[John Chater]

Hi John

Thanks for pitching in

Deck is exhibiting this in factory default settings over HD-SDI, Component, SDI and Composite. I believe something similar has been seen in Firewire. Methodical analysis of deck settings hasnt fixed anything. The only solution in the past has been- move deck to different power source or turn off and let sit overnight. Problem gone! Yesterday however neither of those options were possible.

I do not believe this has anything to do with user inexperience. Everytime someone experiences this I have them bring the deck back to the shop and I cannot replicate it. As I said this has happened infrequently. Maybe 4-5 times a year. Panasonic service is so slow it would cost me thousands to send this down on an exploratory expedition.The deck works a lot. A friend who has had a similar issue with his deck sent it down to Panasonic and was told they couldnt find anything.

Menu 026- Seems to be connected to HD/ SD phase relationship. This problem is consistent over all video outputs.

Can I give you any more info?

Best
John

[John Chater]

>In case of interval recording mode, the lost time at the end of recording will increase depending on >the interval ratio.

Hello Jan

Thanks for getting back to me with this info.
Im relieved to hear that with regular framerates you will only loose two seconds.
This timelapse was exposing 1 frame every 10mins. Do you have any idea how much footage should have been lost at this interval setting?
Also will a corrupted clip sequence show an elapsed footage time below it? This one showed no elapsed run time. Im wondering if the camera had not recorded enough footage for it to have saved anything repairable.
Finally, is it correct ( as Barry says ) that any clip with a red defective ‘X’ indicator is repairable? The manual indicates otherwise.

Best
John

[John Chater]

Yes tried that. It had a red X which the manual says cannot be repaired. Also there was no indication of an elapsed time on the timecode below the thumbnail.
Id like to find out what Panasonic has to say about the camera loosing data if power is lost during recording.
Best
John Chater

[John Chater]

There have been some instances of random Green Flash frames happening when ‘importing’ via the pcmia slot on Powerbooks directly into FCP. To get around this happening we are being advised to copy the p2 cards to the HDD before importing to FCP.

Best
John Chater

[John Chater]

Hi Sherwood
I have a HVX-200 in my rental inventory. Right now it has quite a bit of availability.

Best
John Chater
http://www.chaterfilm.com

[John Chater]

Hi Steve
I had my cameras upgraded last summer. Other than the ‘Dark Compression’ lock, what else gets upgraded with this very latest software update?
This really should be documented somewhere for us to see. Also why cant your resellers or independent repair engineers have the ability to do these upgrades. For those of us not in LA the price of shipping and the consequences of equipment downtime makes it very difficult to keep up.
Best
John

[John Chater]

>Gary wrote: this is not a recommended workflow for FCP as FCP does not support USB for scratch disks due >to the packeting protocols.
>did you reformat the USB drive for the Mac OS? That will slow you down also.

Hi Gary

Good meeting you at Macworld the other day.

Okay so we decide to use USB2 from the laptop because Apple have abandoned the Firewire 800 on the new laptops and wanted to make sure that USB2 would work going forward. So are you saying with a G4 Powerbook we should use Firewire 800 to the HDD? If so will we have to use Firewire400 on the new MacBooks?
The HDD was probably formatted to the MAC OS. Cant confirm right now. So how should we format the HDD?

I know you have tested everything including the new Macbook Pro. What are you recommending as the fastest way to import to FCP, storing on an external HDD. What import times are you getting from a full a 8gb card? Faster that 13-14mins?

Im still sticking with a workflow that imports to FCP, rather than just downloading the full P2 cards. Mostly because this is a selling point to producers and also because I want to see the footage to confirm its existence. Trusting a file has downloaded is not good enough. Contrary to Jan’s opinion I have had CF confirmed downloads of jpegs to my computer. Only later when I went to look at the images did I find them corrupted. Those we my family snaps. What is coming out of the P2 cards is my career.

Best
John Chater
http://www.chaterfilm.com

[John Chater]

Jan wrote>Are you transfering the footage or importing to FCP? I found tranferring an 8GB card from the P2 Card slot to be under 7 minutes, regadless of what I shot on it. If you are using 1394 for tranfer to a tower, then again it should be faster. USB is not the way to go from the camera to an Apple computer.

Hi Jan

I was importing to FCP via the PC Card slot in the Powerbook G4. The USB2 connection was from the G4 to the HDD. We chose the import to FCP option because that allows us to quickly scan the imported footage for any corrupted data before we erased the card.

If I was to go your faster route and transfer the native P2 files to a HDD, is there anyway to confirm the files are are uncorrupted before I erased the P2 card?

For myself I am only interested in a workflow that would allow the camera to keep shooting. Anything that would tie up the camera isnt very practical in a real world shooting scenario. So i dont really have any interest in how fast I can transfer data from the camera. I have clients who get impatient during the 30 secs it takes to bar and tone tapes.

[John Chater]

Tony Salgado wrote> Honestly I don’t think two cards would be the most ideal scenario if someone is using the HVX 200 as the primary camera for longer records on a daily basis.

I completely agree and I couldnt find anything in my post where I suggested it was. Fact of the matter is there are no other 8gb cards available now. As I said before Im lucky to have two.

Years ago I worked with a cameraman who had only two mags for his Aaton. Every shoot was incredibly stressful turning mags over fast enough. I dreaded doing interview shoots.

For now I am testing what weve got available. People want to work with the camera today so Im looking for field based solutions that I can use right away. In three months it will be different. Years from now Im sure we will find that HDD’s were only a temporary solution. But right now it is the only solution.

I should stress that the camera is a wonderful piece of technology and the picture looks pretty good for the price point limitations Im sure Panasonic were working under.

Best
John

[John Chater]

John Sharaf wrote >Let me get this right; your tests reveal that it takes 14 minutes to “process” one 8 Gb card >that contains 20 minutes of DVPRO100 24p? and if it were written as 720 30p or 60p or any permutation of >1080 the card would hold 8 minutes and take 14 minutes to download?

Based on the the FCP/ Powerbook/ HDD workflow I tried yesterday, those are the results I got. Would be great to make it happen faster wouldnt it? Slower than realtime at anything other that 720/24PN is not the greatest. Computer hardware is far from my area of speciality,so Im hoping someone will guide me here.

Best
John