Barry Green
Forum Replies Created
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[john chater] “Out of curiosity does anyone know if there are any theoretical limits to the speed the data transfers can happen?”
The first bottleneck is the hard disk speed; most hard disks max out at about 30 megabytes per second or so. Assuming you use a SATA RAID (or equiv.) that can sustain more than 80 megabytes per second, the next bottleneck would be the firewire or USB2 connection. FW400 maxxes out at a theoretical 50 megabytes per second. The card itself is typically the fastest element in the chain; the card supports 80 megabytes per second.
So if you had a 100-megabyte-per-second RAID, directly connected to the slot (i.e., not using FW or USB), then you could hit the maximum transfer rate. At that rate a 4GB card would offload in maybe 50 seconds.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
You can transfer footage from a computer back to the cards. Don’t know if you can do so directly from the P2 Store or not, but you could plug it into a laptop and plug the card in the laptop’s slot, and copy that way…
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Excellent report — I can clarify a few things for you that may make you even happier.
[scott davis] “I had 2 8GB cards and I could get 17 minutes of 720P footage onto them.”
That of course depends on your frame rate. Had you been shooting 720/24pN, you would have gotten over 40 minutes on them.
[scott davis] “Go to the newer suite, and I still couldn’t get the footage off the P2 cards into FCP without loading the footage as real-time Firewire load.”
You can do it directly; you have to use the “Import Panasonic P2” command. Attach the camera via firewire and set it up as a 1394 Device in the menus; that way the camera will act as a card reader and will show up on the Mac desktop as an external hard disk. Then just import the files. It’ll take a few of minutes for FCP to unwrap the MXF files and re-wrap them as Quicktime MOV files, but then you’ve got ’em ready to go.
[scott davis] “but you can’t take HD footage and dub it straight over to the on-board DV deck.”
Yes you can. You have to have the switch in TAPE mode, and then go into PC/DUB mode. It’ll let you convert any high-def files straight over to the DV tape, even preserving the slow-motion or fast-motion effects of the variable frame rates, and you can select 2:3 or 2:3:3:2 pulldown if converting 24p footage.
[scott davis] “I was surprised by the mass inside that little guy.”
Definitely bigger and beefier than the DVX. It’s about the same size & weight as a Sony Z1.
[scott davis] “In the 100, while in preset, you can toggle back and forth between 32K and 56K. Don’t know if I was doing something wrong (very possible, but it happened repeatedly) but I was never able to toggle between the two”
It works exactly like the DVX does in that regard. I don’t know why it didn’t work for you at the time (was the AUTO switch engaged? Or was the SW MODE menu messed up so that preset wasn’t really assigned to PRST?) Don’t know, but rest assured that it works exactly like you’d expect.
[scott davis] “The eject on the deck is a little tweaked. After you hit the eject button and the door opens, you have to open it further manually to get the transport to eject the tape. It just seemed easier in the 100 and 100A.”
It was easier on the 100 and 100A. The 100B and HVX use a different tape mechanism. On the plus side, it’s a lot more rugged and resists the handle-pulling-on-the-door thing a lot better; that would occasionally cause some tape issues on the 100’s, but doesn’t happen on the 100B or 200.
[scott davis] ” FOCUS ASSIST!!!!! This thing rocks. It looks like it does a digital zoom and enlarges the portion of the center of the screen to help with fine-tuning focus. Very nice feature. Only thing though… it didn’t seem to work unless shooting in either 1080i or 720P, any frame rate.”
The Focus Assist is indeed one of the best features — it lets you get sharp accurate focus without needing a monitor, and it works while recording too. It’s not actually a digital zoom though, it’s more like a direct pixel mapping onto the LCD so you’re seeing the image at either full res, or something close to it. And no, it doesn’t work in standard-def, which is too bad, I wish it did!
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
I haven’t done it, but Michael Caporale has; he shot the music video for John Brennan(?) using an HVX recording straight to a 1200A.
After transferring to the P2 Store though… well, I’d guess you’d have to import and play the files out of your NLE if you wanted to get them back out onto tape…
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
CinePorter’s a lot more interesting than a FireStore for a lot of reasons. First is the P2 interface, which could (COULD) make it capable of storing 720/24pN or 720/30pN data. Firestore can’t do that according to info at DV Expo 8 weeks ago; don’t know if that’s changed or not. Second, CinePorter has multiple sizes, up to 320GB; FireStore is one fixed 100gb size. Third, and I don’t know how they’ll implement this, but CinePorter offers two-drive configurations; it may allow for RAIDing and inherent data duplication.
On the opposite side, FireStore is from a known company who’s now delivering their FIFTH generation of product, whereas I don’t think Spec-Comm’s ever released a product like this before. So obviously we’ll all have to wait and see how this plays out, but on paper there are a lot of interesting ideas going on with the CinePorter.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Yes you can do that.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
I’ve done it with Avid on the PC too.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[toke lahti] “I’ve always been under impression that 1/3″‘s dimensions are exactly half of this.
So it isn’t so?”It may be so, but I haven’t measured one to know for sure. I’m basing my 5.25 x 2.95 guess (and it is only a guess) from the info on Panavision’s frame & format list:
https://www.panavision.co.nz/main/kbase/reference/tbleframelist.aspOn that list, they show a 2/3″ 4:3 chip at 8.8 x 6.6 mm. But a 1/3″ 4:3 is not half of that (which would be 4.4 x 3.3), instead the 1/3″ chip is listed as 4.8 x 3.6. So I calculated the ratio between 4.8 and 8.8, and then applied that ratio to the 9.6 x 5.4 size of a 2/3″ 16:9 chip to come up with a speculative guess as to what the dimensions of a 1/3″ 16:9 chip might be.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
There’s no provision for recording on P2 and tape at the same time; the tape drive doesn’t even appear to exist when you’re in P2 mode. You can’t even eject a tape when in P2 mode, so no, that’s not gonna happen.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
One potential solution is DVFilm Raylight, at http://www.dvfilm.com. It converts the native .MXF files into a reference .AVI using their proprietary DVCPRO-HD compatible codec. There’s a partially-working free trial version (partial because it only supports some versions of 1080 at the current time, no versions of 720 yet, although all will be supported by the time it’s released).
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db)