[David Cosby]

The situation I witnessed was the shooter completely by-passed recording to the native P2 MXF format and instead recorded directly to Pro res 422 in Final cut by running an HDSDI signal through an AJA iso.
I believe the clients editor had issues with that and they tried to convert the Pro-res to some form of mov files and had even more difficulties. I question if they would not have been better to stick with the original MXF recording and converted them with a plug in like the Ray-light suggested?

My personal belief is that cross conversions are always best done later rather than in the field. Leave the shoot with what you know works. conversion to Pro Res would be fine if you were finishing in final cut but Vegas? It made no sense to me, even if you are editing in final cut there is no issue converting the P2 MXF files later I believe he hit a point-of-no -return and couldn’t turn back.

it was an unfortunate situation and I’m not sure if it had a happy ending.

[David Cosby]

Thanks its a good start. I am under the impression that Vegas is not Quicktime friendly but it is good to know there is a way to make it MXF compatible. I prefer to hand off MXF originals and keep a back-up copy as a safety. It always seems safer to let the editor make their own conversions…

[David Cosby]

Yes, what was the charge for that?

[David Cosby]

Metadata is dependent on the amount of effort you are willing to put into it.
We have had great success using it to keep track of multiple cameras on shoots where someone is also keeping detailed continuity notes to keep the edit organized. We have also been most successful when it is done with a tech who is changing the info and downloading the cards when you make scene changes.
Simple single camera shoots with a small crew can be cumbersome if you are consistently having to stop to update the info. But the beauty of metadata is that it can still be changed later to organize your clips.
It takes a while to wrap your head around it but there are times that it can be very helpful.

[David Cosby]

We have 2 2700s and a 3700 all cameras you will not be disappointed with.
We keep as many cards with a package as we have available, in a variety of sizes. It would be nice to charge more per card but the goal is to get the job done and get home.
Long Doc style shoots it pays to break up the segments whenever possible so that you can download as you go thru the day. There is nothing worse than backing up files at the end of the day when an impatient client is trying to catch an earlier flight. If you keep enough of them with you then you can hand off one drive and then make your back-up later at the shop. we have a HPG10 or 110 P2 gear device as well as a mac laptop on every shoot. That way you have options and are not necessarily dependent on either. A laptop can crash at the worst time, or a client may bring you a mac formatted drive that the P2 gear may not read. All of these are things we have found out the hard way. If you have full control of the work-flow it’s not a real issue as long as you have enough storage… but Shoots Happen!

We have recently been fiddling with Shot-Put Pro which allows multiple back-ups on a download and Proxy Mill which makes TC window files as well. so far not as fast as we’d like but we find ourselves reminding clients that “Tapeless” doesn’t mean “Timeless” or “Costless”.

P2 has been a wild ride.. but we’d never go back and the images have been awesome.

[David Cosby]

Highly unlikely for you to expect Panasonic to keep putting updates into old tech the likes of a 500.
if you were sharp and busy the past few months there were great deals on far better cameras.
300s are solid with the use of AVC. But the real deals were the 2700 and 3700 Varicams and I seriously question if you will see cameras of that caliber for prices like that for a while.