[Bill Parsons]

I use this camera to photograph dance — this should be a good analogue with sports — and it works extremely well.

In my case, I prefocus and turn off autofocus. I take it that you will be using autofocus for the sports coverage.

I have used it with autofocus to photography my grandson, a moving target, in an inside room, and it focused perfectly. Thus, it should handle the sports activity just fine.

Regards, Bill

[Bill Parsons]

Steve, I find that I often justapose incompatible elements in my sentences. It’s like telling the bride that I can’t do something….

I will keep my eye out for a less-expensive PCD35.

[Bill Parsons]

Thanks for the very enlightening comments.

When I saw the line-up of P2 camera’s with the stupid P2 card, I figured I should wait for an internal SSD (solid state disk). After all, Apple can put 500GB of SSD in a laptop for $1,100. This compares favorably with the $2,600 I paid for 4 64GB P2 cards.

I ended up buying the HPX250 this year anyway because my cash flow supported the purchase and cut off my rentals. And I, too, am downloading from the 250 to the computer via the usb connex.

Annoyances include:

1. Long transfer times when using Shot Put Pro (as recommended-it’s nice sw). It takes 6 or even more hours to copy 2 P2’s to 2 HD’s with verification.

2. When shooting, I backup live with a Firestore FS100-250. It holds as much DVCPRO HD footage as my 4 P2 cards. I will experiment with this drive via Firewire800 to see if it’s faster than the P2 via usb intfx.

For now, I’ll continue using the usb D/L from the 250 to the HD. I’ll try only writing to one HD using SPP with verification and then use Carbon Copy Clone to reproduce the downloaded data to other drives. CCC has verification as well. This way, I’ll be moving data much faster than by usb port. Maybe CCC can operate against the P2 cards in the camera.

If I’m still in this little boat in a year, I’ll get a 17” MacBookPro with the Express34 port and find a PCD35 somewhere.

Nice camera, otherwise.

[Bill Parsons]

I have an analogue for Final Cut Pro.
When I use this tool to ingest (“Log and Transfer”) the footage, I select all the clips to be ingested. At the same time, there is a setting to delete one or more of the audio tracks at ingest time.
There is probably a similar option in your file ingestion tool.

[Bill Parsons]

Have you tried reinstalling the P2 drivers?

[Bill Parsons]

Steve, thanks for the entirely logical and simple suggestion (why can’t I think of things like that?).
I emailed SPP and got an ambiguous answer to try multiple settings of the processor number and see what the results are. They said that this setting does not refer to the number of cpu’s in the computer, but rather to the number of files to move at a time.

I have used 1 (no-brainer, there) and 2, but for different projects of course just to see if 2 worked. I’ll try a small data set and vary this setting to see what kind of results I get, and will report here.

Regards to all, Bill

[Bill Parsons]

I have purchased Shot Put Pro, as suggested and it is speedy and comprehensive — if not intuitive. The User Manual is the poster child for spare documentation.

I am using a MacBookPro 15″ from May, 2010 with the, then, new i7 chip. There is this about the machine:

“The Core i5 and i7 processors have a few interesting performance features, including Hyper-Threading, which uses virtual cores to double the amount of processing cores presented to the operating system. The processors have dual cores, but OS X treats them as having four cores. Another i5/i7 technology, Turbo Boost, allows the processor to speed up for a short period of time when necessary, or shut down unused cores and give the resources to the cores in use. Turbo Boost can increase the clock speed of the 2.4GHz Core i5 processor up to 2.93GHz, for example.”

What I would like to know is where to set the concurrent processing counter in SPP. Do I set it for 2 processors or 4?

Many thanks for the invaluable responses in this thread.

Best regards, Bill

[Bill Parsons]

I can’t speak to your budget, but I can recommend looking on eBay. I bot a Sennheiser shotgun mike there for about half price.
Dunno where you’re gonna get a mike for $150 that’s worth anything except there.
G’luck, Bill

[Bill Parsons]

As you both suggest, it’s not my choice. I thot it would make my friend’s life easier if I converted to his format, even tho it’s lower res.
He tells me that FCP doesn’t speak AVCHD and that he uses a converter.
I agree that letting him sew them together is easier

Thanks for the responses.

Best, Bill

[Bill Parsons]

Robbie, thanks for the suggestion. I turned this up in my searches and it looks interesting.

The $99 price is ok, and I’ll be testing it out soon.

Best, Bill