[Richard Sutcliffe]

I also wanted to add that I personally prefer the ‘feel’ of the footage we conformed in cinema tools to shots we took at 25PN. I cant really put my finger on it but wee started out shooting 25PN, realised that the lack of audio was robbing the footage so went to 25P. The 25PN footage has.. hard to explain.. a ‘hyper real’ feel to it. It strikes me as video like. The conformed 25P footage on the other hand had a much more natural feel and look. ITs something and nothing really but Id be interested if anyone else has had a similar thought.

Actually, the lack of audio in 25PN isn’t something and nothing, to me its huge.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Hi Rory,

We have used the 25p variable framerates successfully and it was very straightforward so don’t worry! Our workflow was to export from P2 Log as Quicktime xml, then use cinema tools to batch confrom the exported footage to 25fps, this removed the redundant frames and when imported into FCP we had 50% slo-mo WITH SOUND!!

Hmm, Im assuming here that FCP was mentioned in your post….

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Yeah it would pay to be prepared for things not running entirely to schedule. I should add we were copying the cards to LACIE 250gb drives, I would add that you might be copying cards to a SATA RAID in half the time it took us, making two copies at once and never have any spikes in the xfer time. One of the new workflow issues we must all take account of is that everyone’s hardware setup will be different and this makes it hard to discuss things such as how long it takes to transfer a card.

With regard to USB2, it wasn’t just one drive but an iomega drive we had and a lacie porsche drive. Both were much slower than the FW800 and the iomega was at least twice as slow.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Our experience has been inconsistent with transfer times from P2 to powerbook/FW800 drives. In theory and in tests it took between 6 and 7 minutes to transfer a full 8gb card to the FW drive. In practice (this was a live event over three full days) the transfer times began to increase as the shoot progressed. But it wasn’t consistent and the increases were huge. with the exactr same hardware/software setup we saw some of our transfersincrease from 6 to between 12-15min. the very next card, writing to the same drive would take 6mins again. Unfortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to investigate why this might be but it could have had serious ramifications for us if we had needed to turn our cards around quicker.

So the short answer is 6-8mins but if you only have 6-8mins you could end up in trouble.

Incidentally USB2 was a complete dog for us. Dont know if it is Mac specific this issue but I would never consider using a USB2 drive again, only FW800.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

A catch-out that I recently discovered is that shooting PN does not capture audio (in variable framerates at least) whereas P mode does. a batch conversion of 720 50p footage in cinema tools was very quick and straightforward and to my eye the results were very good plus it had wild audio played back at the correct speed in FCP.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Thanks for posting this, we have found similar issues with some of our clips. Its worth noting particularly in interview situations where grabs span two cards. Have you determined whether it is the end of clips ie button off or end of cards where the garbling occurs?

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Can anyone tell me what the effect of working with Raylight is on the files? To clarify, does raylight leave the mxf untouched and convert them to some sort of a proxy? What size is the raylight created file?

TIA

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Todd, thanks for the insight, please elaborate on the download time, how long exactly? Are you finding that the cards fill up faster than you can download/verify?

[Richard Sutcliffe]

I remember a uk road safety ad which had startling impact. A child ran away from the camera and into the road. A car came into the shot and I can’t remember the exact details but something happened, perhaps a pigeon took off, obscuring the action and they used this as cover for replacing the boy with a crash test dummy. The dummy was dressed as the boy had been and seeing the dummy hit with full force was shocking.

I havent seen the ad for years but it obviously left a lasting impression for both road safety and creative reasons.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Biggest minus I can see would be for solo shooters in the field like me. The battery life on these stores isn’t going to cut it for me. If shooting 4 hours of footage, the firestore is likely to be switched on for 6-7. current firestores have a bat life of 90mins that means three to four batteries for a days shoot. thats 4 more to charge every night. Same for the P2 reader. I need a device that is going to run all day or at the very least a half day because if you run out of battery power your shoot is over. No HDD, no shoot.

P2 reader writes to HDD which means it needs to be flat and stationary during write down? Panasonic inform me that dumping and verifying is in real time or thereabouts so 30mins? That means no repo or re locates for 30 mins.

Obviously not as relevant for studio work.

The other negative is being fixed to the camera by a firewire cable. If Im shooting on the mountain in winter, that firestore is going to be tucked away in my jacket. How many times will I forget Im fixed to the camera?