best software to import P2

[Barry Green]

[JeremyG] “I can’t figure out how raylight is going to save me any time at all. The rewrapping to quicktime goes really fast, renaming everything is what takes so damn long
And here’s where Raylight can help. Not only can it eliminate that whole rewrap step entirely, but it can eliminate the renaming step — but it’s up to you to prepare the metadata to allow it to do so.

Look at my dvxuser article on User Clip Name, and you’ll see how you can prepare the camera so that it automatically names the clips with an ascending numeric value (so you could name a clip “Car Commercial Take 1” and the next clip you shoot would automatically be named “Car Commercial Take 2”, etc). You’d change metadata between scenes, so you’d pre-load metadata files for each scene you plan to shoot that day.

Then when you go to the Mac, Raylight will scan your drive and create quicktime files that use the user clip name. So instead of coming in as “0014RF.mvx.mov” it’ll be “Car Commercial Take 2 0014RF.mxf.mov”. Automatically.

You can’t use the User Clip Name with FCP in any other way, IINM. I think Raylight is the only tool that allows access to that field.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Thanks, Barry. I will take a look.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

Do you have a link, Barry. The search doesn’t seem to be working. Or maybe you can direct me somehow if you don’t want to post a link?

[Bob Woodhead]

OK, this will be a very… *special*… reply. 😉

I also found that importing via Log & T wasn’t bad, but as you, hated renaming files. (Of course, on tape, you had to do that AND realtime injest, so aren’t we impatient. lol)

Metadata on the SD card: scene files are totally independent of metadata files. Day before shoot, I edit the metadata files with the various data options I think will be needed. (clip name= “on_cam take”, “broll take”, “greenscreen take”, etc etc. Easiest way is to use a miniSD card reader & edit the files right off the card. It’s not possible to “see” the miniSD card via USB or FW via camera, without using the P2CMS metadata option (VERY clunky for lots of edits). So I might have 3-8 metadata files from which to choose while shooting. (But if you’re shooting drama or something, and you want, you could have “Scene 1 Take”, repeated 99 times as separate files, so you could go to “Scene 99 Take”.)

While shooting, the camera records the loaded metadata onto each clip. The “user clip name” field of the metadata is automatically incremented every time you hit record, eg; “broll take 1” “broll take 2”. Note that the clip name you put on the card was “broll take” – the camera adds the #. When you switch to a different setup, you load the appropriate metadata file (“on_cam”, maybe). This way your shots are automatically “metadata’ed” (roughly) by content.

Raylight will then use the “user clip name” field of the metadata & rename (append, actually) the clips with this field’s entry. Voila! Sorted clips!

P2CMS really isn’t bad, once you use it a few times. It provides verification of the transfer off the card (VERY important), visually shows which clips on the cards have already been transferred, allows multiple clip metadata editing (to some degree), formats the cards, and has a P2 Viewer app. (other stuff too) The onky improvement I’d like to see would be the ability to select multiple P2 cards at the same time for transfers.

Raylight will also let you (watch closely here… nothing up my sleeves…) edit directly from the camera! And after you edit, it will then write your edit BACK TO the P2 card in the camera! You can then play back the edit in full HD quality, right off the camera! wow. (maybe not quite as wow on the 200, as there’s no HD-SDI out.)

Hope all this clears up the confusion in a… special… manner. 😉

“Constituo, ergo sum”

Bob Woodhead / Atlanta
http://www.CoolNewMedia.net
Quantel-Avid-FCP-3D-Crayola
Panasonic HPX500

[Jeremy Garchow]

Barry, thanks, found the article.

Bob, thank you for the clarification.

Jeremy

[Thomas Scheffer]

on macos10.5.1 p2cms is not working anymore for me. many errors.

is this the same for you?

tried hdlog (bronze) and there also some bugs.
its not possible to p2offload a p2store.

any ideas?

thanks

best regards
thomas

[Barry Green]

Raylight Mac:
https://www.dvfilm.com/raylight/mac/

User Clip Name article:
https://www.dvxuser.com/jason/P2-Name-article

[Tom Chartrand]

There are updates to the HDLog products at :
https://www.imagineproducts.com/dlupdates.htm

hopefully that helps.

Tom Chartrand
ShorelineDigital

[Thomas Scheffer]

thanx tom.

this is strange. i purchased hdlog three days ago and it is version 4.4.5.
so its newer then the update on the manufaktor website.

many probs with that software. offload p2store doesnt work etc.

thomas

best regards
thomas