P2 workflow - how are you doing it ?....
 

Hello all,
I'd like to start a new thread on the actual workflow using HVX200 and P2 cards.
I haven't found a good discussion on it yet.
To start, let me give you an example, this is a shoot I worked on last week.
5 days shoot at a recording studio, recording musicians and engineers working on an album (can't reveal the name of the band)
We had 3 HVX200, four 8 gig P2 card per cameras so a total of 12 cards.
2 G4 laptops and 1 firestore.
What we found is that when you record continuously, you start having a backlog of P2 waiting to be dump.
We Shot everything 720p - 30PN - so 16 minutes of video per card - it takes about 12 minutes to copy the content of the P2 into a Hard drive (using the powerbook PCMCIA slot)
We created a folder for each card into the backup hard drive, naming convention was: "project name-P2-001" and so on...
The Firestore quickly became useless because once full it takes over 1.5 hours to dump it using USB2 on the mac. ( I know it's probably faster on a PC side)

We took the habit of every-time a P2 was full, we switched the record inhibit button in the back of the card and switch it back once the card was backed up, It's very easy to get quickly confused about which card is or is not backed up, especially if you're busy shooting.
I found the dry-erase square on the back of the card not very useful and way too messy for a card that needs to go back in the camera.
The workflow worked ok, but in the end we ended up with over 75 P2 content folder backed up on 2 hard drive, not knowing from which camera it came from or if the order was correct.
I know, we can tell the order by looking at the timecode later but there must be an easier way.

I'd like to find how you guys are doing it, exchange workflow tips and see if there is a better way to do this.
thanks
e.

First thing, I guess you had a dedicated person doing the off-loading?
In your case maybe two people with two laptops would help.....
Before the shoot you can make multiple folders for each camera.....
P2_CARD_001_CAM_01...etc

P2_CARD_001_CAM_02...etc

P2_CARD_001_CAM_03...etc

Then as each card comes in you dump each card to its folder.
I would have MAC G4 laptops as they have the slots and Firewire 800
drives to dump to.......
Each laptop should have P2 logger so the tech can review clips
quickly after each dump.
If you are trying to organize all of this while shooting then yes it's
too late and production will grind to a stop......
You can transfer an 8 gig card in about 8 min with this set-up....
Since an 8 gig card will last 20 min at 720 24p it should be a shoot and swap....I would only shoot with one card in each camera and have the spares ready to go and then transfer every card at every swap......
If you wait to fill up each card then yes it can get confusing......
This will work if you can set-up the tech close enough with dedicated power.....doing it remote on location with battery power only presents another set of challenges.....

thanks mike,
8gig in 8 minute?? the set up you discribe is the same we had, G4 laptop with firewire 800 drive - it took about 12 minutes to tranfer the full 8 gig cards.
Our problem was that only one laptop had the PCMCIA slot the other one was a macbook.

I wonder if anyone had experienced with the new Panasonic AJ-PCD20 P2 5 slot P2 Drive ? seems like an interresting option for mac users.

thanks for the tips.
e.

Two thoughts:
If you copy out to a 2-drive RAID 0 array, you can halve your transfer time. No point in going beyond a 2-drive array, since the P2 card can't deliver fast enough to take advantage of a 4-drive array.

If you check the creation date on the LASTCLIP.txt file, you'll know when the card was last recorded to. If you use that time (24-hour military time) as part of the folder name that you download to (e.g. Projectname-P2-13:51:24-cam 1) , the folders will automatically sort in order if you sort by name.

We are using G-raids - We can transfer 1 gig per minute going from slot to drive....
I also have some 80 gig USB externals that are bus powered if we have to go battery only....
Now those take about twice as long for transfer....
Typically with batteries only I transfer to the internal drive and then
copy to the USB drives while we are shooting....
But as a best practice on-location I try to get the cards copied
to another drive that is not used during production.

Scott,
When I check the "creation date" of the LASTCLIP.txt file, the column is blank.
I only get info in the "date modified" column which is when it was copied to the drive. so not very useful.
are you on mac or PC ?
I'll definitelly try with a dual drive raid.
I should receive the new 5 slots firewire drive on friday.
I'll post comments on it

thanks

I'm using Mac in the field for transfers. I do a "apple-I" info window on the LASTCLIP file while it's still on the card, not after it's been copied. When I have the camera connected to the MacBookPro, for example, and two "NO NAME" cards appear on the desktop, the LASTCLIP info window lets me tell which one was recorded first.

Now, that's a great tip scott!

thanks.

Score one for the home team! Glad it helped!

Incidentally, I'd remembered the P2 throughput incorrectly. A four-way stripe would, indeed, cut your transfer time to 25%. The P2 card's throughput is faster than FW400. I was thinking it was only a little more than 100 Mb/s. I wuz wrongggggg.

Eric,
I don't know why it took 12 min to copy the P2 card, should be 8min.

Why complicate things by using a MacBook pro? Use laptops with the PCMCIA slot. My laptop always goes out with me when I work. Also just having the same workflow on each laptop should help with things getting crazy.

Have you looked into "P2 genie". It's a cheap program that takes care of creating a folder, naming it in order, downloading and erasing the card when finished. Otherwise pre-creating the folders is not a bad idea though it sounds easy to screw up.

I think it's probably a good idea to have a dedicated PA for each camera to take care of this though it is more expense.

Were you rolling continuously from Tripod? Another solution is to use "capture now" going right into the laptop. You would have to work out the bugs which are a little scary themselves , but it does work. We've done it on a few concerts and never lost anything.

If the firestores seem reliable these days , it might be cheaper than a bunch of PA's shuffling around cards. MI in San Rafael rents them.

BTW we just ordered a Brevis to test against the Redrock. I'll let you know what I think when we get it.

Lenny Levy

thanks lenny,
I know the macpro was not very useful, 2 powerbooks would have been better, but that's what I had.
On an other note I just got the P2 drive with 5 slot and firewire 800, and it rocks. It's definitelly the way to go, I think.
I posted comments on it yesterday.
Let me know about the Brevis, I'd love to rent it from you once you're done testing.
hope all is well on your side of the bay.

Here is my workflow and gear. I use a Dell 700m PC laptop with an extended battery, 160gb USB OTG battery powered HDDs formattted in Fat32 so they will work on Mac and PC and P2 Genie Software.

I have P2 Genie set up to operate in AUTO mode and set to erase the P2 cards after copy confirmation. I also have it set up to do redundant back-ups to TWO USB OTG 160GB HDDs.

When I am about shot out of a P2 card, I eject it from the camera and insert it into the PCMCIA slot of the laptop, P2 Genie starts automatically and dumps to the 2 drives, and reformats the card. Wash, rinse repeat... this has been a ROCK SOLID workflow and will get me thru 8 hours of shooting pretty easy, EVEN IN THE FIELD with no power. I do carry an inverter/back-up battery just in case but rarely need it.

Let me add, that this entire set-up, including the cost of the laptop, is less than a P2 Store and, including the HDD on the laptop, gives you SEVEN TIMES as much HDD space!



ash =o)

Plus the ability to run P2 Viewer, the ability to run DV Rack HD, the ability to add/annotate metadata, the ability to edit your scene files (presuming you have an SD card slot), the ability to play all your footage back and see it right away... plus having a word processor and spreadsheet on-hand, plus all the other goodies a laptop brings! There are many compelling reasons why a good cheap laptop is a vital companion to the HVX (but I prefer a good powerful laptop, as DV Rack HD and P2 Viewer both benefit from a Core 2 Duo and a good graphics card).

thanks Ash and Barry
I could not agree more, this is definitely better than using the P2 store.
But you should really have a laptop per each HVX on multi-cam shoots. Otherwise you start having a backlog of card waiting to be backed up.
Next week I'm taking the new 5 slot drive to the test on a multicam shoot, and I'll definitely use P2 genie.
I've been using HD log but it sounds like P2 genie is better in the field.
thanks for all the feedback.
Can DV rack runs on an intel mac with boot camp?
e.

On multicam shoots where we're shooting continuously, I've done exactly that.
Definitely on a macbook pro, but reviews are mixed on it running on the macbook itself.

I strongly recommend anyone with an intel mac to do the file transfer in the PC side anyway. The mac OS (or PCMCIA driver or whatever) can introduce tiny glitches when transferring cards, but on the PC it's flawless, so I recommend a PC laptop for field work but if you're going to use a Mac laptop you'll find it more reliable to use the PC side (at least until Apple or Panasonic fixes whatever glitch exists in the process!)

We have had no problems with the 17" PB on location....
Most of our work is done for producers editing with FCP.
Having the ability to rough edit as we go has been invaluable....
I also have an Edius set-up on the PC but hardly anyone I know
uses that. Plus when we edit projects we output OMF files for
the audio studio...I do not know if Edius will do that... I am sure
some flavors of AVID will but that is a debate for another thread....

thanks Barry
I've also been doing everything on the mac side and have not had any problem so far. Can you give a bit more details on those tiny glitches you talked about.
I'm curious cause I talked last week with Mike Fryer from Dual System (the makers of the PCMCIA to Express Card host adapter) he also mention problems with the mac drivers. By the way the card is in it's final Beta testing and will be available before the end of the year.

We use regular old powerbooks.....I could see where the Intel Macs might have some problems. We also carry a PC laptop on location for tele-prompting, script re-writes and various other PC duties.......
We have played around with recording direct to both laptops but I hate
being connected to something else.....

Ever seen a DV tape dropout? The little squares of corruption that pop up at five or six random spots throughout a frame? That's what can happen when offloading a card on a Mac (and only on a Mac). I don't know why, but it isn't 100% reliable in all cases.

The footage is fine on the cards, and it's fine when offloaded to a PC, but sometimes you can get a random "hit" when offloading to a Mac.

It's not FCP's fault; we've done hundreds of cards to a PC laptop->external drive, and then brought that external drive to a Mac and imported the footage off it, and it's always been fine. It's something about importing directly off the card, or finder-copying the card. And I can't tell whether it happens from using just the card directly in the slot, or using the P2 Store, or importing the card onto the Mac using the camera as a card reader. I don't know what circumstances cause it, only thing I know is that it happens on the Mac and not the PC, and it sure would be nice if Apple and Panasonic would figure out what it is that needs fixing and fix it.

I copy all cards to another drive first...don't ever have the time to load directly from the P2 card to FCP....hundreds of cards copied from P2 to Mac....I have used a few different HVX's and have used 4 different 4 gig P2 cards and dozens of other rental P2 cards and I have never seen that problem.

I recommend using PC laptops as well. Macs require restarts as they often have hardware issues after "waking up."



ash =o)

same here. Done many backups on the mac side, never saw that problem before.
In any case, it sounds like it could be specific to a particular mac computer, maybe something running in the background while copying? I think if it was happening generally on the mac side, I'm sure we would have seen more postings about it.

I don't know anyone who's seen it on a Mac but I have told people to never import into FCP from the card.
Always copy the card to a Hard Disk then import to FCP.
I never import from the Camera either, but just because its inconvenient.


I don't cut this stuff though I just send it off. I would hear if something was bad though.

I agree with Eric about turning off anything that could run in the background. I have 2 user log-ins. One for "capture" and one for everything else.
I admit though that I usually only use the "capture" one if I'm using "capture now" in FCP I usually copy cards in a my regular set-up. maybe I should be more careful.
I'd like to hear if anyone else has seen Barry's problem.

Barry have you heard this from a lot of people, or is it just your experience? Mostly you work with PC's right?

I was PC only until I started shooting with the HVX....I really tried to make Vegas work with Raylight....not the greatest experience....I do have Edius but find the interface and tools - lacking.....FCP may not be everyones cup of tea but most PA's I hire have some working knowledge of FCP.
Plus, throw in LiveType and DVD SP.....

+ who really have the time to import directly in FCP during the shoot? thanks to this thread I'm now using P2 genie instead of just copying the P2 content into a folder, combined with the firewire 5 slot drive, it works quite well on the mac side. What Barry was saying is that the glitch problem might also happened on Finder copy. So if anyone out there did experienced those glitches, please jump in.
In my understanding, it is better to keep the MXF files as your masters once your project is done, right?? what I haven't tested yet is how the workflow works when you need to go back to an old project.
I'm sorry I should post this in new thread :)

It never happens on the PC, only on the Mac.

thanks barry,
I hope we can get more details on under which context those glitches are happening.
e.