Dave Neyman
Forum Replies Created
-
I use a Lowe Pro Computrekker backpack for the MacBook Pro, hard drives and other accessories. It is not totally waterproof but has a raincover that wraps over it if needed. I suppose you could use a 1500 series pelican as well. Any MacBook Pro will work as long as you have the Duel Adapter for the P2 cards. I have 4 batteries for computer and 8 for the HVX-200. You can use the 2.5″ USB bus powered drives in the field and then back them up to a raid 1 system when you get to some civilization. I try to make it a rule to have the P2 data in 2 places before blitzing the cards. This has allowed me to shoot for several years now with no data loss (knock on wood). You may want to invest in more P2 cards anyway since it is cheaper to spend the money on cards than to reshoot material because you skimp on cards and lose data.
-
You can use a P2 store but it has a 60 GB limit. Steve is right that you should use the computer with a portable hard drive. Like it or not, that is part of the workflow. I have used mine in Alaska as well as many other remote places and it works fine. You do have to have plenty of batteries if you do not have an AC power source but I’ve found a car inverter works well also. You can always go back to tape but you give up the best features of the P2 format and workflow. You should have Final Cut installed so you can check your footage before you dump the cards just to get the good feeling that all your one’s and zero’s are lining up correctly.
-
Lars,
You are not dense, just thorough, and that is a good thing when dealing with footage that could easily be lost with the click of a button if you are not paying attention. You understand correctly the process. The drive come up just like any normal drive would. When I pull the footage from the single drive using the MS1UT I dump the footage on yet another drive when imported into FCP. Best of luck.
-
Jeremy has the best way to do this so I would listen to him. My experience has been that the cameras don’t drift too much until you shut off the camera and or change batteries. Just reset the TC to TOD and repeat the remote start. Any offset in the time code can be adjusted in FCP. I shoot multi-cam like this a lot and it really does work pretty well.
-
I have one that I use with the MacBook Pro and 16 GB P2 Cards and it works great.
-
You may be thinking about the Duel Adapter from Duel Systems. It plugs into the Express 34 port. It is the only one that I am aware of and it does work quite well. I wish someone made one that was FW800 or USB2 but to my knowledge no one does. The Duel Adapter is around $100.
-
Seth,
I have pretty much the same gear and workflow that you are trying to use. The only difference is that I don’t use the P2CMS software. I just use the finder and copy the entire card over to a Raid-1 hard drive (Mirrored). Once the transfer is complete I rename the NO NAME folder to whatever is appropriate and I pop into Final Cut Pro to make sure everything appears to be recognizable. I started to use P2CMS once but felt like I had more control doing it manually. I realize that I have an extra step checking the footage in FCP but it lets me sleep better at night. I have filled a lot of hard drives with no data loss (knock on wood). I think based on what you are describing and my experience… P2CMS is the issue. Just eliminate that and see if everything else functions properly.
Best
Dave
-
Bob and Noah speak absolute truth. Been doing it this way from the beginning and would not do it any other way. My rule of thumb… The data MUST exist in two separate places BEFORE the P2 card is re-formatted… NO EXCEPTIONS. The Raid-1 (Mirrored) does this. I use a SansDigital MobilSTOR MS2UB and MS2UT and have loved them. Once the drive is almost full (I like to leave about 5% empty) I archive one of them and use a SansDigital MobilSTOR MS1UT as a reader.
-
Ditto to what the others have said. It would help even to have a third card for each camera but it is really a disadvantage when the cards are not the same size.
-
It should work okay. FCP 6 was apparently built on the Intel architecture so it will be slower than on an Intel machine by quite a bit, especially when you get into the heavy rendering. Best of luck.