P2 field offload to iPod

[Bob Gundu]

Hey David.

I thinking of this as an Off-Loader solution. Look at page 85 of the HVX200 manual to ead about how to verify the data transfer from P2 to Firewire drive.

Later,

Bob

[Ron James]

Bob, 2 quick questions for you:

– Does the drive have to formatted by the camera in order to be compatible?

– and, if the drive is formatted by the camera, do you know if it will be readable on a PowerMac (for use with Final Cut Pro, for instance)?

Thanks!

Ron

[Barry Green]

Not Bob, but I can answer from experience. Any drive to be used by the camera to offload cards must be first formatted by the camera before being used. This is a nearly instantaneous operation, but it’s also one reason why I urge caution for people wanting to use ipods! Formatting involves erasing all partitions on the hard disk. The drive then consists of a large unallocated, unformatted pool of space. Each card you offload results in the camera allocating a new partition out of that space, and copying the card contents over.

The partitions the camera creates are FAT32, which are compatible with PCs and Macs.

—————–
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[Ron James]

Barry, do you mean the drive ends up divided into multiple partitions?

If I remember correctly, FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit, doesn’t it? So, would one have to then unload the FW drive after each card?

Sorry if these questions have been answered already. I did search through many posts last night but the workflow subject matter still seems a little sketchy.

Appreciate your help!

Ron

[Barry Green]

I haven’t had an opportunity to test it with 8gb cards yet so I don’t know what happens in that circumstance. I’m pretty sure the camera would take care of splitting files into 4GB maximum file sizes and linking clips together, which would keep everything FAT32-compliant, but I don’t know for sure.

You don’t have to offload the firewire drive until it’s full, either of partitions (15 max) or of data space. The camera will keep allocating partitions and offloading new cards until it either runs out of space, or runs out of available partitions.

—————–
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)

[Ron James]

Oh, I see!

So the camera creates partitions everytime, and your guess is that with the 8GB files, they’d link across partitions (because 4GB would be the max. partition size in FAT32, wouldn’t it)?

Thanks a lot for the information. I will be very interesting to see how all this unfolds further down the road.

Ron

[Barry Green]

No, partitions can be any size. Windows XP limits FAT32 to 32gb partitions, but in actuality FAT32 can go to 2 terabytes of size per partition.

What I was referring to is a maximum file size of 4gb. It’s my understanding that FAT32 limits file sizes to 4GB, so if you use an 8GB card it would be possible to exceed that file size limit. As far as I know, the camera in that case would actually split the clip and create two “spanned” clips, using the metadata to link them together. So you’d still only have one partition, but for clips longer than 4GB you’d find two files in that partition, with the metadata linking the files together into one contiguous clip.

—————–
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)

[Ron James]

Okay, I see. Thanks for clearing it up.