P2 Reality

Hi all,

After searching posts, ingesting FAQ's and doing test shoots, I have determined that for me the HD camera solution is the Panasonic AG-HVX200. Don't want to mess w/ HVD. That being said, can anyone point me in the direction of an article, link or resource that outlines the true workflow of this camera and FCP? Hard drives, P2 cards, video cards, monitors etc. etc. I am trying to determine the actual investment in purchasing this camera as it pertains to being able to shoot, edit, store and view etc. on my system. How many cards? Hard drives in the field? Type of hard drive? External monitors? Do I need a video card?
Thanks for the help...

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

[forums.creativecow.net]

Tutorial on how to import using FCP.

Also, my workflows are listed here:

[lfhd.blogspot.com]

[lfhd.blogspot.com]

[lfhd.blogspot.com]


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Can I add this to the FAQ Shane?

Michael Horton
-------------------

Absolutely.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
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It would help to know what type of material and situations you are shooting. If you are shooting long form work, my advice is to not buy an HVX. We have been using them since February, shooting long for television and documentaries. We shoot a lot of 60-90 minute interviews. If you shoot weddings, events, docs, forget about it.

Unless you want to deal with the shortcomings of the FireStore or can wait for the CinePorter, P2 is not a very viable format for long form shooting.

OTOH, if you are shooting narrative, commercials, music videos, etc. P2 is great, I love the format, it's just not yet suited to shooting lots of footage per day.

Best,

Dan

dan does make a good point that P2 is a pain and expensive for longform. BUT, it's getting cheaper and easier - and there are several ways around it (and more options always on the way)

i use an older 17"g4 laptop to transfer P2 media in the field and so far thats not a big issue - other than the 8 min it takes to transfer a ful 8gig card... i sure DO NOT MISS sitting in front of a deck after a day of shooting and logging tapes!

the thing that really sold me on the HVX was that it fit almost transparently into my existing DV workflow. the biggest drag so far is that my broadcast monitor (connected via canopus advc110) only displays current frame instead of live monitoring. i now use my second (19"crt) monitor to monitor my timeline and look over to my sony PVM only for color work.

so really, i didnt "NEED" any additional or different hardware to fit the HVX into my world.

Various formats but will include some long form interviews for docs. Isn't there a 16 gig P2 that is about to be delivered?

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

I will disagree about the longform comment. I edit longform documentary and we used two of these cameras shooting all day long...using P2 cards and the P2 store....and did just fine.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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P2 in is actual capacity is better suited for short form or movies shooting style , also hard-drive firestore or similar ways requires you to take also in to account a dramatic change in the independent producer workflow.

For long form events the HDV or XDCAM HD still more adapted to these shootings , where the media is the master archive .... also where the let the camera roll is mandatory.

Here in Montreal no insurance company will provide coverage if severe criteria are not follow about securing master and follow to the letter (P2 is see as a volatile media , must be erease ..).

P2 is the the solution for short form right now .... for the long form the workflow , low recording time and cost + a way to drop the shooting , erease the P2... ect, ect is not practical.

Alright,

Thank you all for all of the input- appreciated as always.

I have decided to get the HVX200- taking delivery Monday morning.

1st shoot: Monday 1pm. YIKES. (I will bring my PD150 as well should I have any major snags- my CYA workflow solution).

That being said, let me see if I get this...

Shooting an instudio interview and a photoshoot for a documentary.
If I bring a 17 inch Panasaonic HD monitor for viewing and 2 8 gig P2 cards,
my G4 laptop, the pcdriver_mac that Shane had on his site and a G-RAID firewire 800 drive, I'll be able to copy the data from the P2 cards to the drive and WA LA?

This just seems too simple. Am I missing some crucial element??

Also, I have used the DXV100 so I am slightly familiar with some of the settings, but is there a resource that might outline an initial set up for the camera (something like Alan Barkers website outlining the PD150 set up)?

This is obviously a nerve racking fast track but oh well... here's goes! Soooo, any advice / input would be helpful.

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

Hi Troy,
Also keep in mind that if it is an interview with the camera on a tripod, you can stream directly to the G-Raid via firewire to FCP and the Powerbook and won't have to be swapping the 8 gig cards if the interview is long.

You might want to take a second drive along as well, just copy the files over to the other drive after each take (and every few card dumps) for safety.

You just never know.

> you can stream directly to the G-Raid via firewire to FCP and the Powerbook

Hmm, not sure about that. In order to be capturing as the camera is shooting, you'd probably have to be on Non-Controllable Device settings in FCP. That means no timecode. Very risky. I could be wrong, though.


www.derekmok.com

Yep, you can do it. I have done it on several shoots.

Just make sure that your open sequence is the same format as the camera is set to or you will have problems.

You are right however about the timecode. The camera actually sends timecode down the firewire stream but FCP can't see it, unless Apple has added support for that kind of capture in the new release.

You do get timecode when using non-controllable device, but it's continous during the capture, starting from 0.00. This isn't really a terrible problem if it's your master though. It is what it is then, nothing to have to relate back to.

What would the timecode be referencing anyway? Nothing...so why worry? You aren't recording onto a format THEN capturing...so timecode really doesn't matter.

We are going to do just this on several of our interview shoots. HVX->powerbook with extra PCMCIA firewire card->G-Raid. Then dupicate the footage onto another G-Raid. And we will be breaking the interview clips up into a few clips, 10-15 minutes in length.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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If for any reason FCP crashes or produces a corrupt clip, you're screwed -- you've lost all your footage and you'll have to restage the shots. This, to me, is not worth taking the P2 cards out of the shooting process. It's far more likely that a live, running FCP system, probably on a laptop, dealing with a live data stream, would fail than a P2 card in the camera. To say nothing of the lack of mobility, and longer setup times for the camera. And you'll need one FCP system per camera, so it's also unrealistic for shoots with more than one camera.


www.derekmok.com

You should also be aware that capturing directly to hard drive using DVCPROHD does not work for some formats. I believe you can only capture DVCPRO HD formats using 60fps. Neither the 24pn nor the 30pn formats can be captured directly to a laptop.

The loss of device control and TC for direct to disk capturing was a great, great loss for FCP. That really excellent functionality that worked wonderfully existed in earlier versions then gets lost as the application advances is really deplorable.

All the best,

Tom

I agree with Derek, shooting live into FCP is an accident waiting to happen. I have done it, it works, but talk about shooting without a net. Sure, I am going to sit down with Martin Scorsese or John Milius for an interview and hope that my laptop doesn't crash as we interview (used P2 cards for both interviews, worked great).

Nope, gotta be either P2 or Cineporter, I don't trust the Firestore as well, too many dealbreaker issues on the boards have been reported for my taste.

Shane, did not mean to say that long shoots cannot be done with P2, we shot a television pilot in the Spring, over 350 cards worth from 3 cameras in 5 days, sure it can be done. But, we had three computers, printers, two people, a motorhome, generators, etc. that all together probably added up to $20,000.00 to $30,000.00 for the week. IMHO, for most indie-style production shooting long form, I feel it's too easy to underbudget just how much time, labor and effort P2 takes when shooting long form and tons of footage. I know you guys used P2 for the Mexican-American War project, but wasn't that mixed mostly with Varicam footage as well?

I have been shooting my own interviews for a couple of projects alone lately, being the DP, building and lighting the set, doing audio, camera, P2 downloads and being the interviewer myself. All of the other producers at the place where I work at think I am crazy but when I am shooting greenscreen interviews where crucial framing is not that big of a deal, I do it by myself. It's just hard to remember to keep changing out the cards and downloading to the P2 Store. I tell the subject what I am doing and how I am shooting and downloading, that if I begin to mess with the cards and store in the middle of their response, just keep eye line with me and keep talking. It has worked out well, so far, although sometimes it's a bit stressful.

It's on the back end that P2 really sucks. We have gone from archiving to hard drives and dual layer DVDs to DVDs and DLTs to now, we archive all P2 files to DVCProHD videotape, which seems kind of backwards, shooting P2 to end up with tape. That's why we are buying some Varicams and HDX-900s as soon as they are available (I think HDX-900 is the one?). Lately, we are shooting with a $6,000.00 camera (HVX) ran into a $25,000.00 deck. Seems like just buying a $30,000.00 camcorder like the HDX would be a smarter move.

P2 rocks and will always be useful to me but in the long run, the back end of the workflow seems too convoluted to what we do, long form narrative and documentary type of work. Same with events, I would much rather deal with tape. Suprisingly, the much touted time savings of P2 from not having to log and capture, in the end, turns out to be no big deal for us. We end up having to watch and log all of the P2 footage after it's imported so it is really not much of a time or labor savings over tape. I thought it would be nirvana. P2 is good but archiving and retrieving P2 footage is a PITA compared to tape.

Best,

Dan

Question about transferring the data from the P2 to the G-RAID drive via my laptop.

I am going to use my G4 laptop and the P2 cards as the FCP import thing kind of scares me. It will be usefull at some point but not under the pressure of the one time gotta get it right scenario.

So, I have downloaded the pcdriver_mac and installed it on the laptop. I have shot till one P2 is full and I want to transfer the data. So I insert the P2 into the slot on the laptop and then what? Will the P2 show up as a hard drive icon? drag and drop? Or is there some other copying technique I need to know? Someone told me that I need to open FCP and import files- that can't be right.

What will it look like and what will I need to do?

Thanks,

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

Watch this tutorial:

[forums.creativecow.net]


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Thanks all for the input.

So, one more thing (sorry to whoever it was that Iposted this question to directly via email)

For today (1 location, interview, tripod, and an assistant) I have decided NOT to go with the FCP log and Capture technique. It will be my G4 laptop (with pcdriver_mac installed) and 2 8 GB P2 cards.

What will the transfer of data entail? Will the P2 show up as an icon then drag and drop? Someone told me that you have to open FCP to transfer the data. Sounds odd.

What will this process actually be/look like?

Thanks!

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

Sorry for the double post... the first one seemed lost in cyberspace

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

AGAIN...watch the tutorial. It tells you EXACTLY what to do. How the card will appear, what to copy from the card...everything. It is all explained...


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
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Hey Troy, I have not seen Shane's tutorial so here are a couple things if they aren't in the tutorial.

The cards can be hot swapped while the camera is on but NOT while the camera is actually recording to the card you are pulling. You might want to test hot swapping before doing something like an interview that could span across two cards so you were sure of the proceedure.

Many people advise that it is a good practice to switch the record lockout tab on the card to the record inhibit as soon as you take it out of the camera and before it goes into the laptop.

You don't need FCP at all unless you want to look at the footage. The P2 card driver for the Mac won't let you look at the footage unlike the PC version which does. However, the improved scopes in the new version of FCP may be helpful in the field. I have not tested this but the firewire stream could possibly be used to feed the scopes in FCP for reference. If your Panasonic 17" is the LCD with the scope built in then you're covered.

A program called "P2 Log" is good for allowing you to view the footage without having to use FCP. It also will incrementally autofill metadata fields like "take" that you can't otherwise change in the camera. P2 Log will also allow you to upload some metadata fields through the SD card but not all. $99 I think.

Down the road you can help yourself out with a little program called "P2 Genie" which automatically takes care of creating a new folder for each card dump and increments that folders label ala "Reel 1, Reel 2, Reel 3, etc. P2 Genie can also erase the card and remove it from the desktop if you choose to use it for that. A little over $30.

Both those programs have been very helpful to me but it can take more time to get the licensing info back from the manufactures than you probably have today. It can take as much as a day to get authorized.

what ive always understood (yet not tested) is that the camera will somehow cache whats being shot so that one scene if needed can span from end of one card to the beginning of another???

whats always scared me is that (even if your cam is locked down) youre certian to jostle the cam at least a bit while pulling the full card out.

for these situations - and id imagine these to be primarilly interview type scenarios where you dont want to interrupt the supject, im likely to use something like a firestore...

Just FYI, FCP 5.1.2 also allows you to look at the footage before you import it. You can review it, mark IN and OUT and extract what you want. YOu can even name it what you want and not use that number...although I highly recommend that you have that number somewhere in your cip name so that you can re-import that clip if something goes awry.

WARNING...I recommend importing the full clips. If you grab just a section of a clip, and your media drive fails or you need to import the footage again for some other reason (revisiting a show) you will not be able to get the clips to relink...unless you note the IN and OUT times of every clip and manually set those in the P2 import window. Import the full clips. Editors want as much footage as they can get anywho.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

The camera will automatically switch to the second card if one fills up while you are recording. I have not spanned cards myself but my understanding is that the "lastclip.txt" file is what keeps track of this and allows the edit system to assemble the pieces correctly.

The cards are pretty snug in the camera so I don't think there is really a way to pull one out without jostling the camera if you are rolling. I think the best you could do is let the cards span and then take them out together.

If it's a long interview I would rent a couple of extra cards so you could just do a quick swap and not be down long. If you wait have to wait while you are dumping two 8gig cards, people might start to get unhappy.

OK all,

As always, I can't thank you enough for the helpful input. It got me through today. Here is my review for the record.

We shot Chris Rice (Ann Rice's Son) and Stephanie Powers being photographed by Michael Childers then did interviews. Anyway, we were in documentary / long form format.

As a first go it was pretty cumbersome. I WAS able to extract cards without shaking the camera. The camera did roll over to the second card seamlessly. IMHO it is not very feasilble to shoot this format with only 2 cards (8GB). Even with someone available to assist, a normal tape change is seconds. The card swap (every 10 minutes) is far more time consuming. Removing from camera, inserting in Laptop, making new folder, copying files (several minutes) and the biggest problem- not being able to reformat/erase a disks contents while still recording. So, for today, we decided to use a card at a time while the other was copying. Stop, reformat, resume. That took a dedicated person to assist while I ran camera. The problem could be lessened by having 4 cards (the soon to be release 16GB would be swell) 2 in action and 2 being copied. 20 mintues record time and a 1 minute (or less) reformat.

There has got to be a software or way to erase the contents/reformat the card on the laptop, no?

Anyway, it was a lot to contend with at the last minute while on the steep learning curve. That being said, the images look great and importing will beat the hell out of logging and capturing.

One thing is for sure though, this is a very expensive $5,000 camera.

By the way Shane, I did watch your tutorial AGAIN and it was very helpful... thanks for that.

Thanks again to all for the input!

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

Hi Troy:

Why not just re-format the cards (basically delete the folders and files) using your laptop? I have done it, it works fine.

I interviewed a director last night. I setup the camera, lighting, greenscreen, audio myself, then sat down and did a two hour interview myself, using three cards and a P2 store, worked great. As long as you instruct the subject to keep their eyeline when you bend around to change out P2 cards, it works well. I always change out cards as I keep the camera rolling, if you are deliberate and careful, you can do it without moving the camera.

Best,

Dan

I was told that you had to reformat in the camera... that is great news! I posed that very question and was bummed at the answer I received. So, do you just drag and drop files in the trash?

How do you reformat on the laptop?

Thanks,

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card