Does HVX200 Include a Macintosh P2 Formatting App?

[David S.]

Perhaps I’m incorrect about this.

Just did an pretty tight search of the pdf manual, and so only one reference to card bus, and none to reformatting the P2 card in a windows or mac computer.

I know the disk utility will format to FAT32, but I wonder if that is sufficient.

Any actual owner of a HVX200 and Mac with card bus able to confirm this?

David S.

[David S.]

Got this elsewhere:

“When you’re shooting continuously by rotating P2 cards, you don’t re-format. The system, P2 store, camera, etc… Simply erases the file entries from the P2 file system’s table of contents so that the camera can write new data to the card. Just as you would with your computer hard drive or a memory card in the camera or your iPod. You don’t re-format the device every single time you need to wipe it clean.

The Mac utility that can format P2 cards will format the card the same way the camera does. It’s not formatting it directly from OSX and placing extra system files and whatnot. Same with Windows. The HVX200 likes its P2 cards formatted a specific way and this is why there are utilities available to do it. And best of all, you can do it right from the camera when you get a new card and be done with it — just as you do with a memory card for your digital camera. If you’re formatting your memory cards for digicams every time you wipe the card clean, you’re just wasting your time and adding extra cycle counts to the chips…. Not that you’ll format your way to the failure limit of these memory cards, but something to consider.”

I believe the poster means that the Mac Disk Utility will not format the card the same way. If this is correct, and there are warning lights to indicate full p2 cards, it will allow a continuous shoot more efficiently.

If there is someone with a production model that could confirm this, I’d appreciate it

Thanks

David S.

[Gary Adcock]

[David Saraceno] “I know the disk utility will format to FAT32, but I wonder if that is sufficient.”

David as I said – yes the card is fat 32 format and once the card it formated it does not need to be reformatted.

Your P2 card DOES NOT need to be re-formated after every use. I do not understand what your thinking is on this and why you need to be able to do this in a mac. Once the card is formatted it is good to go.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[David S.]

[gary adcock] “David as I said – yes the card is fat 32 format and once the card it formated it does not need to be reformatted.

Your P2 card DOES NOT need to be re-formated after every use. I do not understand what your thinking is on this and why you need to be able to do this in a mac. Once the card is formatted it is good to go”

Gary, I just got the manual, and I don’t have access to the camera.

My thinking was that the cards had to be wiped clean. Without confirmation that they don’t have to be, I’m just asking.

Thanks for your patience.

David S.

[David S.]

It’s good to learn that the p2 cards can be written over without reformatting.

I wasn’t aware of that, and my orientation, like many, is from using SD and CF cards within the context of our digital SLR.

Those storage cards can’t be written over — files must be deleted or the cards reformatted.

Thanks for all the assistance, and I apologize for my ignorance.

David S.

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi David,

There is work in progress that I cannot disclose that will likely do this. The realityis that you will have to reformat your card in the camera after moving the data off of the card. I just tried, I had to reformat, it took 6 seconds all total, but I had to do it.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[David S.]

[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “Hi David,

There is work in progress that I cannot disclose that will likely do this. The realityis that you will have to reformat your card in the camera after moving the data off of the card. I just tried, I had to reformat, it took 6 seconds all total, but I had to do it.

Best,

Jan”

You’re up late. Thanks Jan.

I intend to use the camera to do long form work for a skating event, as you may recall.

I tried to assess workflow, and unfortunately my orientation is CF and SD and tape.

I know FireStore, CitiDISK HD, and etc. are solutions, but I have this distrust of a hard drive capture.

But anyway, thanks

David S.

[David S.]

[gary adcock] “David as I said – yes the card is fat 32 format and once the card it formated it does not need to be reformatted.”

In any case, Gary I guess, according to Jan’s response, HAVE TO REFORMAT the card to use it again.

You can’t just write over it.

That certainly does change workflow for long form events.

I hope Jan’s suggested remedy comes to fruition

David S.

[Gary Adcock]

[David Saraceno] “In any case, Gary I guess, according to Jan’s response, HAVE TO REFORMAT the card to use it again.”

then I guess that I am incorrect in how I presented the information,
When I shoot with a P2 card, then delete the contents of the card AFTER I have imported it into FCP, then reinsert the card back into the camera, I do not have any problem capturing to the now empty card. While I have not technically “reformatted” I have cleared the contents of the card to allow for more data to be written to it.

No the camera will not write over the existing contents of a card without deleting that content first.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi all,

I just tried this as many ways as is possible, and the card remembers how much time was recorded on it and it does not fully erase when I delete the clips.

I just recorded 2 minutes of my living room. I went over to the MAC, I deleted the clip. I noticed that the available storage room had not changed however. Although nothing appeared to be on the card, when reinserting back into the camera, I only had 8 minutes of time left.

I took the card put it into my PC. I opened up the P2 viewer, the card appeared to be empty, but the storage capacity of my card was still not full. I then looked at the card with Windows Explorer, and saw that the contents folder was still there, but empty. I tried to delete, but it would not. So I put it into the camera. The camera said I only had 8 minutes of time(I was working in 720/24PN)yet it would not display any thumbnails.

I then formatted the card, it gave me my full 10 minutes back.

Interestingly enough, the formatting on the camera seems to take less time than that on the computer, less than 6 seconds as compared to just under a minute.

Hope that helps,

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems