shooting on P2 back-up

[Greg Ball]

Thanks to all who have replied.

Here’s a dumb question. What’s a DIT? Why are most of you against firestores?

Please keep in mind that I’m the director, I’m not a P2 person. But the crew is asking me how I wish to have this shot

Again we’re doing a 4-camera shoot. So wouldn’t there be a large amount of P2 cards?

What we’re doing is a mock interview set with one moderator and 4-5 Participants in a roundtable discussion. The following day we’re shooting Broll. We’re doing this on the west coast and editing in Miami. We’re hiring a local crew on the west coast I’m bringing back the footage on a drive. So Raid 1 won’t really help me.

Another question. Is the drive in any danger going through airport security?

[Matthew Romanis]

D.I.T is an Digital imaging technician in Video, Doctor of Information Technology in IT.

The really important thing to know, in order to help you further, is how much material you think you are going to shoot per camera per day, and what version of HD do you have to shoot?
The HVX 200 is capable of shooting 1080/60i, 1080/24p, 1080/24pA, 1080/30p, and 720p/60p, 720/24p (over 60p), 720/30p (over 60p), 720/24pN native, 720/30pN.
So a total of 9 different HD variants across two formats.
720/30pn and 720/24pn may be of interest to you because you can fit twice the amount data/time on a P2 card than the other variants. Normally you would get 1 minute of HD per GB (roughly) but by shooting in these p/n modes you get 2 minutes per GB in 720/30pn, and 2 minutes 30 seconds per GB in 720/24pn.
If you get 32GB cards (at least 2 per camera) then that is at least 2 hrs of footage, 64GB cards would mean at least 4 hrs of footage per camera. You just need to know that you can use these format variants in post.
Re the firestore, the later firmware versions are capable of recording pn variants too. You will need a firestore per camera.
The firestore earned a bad reputation when first released because of loss of communication through the firewire connector, but later versions had a right angle connector that helped solve this issue.
The camera displays little to no warning if something goes amiss with the firestore, so the operators need to keep an eye on the control panel for the firestore.
Whether you go with cards or the firestore, you will need to transfer data from both to your own HDD.
You should never travel with your P2 data on one drive only, either use a Raid 1 dual enclosure, or use two separate drives one a clone of the other. There is software available to help automate doing this.

[Michael Sacci]

[Greg Ball] “Why are most of you against firestores?”
All the reasons are listed in the posts, nobody is crashing firestores, they are generally harder to work with.

[Greg Ball] “Please keep in mind that I’m the director, I’m not a P2 person. But the crew is asking me how I wish to have this shot “
We know that is why we are telling you to hire a P2 Wrangler (DIT), someone that know have to handle and organize all the media for you to bring back with you. This person should also have a high level of understanding on how to set up all the cameras. You NEED this person on set.

Whether you use P2 or FIrestore you will have the same about of data to deal with.

Raid 1 drives that people are talking about are dual hard drive set up in FW800 enclosures, they copy the data twice. Since you are traveling I would just bring 2 separate drives do you have all the data in 2 places. Check one in your luggage and carry the other one on the plane with you. Or ship one of the drives. redundancy is your friend.

[Rocky Robinson]

I shoot with a Firestore drive. I like it a lot. The only times I have problems with it is when the firewire cable gets yanked..Doesn’t happen all the time, but it has happened once in a while. I also run P2 cards as a backup, but the trick is to remember to not run out of space on the cards if you have less storage in P2 cards than the Firestore drive holds. Then, with P2, you have to think about offloading and archiving while on-shoot – the realm of the DITs.

The P2 cards are bigger now. Honestly, if I had access to two 64GB cards, it would cover most the shoots I do, and I’d consider changing workflows. I do like having the Firestore recording in Quicktime format on the fly, you can just drag and drop the files right to the FCP timeline, vs P2 importing. If the P2 cameras/cards could do this (record .movs), I’d change in a heartbeat.

But, you’ve got 4 cams going at once? If 2 64GB cards per cam will cover the shoot, and you can afford it, do that. There is extra hassle of the Firestore in making sure it has power and a solid firewire connection. Mutiply by 4, and throw in the wildcards…There IS less to go wrong with P2, lack of moving parts and cables and such. But there’s also the workflow in post factor too. Depends on how you want to work.