Duel Adaptor problemo

[Shane Ross]

Are you running Tiger or Leopard? If you are running Leopard, you should NOT install the Duel Adapter drivers. There is a conflict with them in leopard and the P2 drivers. So only the P2 drivers if you are using Leopard. Duel drivers not needed. They mention this on their website I believe. But I had to hear it from a panasonic guy.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Lars Wikstrom]

I use the same adapter and it works fine for my macbook pro. The only thing that I don’t like is that I have to restart my computer if I pull the adapter out of the express port. I hope this is a bug that they will fix soon.

-Lars

[Tom Klein]

The best solution would be, if Apple Put back the PCMCIA slot reader into the MacbookPros even as an otion or better as a twin card reader, AND made Leopard recognize it as Tiger Does.
But that would be too sensible as they consider PCMCIA as Old technology,and are pushing the newer expresscard .
Maybe some third party manurfacturer can make this as an option.?

One would have thought that Panasonic would “marry” their 5 card reader into a Laptop , a single purpose unit , it would only add say $500 to the cost of their Current Card reader.

Now that would be a unit that could take P2 forward.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au

[Dave Neyman]

Sounds like this could be a problem with the Duel/Imagine Products combination. Try using Shotput or even go back to transferring the files via to finder to a hard drive and then verifying them.

[Alex Kuzelicki]

Hey there,

Have just spent hours trying all sorts of ways to get this working. Simply put though – it doesn’t! Every single time, about half way through, it crashes.

Don’t think it’s a HDLog/Duel Adapter problem because I also tried it with the P2 Contents Manager Software and… same thing – halfway through it crashes my Mac.

Basically, the only way I can get at the footage is to drag and drop – which I’m told is not recommended, but is my only option right now. Also if you remove the Duel Adapter from the slot, you’ve got to restart the computer or it can’t see it again. How ridiculous.

I’ve always thought this P2 workflow was great but now it’s turning into a nightmare. Surely there’s some simple product out there that turns the (stupid) Mac express card slot into a PCMCIA… that works?

Sorry if I’m sounding negative. It’s the stress of having to walk on a fully-crewed set in a couple days time with a system that I can’t rely on.

Any more suggestions would be great. Thanks guys for your comments so far.

Appreciated,

ALEX

[Alex D’eath]

I have a workflow that I have been using for the last 18 months on dozens of shoot with no issues. I have an MBP running 10.4.11, FCP 5.1.4. I use P2CMS and their P2Card Formatter Software.

When a card fills up I insert said card into my dual adapter and drag and drop the clips into a “reel” folder on an external fw400 drive. When the transfer is complete I eject the card and open the folder inside P2 CMS to verify that the clips look and sound okay. I then reinsert the P2 card and and reformat using the Panny software, eject the card one more time hand it back to my DP to go back into the card rotation. I then make a copy of my “reel” onto a second fw400 drive that is daisy chained to the first drive. When I get back to our studios I copy all the reels onto some Seagate 750 external FW400 drives log and capture onto my CalDigit HDPro tower and file the portable drives from my shoot just like tape.

This simple but effective workflow has worked flawlessly on shoots all over the country with out any issues. Many of these shoots the camera runs constantly (interviews) and I really have my hands full with offloading. I haven’t had any issues disconnecting the card reader. I just make sure I eject the card before I unplug the adapter.

Hope this helps.

Alex D’Eath
alex@spacecityfilms.com
Operations Manager
Space City Films, Inc
Above & Beyond…..

[Dan Montgomery]

Duel Systems is pointing the finger at Apple. Apple says “the OS team is well aware of the problem”.

Duel support says to uninstall the P2 Card bus driver that comes with Leopard and install the one from Panny’s site. I’ve repeated this to several people but haven’t heard confirmation if it indeed solves the conflict.

Stangely we’ve never been able to replicate the problem on an in-house computer–but maybe it already had the Panasonic driver on it. Not sure.

The problem is not specific to any particular software–there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to work around it. We’re just using simple UNIX copy commands–you can get the same crashes using cp command within Terminal program for example.

We did discover that launching in Safe mode averts the problem. And of course using devices other than Duel Adapter work fine as well (such as 5-card reader, P2 Gear, HVX-200 camera with USB or FireWire connection, G4 with PCBus slot, etc.).

I know this is frustrating, but it’s something Duel and Apple need to resolve or drop the Duel Adapter product.

As for Drag and Drop, this is a dangerous game. I can’t tell you how many people call here (2-3 a week) with damaged MXF files. In nearly every case the transfers were done with Finder alone. Pretty sure a byte verification as part of the process could have avoided myraid headaches.

Video logging is just the beginning…