P2 Spanned Clips / Hard Drives

[Shane Ross]

[Dana Hopper] “as the client is dealing with the media on PCs.”

Then by all means DO NOT IMPORT WITH FCP! Don’t. You do that, and they will not be able to see nor use the footage. FCP imports into the DVCPRO HD codec, that only comes with FCP.

No, what you want to do is give them the entire P2 cards intact…Contents and all the folders within, and the Lastclip.txt file.

The reason it doesn’t work is that the Fat32 format has a 4GB limit, and the P2 cards are formatted Fat32, so they break up the footage as well, into 4GB chunks. FCP stitchs all of this when it imports.

Give them the originals if they are on PC…DO NOT IMPORT WITH FCP then give to them.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[Dana Hopper]

Sorry, Shane, I should have given you more details. The client has a proprietary software for a sports website. They declined to give me any pre-pro info including Mac / PC or editing system or even if there was an editing system. Obviously, I don’t recommend anyone going into production without this information.

I chose to work in my normal FCP workflow with external drives formatted Mac OS Extended. The files were not transferred by FCP. The contents folders and last clip texts were transferred through Shot Put Pro to folders on the external drive. That they had. Apparently, they then converted that Mac OS Extended drive to a formatted drive they could use with their PCs. And now I believe they are having trouble with the spanned files. My guess is that they are only getting 4MBs of spanned clips instead of the entire 32MBs spanned clips that exist on the original Mac OS Extended Drive.

I am not very familiar with using drives formatted for PC so I was running some tests today with both MS-DOS formatted drives and Mac OS Extended formatted drives. So, my question is, if I have the contents and last clip text on a MS-DOS formatted drive, what is the best way to review and check my video on a Mac before reusing my P2 cards? Is it sufficient to bring it up in Log and Transfer and simply check the duration time? Or is there a better method?

Thanks again.

[Shane Ross]

[Dana Hopper] “they then converted that Mac OS Extended drive to a formatted drive they could use with their PCs. And now I believe they are having trouble with the spanned files.”

They formatted WITH the footage on the drive? THen they were having trouble? I would think so…you can’t format a drive and retain the data on it, as far as I know.

[Dana Hopper] “My guess is that they are only getting 4MBs of spanned clips instead of the entire 32MBs spanned clips that exist on the original Mac OS Extended Drive.”

The clips are 4GB max…period. Becaust P2 cards are formatted in a specialized format of Fat32…they have a 4GB limit built in. So if you had one 32GB P2 card and you shot ONE LONG shot and filled up the card, you’d have 8 separate video files. Files that would be stiched together by Final Cut Pro. But not all NLEs or software joins these clips, and they show up as separate files. Avid does this, for example. Apparently their “specialized proprietary super secret” NLE does this too.

Best way to review and check? Well, P2 Log or P2CMS do this (P2CMS is free), FCP will do this. Look at the files and then don’t import. You can play them and everything.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def