Offloading P2 store into an external hard drive

[Shane Ross]

[Tod Lilburn] “We want to back up the video onto DVD. Does anybody know an easy way to do this?”

First you need to go from the P2 store to an external hard drive. NOT YOUR MEDIA DRIVES, but a drive meant for backup. This way you free up the P2 Store for use again in the field. The P2 Genie software automates this process well.

https://p2genie.andersholck.com/

As for backup to DVDs, you will have to do that manually.

[Tod Lilburn] “Also, if you want to view the video in FCP are you going to be doubling up the space used in the hard drive by converting it all into a quicktime movie?”

Yes. The original CONTENTS folders and LASTCLIP.txt files that you back up are essentially your source tapes. If you back them up to DVD, then your DVDs are your source tapes. Treat them with care. I myself use internal drives that I swap out using an external open firewire case. This keeps the cost of drives down.

The imported Quicktimes are your media…the footage you work with. But once you import the footage don’t toss the DVD away, or reformat the hard drives that the CONTENTS files are on. Again..they are your source tapes and you wouldn’t just throw away or degauss your miniDV tapes would you?

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Uli Plank]

If you use P2 Log, it’ll generate referenced QT files in its “temp” folder. You can use them in FCP without doubling the space needed, but of course the “CONTTEN” folders from the P2 card need to be online.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Lars Wikstrom]

Tod, I upgraded my version of Toast from 6 to 7. 7 has a cool feature that allows you to drag a folder like I just had that was around 25 gigs of video clips into toast. Then then just click the burn button and it says “It will take about 6 disc to back this up” that’s it! When it finishes write / verify it spits out disc 1 and asks for a new blank disc. I buy my discs on line at SUPERMEDIASTORE.COM. Its a good brand I go with with almost no fail rate for about .32 cents per disc.

As for the files them selfs I take a different approch. Even though everyone has said MXF’s are you masters the Quicktimes are the same quality as the MXF’s. They have said there can be problems with the QT’s and should hang on to the MXF’s. But I don’t want twice as much data on discs or hard drives.

That’s just the way I view it even though people say it’s not the right way. I have had the camera a few months now and on about 30 shoots and the work flow has been great.

[David Woodward]

Shane:

I bought the FS-100 for use with the HVX-200P. Is the process the same as the p-2 cards. Do you have to organize the media as P-2 media before you take it over to what I refer as the Parking Garage drives and then when you’re ready to edit import into FCP and the media drives.

What do you recommend as Parking Garage drives?

David Woodward
Twin 2.5 Ghz
1 TB SATA Raid

[Shane Ross]

[David Woodward] “Is the process the same as the p-2 cards.”

I am not entirely sure as I do not have a Firestore. All I know is that you have to do something with the firestore, press buttons or something, to prepare it as P2 files. Because it records them as m2t or something. Then you can transfer them to the parking garage drives.

My boss used his G-Raids as parking garage drives, but I didn’t. I need those as my media drives, so I bought five 250GB internal SATA drives for $70 each (Western Digital) and an empty firewire case that I swap them out of.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net