Helmut Kobler
Forum Replies Created
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Bob,
Just so you know, even though Panasonic says the P2 driver doesn’t work in Snow Leopard, I installed it anyway and am able to offload data without a hitch from my 5 card reader (a PCD35, instead of your PCD20). I’ve done many offloads directly from Final Cut 7 or from Shotput Pro and never had a problem…I *do* notice that my Snow Leopard Mac will fail to wake from sleep since moving to Snow Leopard, and I suspect it has to do with Panasonic’s driver.
Another minor problem I’ve run into on Snow Leopard is that Panasonic’s P2 Formatter app (which I use to format my cards and retain the custom names I’ve given them) sometimes fails when it tries to format a card. If I eject the card and then try it again, it works. But under Leopard, it always worked fine…
So you might try installing the driver and see how things go for you.
I do agree that Panasonic has seemed a little lazy with the Snow Leopard issue. It took two days after Snow Leopard’s release for Panasonic to announce that its driver wouldn’t work–that should have been announced BEFORE launch, not after. Since Snow Leopard went golden master weeks beforehand, Panasonic certainly had plenty of time to test and make the announcement. Now that the announcement has been made, weeks have gone by without any kind of additional information. It’s frustrating. A little communication with people at the right time makes a big difference…
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Works fine for me. You still have to use the Log and Transfer window to import the AVC-I footage, and FCP7 gives the footage a QuickTime “wrapper”, so the resulting media files will be QuickTime, not MXF. But the process goes very quickly–far more quickly than converting the AVC-I to ProRes, as FCP6 had to do (not to mention the fact that ProRes took up a lot more disk space).
Regarding any metadata in your AVC-I, it’s carried over to the Quicktime-wrapped file, but FInal Cut can’t see it/use it. Final Cut Server apparently can, but I haven’t tried that myself.
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P2 is great, farrrrr better than using tape. It has so many advantages during production, but also in post, as Steve mentioned (I can capture 13 hours of 720p footage in about 50 minutes using a Panasonic PCD35 5 card reader…try that with tape).
Here’s my advice:
If you use multiple cameras a lot, you might get 32GB E series cards, because you can spread them among multiple cameras more easily. Otherwise, I would get the new 64GB E series cards, because I’ve found that shooting to a bigger card is simply more convenient (less swaps, less need of a data wrangler during the day, etc.)
You might consider getting Panasonic’s PCD35($2K) for your desktop workstation at the office. It is the fastest P2 card reader around. When reading data to a RAID, I transferred a full 32GB E series card in 4 minutes. You can also connect it to an ExpressCard/34 port with a $199 adapter, so it works on laptops in the field.
For heavy shooting projects that are in the field (40 hours of footage), your best bet is to bring along a laptop with a card reader, and transfer footage to a RAID 1 hard drive (Raid 1 is comprised of 2 drives, where each one is a mirror copy of the next). If you have enough P2 cards, you can shoot all day and transfer in a hotel room at day’s end. If not, you’ll probably want someone on set to manage data wrangling, but I avoid that at all costs. Oh yes, there’s also a new piece of hardware that makes it very easy to transfer cards without a laptop or external drives: https://blog.abelcine.com/2009/08/25/nexto-video-storage-pro-2/
It’s expensive but looks very convenient. Except the hard drive tops off at 500 GB (wouldn’t fit your 40 hours of footage) and is not a RAID 1 for extra protection. But apparently, you can attach external drives to the device, which could solve that issue.
As for Final Cut 7, that’s great. I’ve had no problems importing AVC-I footage into it. Final Cut itself doesn’t recognize the metadata from your P2 footage, but the data remains intact, and can be seen by Final Cut Server (if you use it). Otherwise, you could use a product like MXF4Mac / P2 Flow to bring the raw MXF AVC-I files right into Final Cut (no putting a QuickTime wrapper around the files beforehand, as Final Cut does when you use Log and Transfer), with the Metadata carrying over to Final Cut’s logging fields.
Good luck!
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Whether or not Final Cut Studio is getting prominent placement on Apple’s home page is not a good measure of Apple’s “priorities” towards the software.
When I go to General Electric’s site, I don’t see their new jet engine on the home page either, and yet, GE is highly committed to jet engines. When I go to Sony’s web site, I don’t see any of its pro cameras on the home page, but clearly, Sony is very dedicated to its camera business.
Apple’s home page attracts a certain audience, and Final Cut Studio users represent only a tiny fraction of that audience, which is why FCS doesn’t get top billing. So what if you have to navigate a few pages to get to the Final Cut web site? It’s a good site and very detailed.
Anyway, if you want to get alarmed by Apple’s commitment to the software, I would ask why it took 28 months to develop only a moderate upgrade. That’s a better measure of commitment. Apple will never publicly say, but there could be a few reasons:
1) Maybe Apple is re-inventing the whole editing app suite, and has had to dedicate a lot of the team to R&D, instead of production.
2) Maybe Apple wanted to turbo charge iPhone development over the last couple of years and found it quicker/easier to borrow engineers from other areas of the company, instead of hiring legions of new people all at once.
3) Or indeed, maybe Apple is getting lazy and not taking FInal Cut as seriously as before (though I doubt that).
Who knows. I think we’ll get a better idea by the time FCS 4 is ready…
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Shane is right. Far more than 20 people work on Final Cut Studio. More engineers than anticipated, and then there are the product managers, the schedulers, the assistants, etc. etc. Plus, all the costs besides salaries (which are endless).
It’s hard to know what profit Apple really clears on FCS, but it sells the suite for an absolutely fair price, and I’m happy to see Apple make a big enough profit to keep it in this business. Remember what things were like in the Mac video editing space before Final Cut came along?
Maybe Apple didn’t need 28 months to develop FCS3, but it’s hardly a minor upgrade, and certainly worth a $299 upgrade fee.
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The E series cards use a faster kind of memory, so data can be loaded off the card faster than a non E series card. I believe the e series cards are capable of about 1.2 gbps, whereas the non E series cards are capable of between 600 – 800mbps.
Of course, you need a fast enough card reader to take advantage of the E series\’ faster speed. If you use a slow usb2 or Firewire connection, you shouldnt see any speed gains. But if you use a faster connection, like the Pci cable of the pcd35 5 card reader, you\’ll get faster offload times.
Finally, panasonic announced the Avc Ultra codec, which is not shipping in any product yet, but which will probably require the faster e series cards.
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Another vote here for FSI. I have a 2450 and love it. I originally considered the 2430 (the lower end 24″), but the panel’s viewing angle was a little more narrow than I wanted. When I saw the 2430 next to the 2450, it settled the matter. The 2450’s viewing angle is wide, the blacks deep, and the panel seems to show better details in the highlights than the 2430.
I’ve had mine for a couple of weeks now and love sitting in front of it. It’s also been great to be able to talk directly to the company’s ownership…
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For the record, I love my E series cards (I have five 32Gbs). They transfer super fast using my PCD35 five-card reader. Plus, they’re cheap.
Can’t wait to install five 64GB cards in my camera come August.
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Eric, just a quick note that I love my Vertex 250 SSD. Been running it for about 3 weeks as a boot drive with a new Mac Pro. Machine boots in about 10 seconds after the grey Apple screen comes up. PhotoShop loads in 2 seconds, Final Cut in 3, Word and Excel in 1.5 or 2 max.
No problems so far with sleep functions or anything else, either. -
Another Pro of the HPX170 is that it’s very lightweight and easy to handhold all day. The ergonomics of the much-heavier EX1 are such that my wrist starts hurting after about 15 minutes of holding it.
I can’t remember if Shane mentioned that the EX1 uses a CMOS chip, which gives sharper resolution but leads to artifacts when lights are flashing (like flash bulbs). I also think that the EX1 suffers from more of a “stutter” effect when working in 24P than the Panasonic cameras. And I think the Panasonic has a more pleasing, “filmic” image, whereas the EX1 has that ultra-real video feel (EX1 has lots of tweakable settings, but I’ve still never seen it look quite as nice as Panasonic’s out-of-the-box image…that’s subjective, of course).
EX1 uses a 1/2″ chip (vs 1/3″ on HPX), which means you can get a little shallower depth of field at a given focal length. EX1 also has a sharper LCD, so getting a sharper focus is easier (but honestly, I’ve never had a problem finding focus on the lower-res Panasonic LCDs).
Personally, I would pick the HPX, especially if you are pleased with the HVX200 already. I *do* wish it had a tiny bit more sharpness, though…