Panasonic P2 import in Avid MC 6

[Glenn Sakatch]

If you want to free up your camera, you can copy the contents of your p2 card to your local drive. Make sure you copy the entire folder structure, not just the actual media.

From there import your p2 as you are currently doing. If you have performance issues, then you may need to consider transcoding the footage to Avid Media, work with that and quit using the original P2.

We’ve had great success with P2 without transcoding. Keeping it on an external drive is a pain, as I think you have to relink to it everytime you relaunch Avid. If it is on a local drive, i don’t think this issue occurs.

Glenn

[Stef Prein]

Thanks for your reply, Glenn!

Linking the footage from the hdd is the actual problem… If I use Media Tool to link the footage from the P2 card, I don’t have any issues. Even editing goes fine. But when I copy the contents of the card to a folder on my hard drive, Media Tool doesn’t seem to find the footage anymore. I leave the file structure the same as one the card.

A tutorial on the Avid website taught me to put the video and audio files in the same folder and then import them. But that doesn’t seem to work.

I’m I maybe doing something wrong when copying the footage to my hard drive (it’s an internal one)? Or is the Media Tool not the right way?

Stef Prein
director/motion designer at StudioFets.
Utrecht, The Netherlands
http://www.studiofets.com

[Stacy Lincoln]

I do the same….copy my media onto an external hard drive for backup. Then AMA link to it from there. All of the clips will automatically start coming into a bin. I then highlight the entire bunch, go under the Clip heading to Consolidate/Transcode and consolidate them. This puts a copy of each clip in your bin…each will say .new. Then, you can erase the original clips. This leaves you with copies in your bin you can edit with that never go away until you erase your project. Make sure when you consolidate you choose the option to “relink to the original” if you ever need to do that at a later date, for instance, if you need to bring the project back a year from now.

[Glenn Sakatch]

I don’t do a ton with P2, so i had to load up some footage to make sure.

I’ve copied the entire card contents to my local drive.
Roll_01/contents/…what ever is in there
plus the “last clip” file is in the Roll_01 folder. I believe this is quite important for the system to understand the footage.

(you do have to have the p2 plug in loaded from the Avid site)
(you have to turn off the “Enable AMA Volume Management” in the Volume mounting tab, in the AMA settings tab)

Once you relaunch Avid you will no longer have the link to ama options, but import P2 as an option instead.

Click in a bin, click on Import P2 and point it to your footage which is now living on your internal drive. It will link to this footage, just like it did when it was on an external drive. You will see the drive listed as Virtual in your bin. From here edit or transcode. Again, i’ve had great success editing with this virtual footage, and then transcoded it to dnx to ship off to the online DS box. If you box struggles, then transcode it right away to MXF media.

Glenn

Glenn

[Stef Prein]

I saw my reply didn’t get through here. I’m sorry for that. Thanks a lot for your answers. I think I can figure this out now 🙂

Stef Prein
director/motion designer at StudioFets.
Utrecht, The Netherlands
http://www.studiofets.com