an 8 gig CF card advertised for under $400), and some fast storage device like the P2 Store but with quadruple the capacity and half the price. And then there would need to be some quick easy way of putting files on Blu-ray or some other more permanent storage medium for archival purposes. By archival, I don't mean 100 years--only for normal reuse as needed. Often we go into tapes that may be several years old; and sometimes after a program is totally finished, like 2 or 3 years later, we have to rebuild the entire show and add to it or make changes. So having tapes, or something else, on permanent file is essential. If I could have the XDCAM workflow in a camera like the HVX200, I'd be all over it in a minute. Actually, in my fantasty world, I could stick a 32 gig P2 card into a P2 Store-like device, press a button and in 5 minutes the contents would be transfered and in another 5 minutes a Blu-ray DVD would emerge from the other end. Hey, I read a lot of science fiction too.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

...If you have to give the media to a client at the end of a shoot, that's a big problem. What if he takes the hard drive to his editor and somebody screws it up and the files get deleted?...

That's no worse than handing the original tapes to someone. The bottom line is to keep backups and write protect your stuff. (It only takes about five clicks to instantly write protect all files in a folder on a hard drive. Hopefully, the Firestore, P2Store and other HDD products include a write-only feature.)

That said, the tools today don't meet everybody's P2 workflow needs. A battery-powered HDD store with a built-in Blu-ray data disc recorder would sure be cool - especially if it could record to a redundant RAID HDD and burn the disc simultaneously.

[Bill Pryor]

I disagree about no worse than handing over original tapes. I've never seen a tape just die from sitting on a shelf, but I've seen numerous hard drive failures; which is why you'd need a backup, which would take more time and equipment. Every time I've tried to explain a P2 workflow to others in the biz, I get the same answer: can't live that way. I think eventually there will be something in the P2 world, or a derivative thereof, that can be used like the XDCAM discs. At least I hope so. GV may have something good happening with the Rev Pro, but that's not really on the market yet, and it probably won't ever be in a small, cool camera like the HVX.

[Mike Schrengohst]

I have had to shoot several DV projects after working with the HVX and it is torture...client wanted tapes because they were going to edit...now I have the project again and it has taken me a few days to log and capture....
I did a 50 card job 2 weeks ago and the client has a backup and
can find a clip in an instant to reference to....
So if people cannot work with P2 yet how are they going to think when the shooters start pushing the RED workflow??

[Jon Fairhurst]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

I disagree about no worse than handing over original tapes. I've never seen a tape just die from sitting on a shelf, but I've seen numerous hard drive failures...

Maybe not on a shelf, but how about a dashboard in the Phoenix sun?

No matter the media, if you only have the original copy, you're taking a risk - it's just that different media have different failure modes. Then again "I think I left it on the roof of the car about fifty miles ago" is technology independent...