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Editing P2 cards without using the camera
Hi all:
Well, it happened. One of my coworkers accidentally formatted a card full of really important footage (that cannot be reshoot). We’ve already consulted Panasonic’s tech service to see if they can recover the data, but…
…looking for ways to preventing this from happening again: what happened was that my coworker was trying to delete a couple of non-valid clips before dumping the rest to the computer, and he got distracted and hit the “Format” option instead of the “Delete clip” one. So, in order to prevent this, I’m looking for some program that would allow us to “edit” the contents of a P2 card once it’s been copied to the computer, to avoid doing so in-camera: deleting bad takes, etc. The only one I know of is P2CMS, but I don’t really like it that much. Is there any other program that can perform this function, or is P2CMS our only choice?
Thanks in advance,
Paulo.
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5 Replies
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We use HD Log from Imagine Products. There’s also P2 Flow from MXF4MAC. My workflow suggestion is immediately set the protection tab on the card and always make at least 2 backups of your data before any editing. This data is your master. You wouldn’t record over a master tape. Manipulating data is doing just that so protect it.
John
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Just leave the “bad” clips on the card. No reason to risk losing a whole shoot for a few seconds of a bad clip. Leave the editing for the edit process. Make your selects later.
Jeremy
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Like Jeremy says, I leave all shots on my cards before editing. Hard drive space is cheap, and you never know when you might find something unexpectedly useful in throw-away footage.
But I do use P2 Flow to give bad clips a name, like “Ignore” or “Temp” or “Test Footage” before bringing them in for editing. You could do the same thing with Panasonic’s free P2 CMS utility, but P2 Flow is much easier. However, you can’t use P2 Flow to delete clips. It’s all about creating, not destroying. 😉
Also, I do flick the Write-Protect switch on every card as soon as I’m done shooting with it.
By the way, did you get any info from Panasonic regarding retrieving the card data?
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Well, it wasn’t so much “bad clips” as clips from a previous shooting that nobody had bothered to delete, so they would have been duplicated. And yeah, disk space is cheap… but it adds up (specially because it isn’t the first time people don’t bother formatting a card before starting to shoot). The error, of course, was in trying to delete them in-camera, instead of on the computer, once they were safely copied.
As for the cards, I called two different companies, and they both told me that the only hope was to send it to Panasonic’s factory, either in Germany or Japan, where they have special equipment originally developed to save footage from defective cards, that it could take up to six months, and that there were no guarantees. I did try on my own with Data Rescue too, but all it could save were two thumbnails from two clips.
So, moral of the story? Go back to Umatic tapes, guys; this whole non-linear, “tapeless workflow” thing is a scam… 🙂
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So, moral of the story? Go back to Umatic tapes, guys; this whole non-linear, “tapeless workflow” thing is a scam… 🙂
Ha! Good one.
P2CMS could have helped here. You select the clips you want to keep, then export them out to a new p2 structure. I know you said you don’t like it, but it works and would have saved your shoot.
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