Dave Neyman
Forum Replies Created
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Michael is right that you can use the camera to offload the cards. I have never viewed this as a viable alternative on location since most of the time we can’t shut down the camera while offloading cards. $120 is a cheap price to pay to continue shooting. If you have enough cards you can shoot all day and then download with the camera at night but I prefer getting the data backed up ASAP.
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The MacBook Pro has an Express 34 port and will NOT read P2 card without an adapter. The most cost effective alternative is the Duel Systems adapter.
https://www.duel-systemsadapters.com/?productid=DP-0001
You will then want to copy the files to a Raid 1 system as your camera master before bringing them in to FCP.
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Very smart John to separate the drives. I do the same. If ever we have to leave them in a vehicle I put them in different places in the event of a break in. When you consider that you may have 10 days worth of data on a 750 GB drive, it would be a HUGE loss if both drives disappeared.
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[Dylan Reeve] Be aware, copying a file to a RAID 1 device isn’t really making two copies of it. The drives can’t be used as standalone devices. While it is possible to remove one of the paired drives from the enclosure and use just one, the RAID set it then operating in a ‘damaged’ mode which is not a great idea at all.
It depends on the RAID. I have a Sans Digital RAID 1 system that makes a copy on each drive. I then have a single drive reader which allows me to access the data while the other drive is archived. It is not operating in ‘damaged’ mode.
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Ditto to the Raid 1 solution. My rule is that the data should be in two places before the P2 card is re-formatted. Just two days ago one drive started giving us trouble on import to FCP. We copied the data from the back up drive and we were good to go.
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I agree with Richard. I have heard of few problems with P2 card where as the firestore is dependent on the things Richard mentioned as well as a good cable. I had some friends lose a whole shoot because of a bad cable. People who have had trouble free firestores love them though.
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I’m not an exert on this but you may be out of luck. Data Rescue does a great job of restoring individual files but since the P2 format requires multiple files that depend on each other be in specific places it may be tough to reconstruct. Unless you managed to get every file back in it’s original place it may not be possible. Sorry for your loss. It may be best to start planning a reshoot.
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I did a series of 1 – 60 minute pilot and 12 – 30 minute episodes. We had a total of about 18 500 GB drives of the P2 Masters – 36 drives if you count the fact that we used a raid 1 for a redundant backup. BTW, still cheaper than tape. We used a 3 TB raid 5 to import all the media that would transcend all the episodes. We also fill the Mac Pro to the hilt with 750 GB drives for additional space. We then purchased a 750 eSata for each episode for the media specific to that episode. I believe we could load 4 of those at once. It worked quite well. Consider that our finished time was 7 hours. I think you would be safe getting a large raid to put all the imported media on. The other thing you could do is get a JBOD system. You don’t have the raid protection but it would give you lots of space. There will be some initial startup cost for the raid system but after that it is just hard drives. Consider what it used to cost to edit a show and it is still far cheaper and every bit as effective.
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Richard is right. It is cheaper than tape even if you save to a raid 1 and then use another drive for your media. You just have to get used to considering the hard drives as expendable expenses.
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If I am not mistaken you will have 4 tracks. One from the boom, one from the lav, and two from the L/R of the on-camera mic. These usually show up on tracks 3 & 4. My guess is that they are there as a safety. You should be able to hear the difference in post between the boom and the lav but slating them is a good idea if you are concerned.