shooting on P2 back-up

[Steve Eisen]

I would rent P2 cards instead of Firestore.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Michael Sacci]

Ditto.

Especially since it sounds like you do not use Firestores often. Unless someone on site is very comfortable with them I would stay away. (2) 64 GB cards should rent for about $150/day.

What cameras are you shooting?

Also Firestore are really for locked down cameras when used.

[Greg Ball]

I think they are using HVX 200’s Most of the shooting will be a combo of hand held and sticks, shooting 5 people having a roundtable discussion. Maybe we’ll but one camera on a jib. My problem is the crew will need to download the footage for me to a hard drive to take back to Florida, but I’m concerned about a firestore going down on the shoot. The crew would need to rent P2 cards and I’d still need the footage.

Are you suggesting I rent 2 64 GB drives per camera? That would get pretty expensive and labor intensive wouldn’t it?

[Matthew Romanis]

Just curious, but since when do rental P2 cameras come with no cards? (sorry if I’m assuming your local are renting, but an owner op not having cards sounds fishy).
All the rental houses I deal with supply cards (64GB now) with the cameras, maybe it’s worth getting another rental quote.
How much footage will each camera shoot at one time?

[Noah Kadner]

Ditto on the rent P2 cards, forget about Firestore. You can always wait around to transfer from P2 to a hard drive to take with you. Or worse comes to worse they FedEx you the drive when it’s ready. That’s like $20.

Noah

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[Michael Sacci]

Matt, It is all over the place with what comes with cameras on rentals. A lot of times base prices have (2) 16 GB cards. My point was it shouldn’t be much more than a FireStore which is typically about $100/day.

Greg, you will need either the cards or a firestore for each camera. Also you really need to hire a DIT to handle your media. They can be transferring one set of cards as the others are being shot. They should be able to help you determine how many cards you need. P2 workflow is pretty solid once you understand it. Doing into a situation without a firm understanding of it is really dangerous.

Where are you shooting this?

[Matthew Romanis]

The thing with data wrangling to understand is that offload times double per camera. If you shoot 720 24,25, or 30pn then you will be already in front in terms of GB p/m off load from the cards.
With 4 cameras you’ll need to consider getting a 5 card reader (AJ-PCD20) which only has FW 800/1394b as the fastest data funnel. Pour 4 cards worth of data into that funnel and it takes much longer to offload than one card, so you have to make allowances for that in how fast you need to get cards back to cameras. Using 4 x 32GB cards will take one hour (give or take) to offload all cards, not counting any verification times.
Using just a duel adapter will take more time as the fastest the P2 cards can offload data is 80MB p/s (and that is the fastest, more often than not its around 70MB p/s), so the extra head room in using an express port for speed is never realised. At least with the multi P2 reader, the excess in transfer headroom is taken up with part of another card (in rough terms).

The other thing to remember is that if you do use any of the 720pn frame rates, you can’t use a firestore as the camera deactivates the FW 400/1394a port in these modes.

[Michael Sacci]

Good points…
but there are several different ways to do it, but without knowing the shooting scenario it doesn’t make much sense to suggest how to handle the data. I know in Nashville I can round up several dual adapters and laptops easier than I can get one of the 5 card readers. I have been on jobs that were one hour of shooting and 2 hours of waiting. Each job requires a different way of handling data offload.

But my main point is if you don’t have experience with the workflow, (not point at you but, Greg) it is wise to hire someone that does. Every easy to erase the wrong card.

DIT are one of those positions that most people think are a waste of money, until something does wrong.

[Matthew Romanis]

I absolutely agree Michael.
For someone who is not completely competent in on site P2 management for one camera, let alone more, then having someone on the crew whose job is to structure and perform transfers, backups, and verification is a necessity.
Just thinking about how you sometimes find it easier to round up laptops and adapters, it got me thinking just how many old Powerbook G4 laptops are kicking about. They would be useful for dealing with transfers only, having a 54mm pcmcia slot negates the need for an adapter. Viewing the footage might be hard in some circumstances, but when simple transfer grunt is required they might be a good way to go.

[Dave Neyman]

Just thought I’d weigh in on the issue although you may have already decided. P2 cards are the way to go. Get as large as you can afford. Hire a GOOD DIT who will be working full time transferring the data to either a Raid 1 system or 2 separate hard drives. It may be a little more money this way but doing it right is cheaper than a reshoot.