HPX 250 clips broken into 5 min clips

[Sam Lee]

Set your FCP 7’s scratch disk to the drive you want the media to be rewrapped. Go to Log &Transfer. Import all P2 folders by single or compound folder slection. Look for Complete span clip status (if P2 media are spanned). Click “Add Selection to Queue” to begin the rewrapping. When all done rename the re-wrapped .MOV. Move & rename to correct folder for FCP X. In FCP X, simply import all of it. It’s quite straightforward.

This intermediate step will save gigs to tbs of space when the project grows. FCP X is just not efficient when it comes to handling native P2 codecs in general.

[Craig Alan]

Thanks you so much!

1) Do you not save a copy of the original media card? Just the rewrapped version?

2) Can this be done retroactively? Can I go through this process with all my saved P2 footage with projects with editing and replace it with the rewrapped versions?

If I get the missing media warning I’ll just direct FCP x to the new files, or will this not work? Weird that legacy can handle this footage better than X.

3) When you rewrap compound folder selection how can you tell what each card was called?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Sam Lee]

The pristine P2 media is always archived. I never delete them since 2006. It’s filled with full P2 metadata and even GPS coordinates from the 2/3″ cams. Far too valuable to be deleted. FCP X only takes 4 fields out of 50 possible metadata fields. If there is ever a need for P2 to be on PC, your best shot is to give them the raw P2 media vs the rewrapped .MOV. I can always use Panasonic P2 CMS to fully search the raw asset. That can only be when the pristine P2 media is online and not the rewrapped.

Replacing native P2 with new clip is a challenge. This is another limitation with FCP X. I also work on consumer AVCHD cams once a while and the biggest problem with FCP X is that if you don’t copy the AVCHD media to FCPX’s library (checking the Leave files in place during import), relinking it is virtually impossible when you migrate the media to another hdd or retrieve the media (from LTO-6 archive) at a later date for revision. It’s so hard to do that what I did was to transcode the AVCHD in FCP 7 and it worked! Luckily FCP 7 also supports AVCHD and the exact clip name. I don’t think is in native format but a transcoded Pro Res 422. AVCHD has an annoying generic Clip #01, Clip #02…. I don’t know if you can change it in the camera to something more unique. This is a huge problem when you have dozen of similar media and you may get confused with Clip #01 on Day 2 for Clip #01 on Day 5.

I don’t recall exactly what I did in the past in regard to replacing FCP X’s native P2 import to FCP 7 rewrapped AVC-I 100 .mov. It was something like taking the auto backup of the current library. I had to completely remove all raw P2 assets by disconnecting the drive or shutting it off. Then when that auto backup library is opened, it then asked for relink. This is where FCP X will not relink your original P2 media (unless when if you check “Copy to Library” during import)! I was livid. You should try this at your leisure. What I had to do was go to FCP 7 and rewrap all P2 media. Then I’m able to relink to the newly created rewrapped .mov. At this point, the library is new and it’s much smaller.

At this point, it seems like you have to consolidate into FCP X’s library for a self-contained final archive. This gets expensive fast (storage wise) when there are about 15 Tb of raw P2 data. By rewrapping P2 media in FCP 7, I can get the best of both worlds. This of course will not be applicable to every scenario. Nevertheless, for large project, the rewrapping method offers much more flexibility for relinking and media sharing with After Effects.

In FCP 7’s Log & Transfer, the P2 folder name will be clearly indicated on the top. If you have a long folder, simply drag the window a bit more to see the full names vs being truncated by other fields. It will tell you if you spanning is complete or incomplete. Very nice but unfortunately none of these features get ported to FCP X.

[Craig Alan]

Not sure it exactly relates to what your past frustration, but I have on occasion reorganized my finder folder structure and moved P2 footage around. I have been able to relink those files so the exclamation points go away in the project and browser. However, saving space is an on-going need. I have media from short form projects of on average <200gigs each of original P2 card copies.

I now have 12TB of data on two pegasus raids each of which is also backed up to two others.

I think long term I should put the black ups on something cheaper like a hard drive dock and store the labeled drives in cases. But its much faster for me now to just use CCC to clone to the back up as I update and ingest new media.

Very boring tedious work compared to production.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Sam Lee]

For data management, the good old 2010-2012 tower Mac Pros served me quite well.

Long-term offline archival, I use LTO-6. Probably will skip LTO-7 and upgrade to LTO-6 several years later. In the long run, LTO-6s are much cheaper than hdds ( high initial tape drive cost but very low tape media costs, power consumption, maintenence-free,..). The problem with hdds is that it will not spin after ## years. HDDs are more for short-term, near and online use. I still have footage back in 1997. All recently archived to LTO-6. Hopefully it can last another 20-30 years.