P2 firestore footage imports strangely

[Jon Barrie]

It sounds like the Firestore codec has a FS signature and is coming into CS3 like one continuous clip. As would happen if it was shot. This actually sounds like a good thing. Not sure what your ‘problem’ is. It might have a different way of seeing the clips if they were used as part of a ‘timelapse’ setting. Once the setting was switched off the clip is tied off.
– Jon 😉

How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?

[Terry Lewis]

Do you use P2? Are you familiar with the P2 mxf file structure and conventions? Do you have a Firestore?

I would like to hear from folks who actually use P2.

P2 MXF’s are always below 2 gigs. The exact file size in this case is 10 mxf video files at 1,912,533kb and one 19,720kb file at the end. This is always the case with a longer shoot without pausing. The “timelapse” here is the 22 minutes that the camera ran continuously. No special timelapse setting was used with the Firestore.

At issue is the way Premiere imported these mxf files. There should have been 11 separate yet consecutive files. There were 11 files but all were 22 minutes long.

When importing mxf files from my 16gig P2 card they always import in the manner above. Separate files under 2 gigs.

[Jon Barrie]

Hi Terry,
I can sympathise that you’re having a weird reaction to the import that’s frustrating. But being aggressive about my comments won’t get you any closer to figuring out what’s happening.

And for the record. Yes I do use P2 footage. Not everyday like some users on this forum, but I do use it and am familiar with it in the P2 card format. I don’t use the Firestore HDD recording format, but I’m sure it is doing things a little differently than the P2 cards when it writes files.

I mis-read your initial post. So for that I apologise that my comments weren’t on the ball. However a lot of what i said is still valid.

Are you importing all the clips into the project or just one? If the clips are linked together by a code in the Firestore.mxf then it could be coming into PPro with the 11 clips and they are all linking to the group they are apart of and therefore importing as 11 x 22mins clips of the same thing becuase of that link that they should actually be one clip not 11 broken clips as they are actually recorded in the mxf format.

If this was the case then importing only one part of the 11 of the unbroken record should bring in the clip as 1 x 22min clip unbroken. If this was the case then this is a better way to manage the editing workflow with clips that should continue but break in the mxf format because of the limitations of the 2Gig recording in the DVCPRO format.

P2 cards are FAT32 therefore cannot pass 4Gig in a single file.

Don’t assume that because someone is trying to help you and they haven’t used the technology they can’t offer some help.

I’d like to know what happens if you only import one part of the 11 clips into PPro. So please let me know if my theory is way off or I actually hit something…

Thanks – jon 🙂

How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?

[Terry Lewis]

Jon,

First off. Thank you for addressing my question. I wasn’t trying to be aggressive in my reply. I just wasn’t sure if you had used P2 or the Firestore 100.

The Firestore 100 is specifically designed to produce P2 mxf files, as well as many other formats. It is supposed to conform exactly to the P2 standard. The file directory tree is identical. When the same clips are imported into Avid Xpress Pro they come in as separate clips. In other Premiere Pro CS3 projects when importing P2 from a 16gig card they come in separate. This is the first project in Premiere in which I have used the Firestore. I have used it a lot in Avid. I do need to shoot a long shot like this one to verify that they are handled the same. I suspect that the Firestore P2 is being identified differently by Premiere.

Maybe Premiere is just identifying the continuous nature of these clips and joining them together. Even so I wonder why it would create 11 separate identical clips?

When one of the clips is imported it is 22mins long. All of the clips in the Premiere project window are exactly the same, 22mins long. This should be impossible with P2, since the files never exceed 2gigs. Is P2 fat16 with the 2gig limit?

I am mainly interested in getting this worked out to do projects in 1080/24p and remove the pulldown, since Xpress Pro doesn’t do this currently.

Thanks for helping with this.

[David Dobson]

Nearly a year later and CS4 and it’s still the case that SPANNED clips are brought in as duplicates of the same span – rather than just one clip.