Copying from P2 to HDD

[Noah Kadner]

[Dan Davis] “I just got my camera and i want to copy from my P2 cards to my mac book pro. I have the camera set to 1394 Host and the only thing i can do on the menue when in PC mode is established is “setup” and not copy to hdd I really dont know what “setup” is for and the instruction book is of no help…… so Help. As always thanks in advance.”

You need to have it in the Firewire host mode.

Then you need to carefully connect cam and computer and then start the cam.

Then you have to go to MCR mode by pressing the button once. Then you have to hold that button down for about three seconds until you see a Firewire Connect screen.

Then the cam with a card inserted will mount on the desktop with the NO NAME icon.

-NOah

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[Dan Davis]

Thanks Noah,
However I have done all of that and the firewire host screen comes up on the camera and the only option in the menu is “setup” not format hdd or copy to hdd. On the computer side no external drive comes up. I’m still at a loss???

Thanks
Dan

[Adam Smith]

You’re trying to copy from camera onto a laptop, right?

You can’t use Firewire Host – that’s for using the camera to format and copy with verify to a directly-connected external drive. You’d connect the drive to the camera, set the camera to PC mode with Firewire Host pre-selected, and then use the camera menu commands to format the drive and copy each slot. The camera will create a new partition for each card copied.

If you want to dump footage onto a laptop you need to put the camera in Firewire Device mode and then the P2 cards will mount on the desktop of the MBP. In this instance you do not use the camera to copy the cards, it’s just acting as a P2 card reader. You use the Finder or FCP or whatever P2 software you prefer to copy (and hopefully verify) the files off the cards.

– – –
Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Adam Smith]

Oh – one note, on my MacPro it’s not uncommon for most but not all of my P2 cards to mount. You can always check Disk Utility and mount them manually if they’re detected but not showing up on the desktop.

– – –
Video Photographer / Avid & Final Cut Editor

[Tim Vogel]

Hi Noah,

I just picked up a 500GB Maxtor External HDD and right out of the box the HVX-200 read the drive and allowed me to format it and copy the cards to it. Now I have it connected to my Mac and the machine does not see the drive. It’s not on the desktop and it’s not in Disk Utilities. Any ideas on how to mount this drive? The P2CMS application does see it.

I haven’t seen any posts on this issue. Anyone have any ideas? I’d like to use this workflow for a music video shoot I have tomorrow. I can survive without it, just would make it nicer to have on site.

Thanks in advance for the help.

–TV

[David Bark]

Hi Adam,

I’ve had my HVX for close to a year, and I just got my first P2 card yesterday. I was pretty excited until I ran into all kinds of problems formatting the HDD. Now, it was a drive that I’d used before, and I copied everything on it to another drive.

I plugged in the drive, plugged the firewire to the cam, turned on the cam, went to MCR mode, hit the button for a couple seconds until Host 1394 started flashing, and then the format menu came up. All the options except “Setup” which the cursor was on, were grayed out. Not only that, but after about three seconds a warning box came up that read, “Error: Too Many Targets,” or something along those lines.

I hooked the drive up to the computer and basically trashed everything in it, then tried again to format from the camera with the same results. I’ve tried it with and without the P2 card in the camera, and I’ve tried it with another Firewire cable.

Thought the drive does have 2 firewire and one usb port, as well as an eSata prot, whatever that is, the drive was not connected to the computer and none of these other ports was in use. I’m a little freaked out that the problem might be with the camera. Any thoughts? Thanks!

David Bark
Lightshine Productions