P2 import into FCP

[Harry]

It’s my understanding that you can transfer files direct from the camera into the Mac via the camera’s firewire port.

Best

Harry.

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Mike Schrengohst] “Does the MAC use a card driver?”

FCP 5 has an option in the Import menu to import ‘Panasonic P2’. IOW, the driver is built right into FCP 5.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Ron Shook]

Mike,

First, I don’t know anything about FCP, but I think that some clarification from the powers that be at Panasonic might be in order. These P2 cards fit directly into a PMCMIA type 2 card slot, the same slots found in any reasonably current laptop or that can be added to any desktop computer using an app. $100 USB to PMCMIA converter. Panasonic in their HVX literature shows the card being inserted directly into a Panasonic Laptop computer. Now a 5 slot device in the workstation would be more convenient and allow for the cutting of a more significant amount of source material directly from the cards, but at $2.5k not very value laden?

As far as I know, the critical parts of all this are the drivers from Pana so that the P2 cards look like a hard drive in the PMCMIA slot or slots, and the ability of the NLE to deal with the MXF format, which FCP can do. I don’t understand why you “must” have the 5 card device. Obviously there would be so little material on one card in one slot that you wouldn’t often be tempted to edit directly from the card but would use the card slot to serially dump the P2 files onto the NLE’s AV hard drives for editing.

Ron Shook

[Barry Green]

Someone at a trade show in Europe? Japan? Don’t remember… posted a video showing a P2 card going into a Mac laptop PCMCIA slot, then FCP executing an “import” command right off the card. So that capability may not be publicly released yet, but it certainly seems reasonable to expect that it’ll be here. That workflow already works off a PC, and I believe it’s coming for the Mac as soon as Apple finishes whatever OS/driver they need and releases it.

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[Jim]

They presented the HVX200 in Chicago last week, and the question of inserting and downloading data from the P2 card into a Mac laptop came up. Some one plugged the P2 card into his Mac laptop & it did not show up. We were told that a driver was being developed to correct that, but at present you were not able to see the P2 card in the Mac.