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Activity Forums Panasonic Cameras More questions (HVX200): Firewire transfer, 2:2 pulldown, field dominance

  • More questions (HVX200): Firewire transfer, 2:2 pulldown, field dominance

    Posted by Paulo Jan on March 22, 2007 at 12:18 am

    Hi all:

    After my previous post, I have some further questions about the workings of the HVX-200 that I couldn’t clarify by searching through this forum:

    1) Today we tried transferring the contents of a P2 card through Firewire to a Mac (since we didn’t have a PCMCIA-enabled laptop handy). We followed the steps of the manual: plug the camera into the computer, turn it on, set “1394 DEVICE” in “PC MODE”… but the Mac just didn’t see the camera at all. We also tried opening the Disk Utility to mount the card manually, but we didn’t even see the card grayed out in it, as the manual describes. Is there anything we’re missing? Is there a specific order in which we must turn on the camera/plug it into the Mac/set “1394 DEVICE” in the menus? We’re using a dual G5 with OS X 10.4.

    2) A terminology question that I’d like to clarify: when the manual and related docs talk about “2:2 pulldown”, they are referring to the way that the HVX-200 records 25fps footage in 720P: i.e., it actually records 50fps in the card, and then, when editing, it shows only every other frame. Is that it or am I getting something wrong? And if that’s the case, why is it called “2:2 pulldown”? Maybe it’s because I’m not a native English speaker, but what the camera does in this case doesn’t seem to be related to the pulldown operations that I know about (2:3 and so on).

    3) I know now that the camera can record in SD in progressive mode… but, can it record in SD interlaced mode, with *upper field first*? Today I had the chance of reviewing some SD footage that had been giving trouble to a colleague when importing, and part of it was progressive, while some of it was interlaced… but with upper field first, which goes against anything I knew about DV (wasn’t it always “lower field first”?). And yes, I’m sure it was shot with a HVX-200.

    Thanks in advance,

    Paulo.

    Lars Wikstrom replied 17 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 9 Replies
  • 9 Replies
  • Lars Wikstrom

    March 22, 2007 at 2:29 am

    For the first question, When I upload Via firewire to my computer I plug it in, turn it on and then select the button in the back that switches it to playback mode. Once it is in that mode I press the same button and hold it down for a few seconds and that turns it into a firewire device. After 10 seconds or so it mounts on the desktop.

    In FCP 5 you can right click and select P2 import and a new wondow pops up and you can import the clips as QT movies. But you are better off dragging the contents of the P2 card to your hard drive first and then importing the P2 footage from your hard drive copy.

    -Lars

  • Barry Green

    March 22, 2007 at 8:45 pm

    [PaulJBis] ” Is there anything we’re missing?”
    Have you installed the drivers from the CD that came with the HVX? Without the drivers installed, the Mac won’t see the camera. Also, make sure your camera is in PC mode, not MCR mode.

    [PaulJBis] “when the manual and related docs talk about “2:2 pulldown”, they are referring to the way that the HVX-200 records 25fps footage in 720P: i.e., it actually records 50fps in the card, and then, when editing, it shows only every other frame. Is that it or am I getting something wrong?”

    No, that’s not really it. It’s referring to 1080/50i, where each frame gets written to 2 fields of video, and the next frame also gets written to 2 fields (compare that with 2:3 pulldown for NTSC 24P, where each even frame gets written to 2 fields, and each odd frame gets written to three fields).

    —————–
    Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db)

  • Paulo Jan

    March 22, 2007 at 11:18 pm

    Thank you. In the end it was just what doka15 said: the manual said to press the “mode” button for 2 seconds or more, and we were just pressing it for 2 seconds. Today we pressed it until the “1394 DEVICE CONNECT” message appeared, and it worked.

    Now I have another doubt, however: I tried creating a DMG from the card using Disk Utility, and it created it… but in FAT32 instead of HFS (what I mean is that, when mounting the DMG, the Finder says that the “filesystem” of the virtual disk is FAT32). Why is this? Are the P2 cards formatted in FAT32? Does this make any difference performance-wise? I looked through the Disk Utility options, but didn’t find anything to change the filesystem of the DMGs that it creates.

    [Barry Green] “No, that’s not really it. It’s referring to 1080/50i, where each frame gets written to 2 fields of video, and the next frame also gets written to 2 fields (compare that with 2:3 pulldown for NTSC 24P, where each even frame gets written to 2 fields, and each odd frame gets written to three fields).”

    Really? But in my manual, every time it talks about 2:2 pulldown is in relation to the 720/25P mode (I should mention that I’m in PAL land). To be exact, it says that 720/25P records using the pulldown, while 720/25PN doesn’t.

  • Lars Wikstrom

    March 22, 2007 at 11:47 pm

    It’s not creating a disk image it’s mounting the P2 card on the desktop. I don’t understand the why you need Disk Utilities? Once it mounts on your desktop FCP will see it if you try to import from P2. But you should just transfer that contents and .TXT file to a folder on your desktop and keep that as your master file. Then import into FCP from those files.

    -Lars

  • Paulo Jan

    March 22, 2007 at 11:53 pm

    Sorry, I should have explained it before. In our workflow, the first thing we do when mounting a P2 card is to make a complete image (DMG) of it with Disk Utility, to keep as a backup. That’s what I meant.

  • Lars Wikstrom

    March 23, 2007 at 1:43 am

    Is there a special reason you use a disk image? I back my stuff up to DVD-Data. 1 4 gig P2 card fits real nice on a 4 gig DVD disc.

    Good Luck,

    -Lars

  • Barry Green

    March 23, 2007 at 5:38 am

    [PaulJBis] “Really? But in my manual, every time it talks about 2:2 pulldown is in relation to the 720/25P mode”
    Well, hmm, I hadn’t encountered that usage of the terminology; normally pulldown is referencing how progressive frames (or film frames) get transferred to interlaced video. What it does in 720/25p mode is duplicate each frame. Each frame gets written twice. But it’s progressive-scan, so there’s no field-blending going on.

    I guess the terminology works just as well, I just hadn’t heard it applied to progressive like that before. If you think about it as the pulldown nomenclature (i.e., 2:3 or 2:2) referring to how many frames (or fields) each pair of frames gets written to, then it makes sense. As in, you have an A & B frame pair; in 2:3 pulldown the “A” frame gets written to two fields and the “B” frame gets written to 3 fields, so it’s A:B => 2:3, A=>2 and B=>3. In 720p there are no fields, so it’d be referencing frame duplication, but even then it could work: A:B => 2:2, so A=>2 frames and B=>2 frames. And that’s how 720/25p does get mapped into a 720/50p data stream, so yeah, that terminology still works.

    —————–
    Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db)

  • Paulo Jan

    March 23, 2007 at 8:12 am

    Well, we’re using 8Gb. cards, so DVDs don’t work out for us. Besides, we’re still using FCP 5.0.4, so we have to use P2 Log to convert the data in the P2 cards and export it to XML. Creating DMGs allows us to reuse the card inmediately and still keep an intact image of the data “as it was in the card”.

  • Lars Wikstrom

    March 24, 2007 at 5:04 am

    It sounds like we are doign the same thing but I am not using disk images. I create a folder on my laptop for the project and then I create sub folders and label them Import 1, 2, 3 and so on. When the P2 mounts I drag the 2 items the .TXT file and the contents folder.

    I used 5.0.4 and it worked well. The importer can find more then just what is mounted on your computer. You can navigate into folders on your hard drive and as long as those 2 files are there you can import it into FCP.

    That might save you a couple of extra steps.

    -Lars

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