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Relinking Archived P2 data – Shane?
This is for Shane and anyone else who can assist.
Shane, we’ve been shooting with the HVX200 for a while – love the P2 workflow, and would have a hard time going back to tape.
Until now, our methodology in the field has been to copy to the Panasonic P2 Store – or import directly from our P2 cards into Final Cut on our Titanium laptop (connected to 2 x 250Gb Firewire drive – mirrored RAID1).We only use Final Cut for editing, and that’s where most of our projects will stay so until now I thought the QT files would be all I need. However, I saw your comments on archiving in an earlier post – and watched your video on copying from P2 cards and saving/archiving the MXF files to a separate drive which you would keep (like tape) rather than archive the actual Quicktime files you created on the media drive…Well you got me thinking about changing my approach!
So
Question 1) Could you briefly explain some of the other benefits of the MXF files outside the flexibility of them being available to other editing systems. I haven’t quite got a grasp of metadata, etc.
Question 2) If, after you’ve completed a project you decide to trash the associated Quicktime files and archive only the original MXF files, what is the process of reconnecting the project to the MXF files at a later date. Is this fairly automatic – i.e Final Cut can search out the P2 file names on your archive disk and reconnect/rewrap automatically (so everything is then viewable and re-editable in the timeline) – or do you have to do it via the individual logging folders – one P2 card (folder) at a time.
If you can outline the process I’d really appreciate it – or perhaps point me to where it has been outlined in detail.
Thanks so much.
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3 Replies
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Don’t know if I can answer your questions directly but:
We shoot with the HVX and edit FCP…
But we have clients who log on a PC with the Pana viewer…
We give them everything we shoot on a FAT 32 drive…
As a back-up and for logging….
Right now they just give me paper notes but we
are working through the MetaData flow to see how we
can utilize that….
I then export P2 to QT in FCP the takes marked…
Edit and then back-up the QT files to the clients
drive as well…
In the past we would do a delete and restore but
now we just buy new drives for each project and clone
then when that job is done…
I realize with large projects this could get expensive
or cumbersome but we are working on a show
and the files are at 120 gigs and counting…
It will all be for DVD and HD-DVD… -
[David Telling] “Question 1) Could you briefly explain some of the other benefits of the MXF files outside the flexibility of them being available to other editing systems. I haven’t quite got a grasp of metadata, etc.”
The MXF files are your source tapes. That is how you have to picture them. Would you, after you captured a tape into Final Cut Pro, then toss the tape in the trash…or reuse it? What if you lose a media drive…then all of your masters are now gone. No, the MXF are your masters and your backups. PLUS…if you upgrade your system and your media doesn’t work properly (such as what happened when people upgraded from FCP 5.0.4 to 5.1.1). The issue was that there was a minor bug in the importing process in 5.0.4 that was fixed by re-importing with 5.1.1. Now, if you had tossed your original MXF files, then you’d be SOL. Who knows what issues may crop up in the future.
[David Telling] “Question 2) If, after you’ve completed a project you decide to trash the associated Quicktime files and archive only the original MXF files, what is the process of reconnecting the project to the MXF files at a later date. Is this fairly automatic – i.e Final Cut can search out the P2 file names on your archive disk and reconnect/rewrap automatically (so everything is then viewable and re-editable in the timeline) – or do you have to do it via the individual logging folders – one P2 card (folder) at a time.”
If you imported via FCP, then the clip names and durations will match exactly, so then all you will have to do after you import is “reconnect.” Now, an issue with the P2 log software, if you mark in and outs and extract only what you need and rename it from that point, then you cannot really duplicate that process EXACTLY…same clip name and length. So if you lose your media and need to reimport, you’ll be recutting your show. That is why I insist on importing FULL clips.
We have to send off masters to The History Channel, and thus far they are fine with us sending them a G-Raid with all the original MFX files.
Good?
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
Thanks so much guys… I will do some experimentation with importing/relinking, so I know I have it down.
Sincerely appreciate your help.
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