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HDX 900 vs HPX2000


Saul Rodgar

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There are far easier ways to do this and verify. The P2 gear is my favorite. Stick a P2 card in one end and a hard drive into the other and it will transfer and verify for you. You can bring up thumbnails of the files off the harddrive to view on the P2 Gear. Now you're safe and still quick & mobile.

 

 

Hi Mitch,

 

I'm not sure that I understand your language here. When you say P2 gear, are you referring to the P2 Store or something else?

 

Thanks.

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come on man - you arent staying on the same subject - you initial post was about getting bitten by p2 footage imported into FCP. That is clearly a workflow issue - you shouldnt be importing your only master

 

You are correct that for a long doc/ENG style that workflow wouldnt work - you would need a bunch of P2 cards and then copy them later.

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Hi Mitch,

 

I'm not sure that I understand your language here. When you say P2 gear, are you referring to the P2 Store or something else?

 

Thanks.

The P2 Gear is a different device, available for about a year now. It does not contain a hard drive so there is no max to it's recording capability. One connects a hard drive to the back of the unit and the P2 Gear downloads directly to it, renaming the file headers so that you do not have to. Firewire or USB2.0 can be used, just like hooking a hard drive to the camera itself. Using USB2.0, the P2 Gear can read back thumbnails off the hard drive to verify the download. Small buss-powered drives can be powered by the P2 Gear, which runs on small camcorder batteries and is only a bit bigger than the old P2 Store. The P2 Gear has an LCD monitor so one can play back shots and navigate a menu. It eliminates the laptop from field operation.

 

I also recommend the use of small RAID enclosures, such as the G-Safe from G-Tech. This is seen by the P2 Gear (or a computer) as a single drive, but mirrors the data between the drives so that two identical copies are made at the same time. Pop one drive out of the enclosure for safe keeping and send the other off to post.

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Mitch - the P2 gear is a great device - but i have one question

 

i know it creates a new partition for every p2 card downloaded like the camera does when you offload directly in host mode. what happens if you have more then 26 cards offloaded - doesnt windows have a limit to the number of partitions that can be accessed? Or what if you have many drives mapped on your pc - will this limit how many cards you can acces with a drive used with this?

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come on man - you arent staying on the same subject - you initial post was about getting bitten by p2 footage imported into FCP. That is clearly a workflow issue - you shouldnt be importing your only master

 

You are correct that for a long doc/ENG style that workflow wouldnt work - you would need a bunch of P2 cards and then copy them later.

 

What?

 

The reason why I had to import it that way is because I couldn't do it any other way. Live performance HD acquisition, maxed out P2 store, no clip viewer, only one hard drive, very limited personnel, feverishly trying to do it as the the performance is happening. The work flow is related to the way it was shot. Hell, the work flow was happening AS I was shooting the damned thing.

 

Right or wrong, that was the best that I could do under the circumstances. A wish list is not reality. In the ideal world I would have done it very differently with P2 technology. Or everything could have been done a lot easier on tape.

 

That was the original gist of my complaint with P2: Under the circumstances I was in then (or the ones I usually am for this type of acquisition) tape would have worked better.

 

Anyway, I just met with the people who will provide the HDX 900 and HPX 2000 cameras I will use on the upcoming HD short I am shooting. They keep on hearing (from their customers) horror stories with 32 gig cards and P2 stores with USB connections and the latest Panasonic firmware: my exact set up. Apparently the firmware that is to be released next is going to address the same issues I encountered. Also they say is a lot safer to use newer P2 gear with Firewire connection for the 16 and 32 gig cards, as Mitch suggested. Which as far as I am concerned clears the workflow as being "wrong" as you claimed.

Edited by Saul Rodgar
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its very simple - you should NOT have been importing into final cut - you should have COPIED to your hard drive and verified using p2 viewer -

 

importing modifies the files - your masters should not be modified

 

workflow issue

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The P2 Gear is a different device, available for about a year now. It does not contain a hard drive so there is no max to it's recording capability. One connects a hard drive to the back of the unit and the P2 Gear downloads directly to it, renaming the file headers so that you do not have to. Firewire or USB2.0 can be used, just like hooking a hard drive to the camera itself. Using USB2.0, the P2 Gear can read back thumbnails off the hard drive to verify the download. Small buss-powered drives can be powered by the P2 Gear, which runs on small camcorder batteries and is only a bit bigger than the old P2 Store. The P2 Gear has an LCD monitor so one can play back shots and navigate a menu. It eliminates the laptop from field operation.

 

I also recommend the use of small RAID enclosures, such as the G-Safe from G-Tech. This is seen by the P2 Gear (or a computer) as a single drive, but mirrors the data between the drives so that two identical copies are made at the same time. Pop one drive out of the enclosure for safe keeping and send the other off to post.

 

Is it safe to assume the P2 Gear will work with 1080p AVC-Intra 100?

 

How long would it take to back up a 32 gig card to hard drive?

 

Thanks!

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Is it safe to assume the P2 Gear will work with 1080p AVC-Intra 100?

 

How long would it take to back up a 32 gig card to hard drive?

 

Thanks!

 

 

the p2 gear will not play back avc intra clips - it will show thumbnails however

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Is it safe to assume the P2 Gear will work with 1080p AVC-Intra 100?

 

How long would it take to back up a 32 gig card to hard drive?

 

Thanks!

The P2 Gear cannot playback AVC-i encoded cards, however it can transfer the files to a harddrive and then show the thumbnails for verification. That's 99% of what you use the thing for so most people have no issue with this. If you'd really like to be able to play the cards as well, it's big brother the P2 Mobile will do it all. Abel sells and rents both.

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The P2 Gear cannot playback AVC-i encoded cards, however it can transfer the files to a harddrive and then show the thumbnails for verification. That's 99% of what you use the thing for so most people have no issue with this. If you'd really like to be able to play the cards as well, it's big brother the P2 Mobile will do it all. Abel sells and rents both.

 

Actually, I own the HPM110 (bought from you guys). I assume that's what you mean by the P2 Mobile? We're acquiring equipment for our new studio and haven't really put it together yet. Is it correct that the HPM110 serves this function (backing up the P2 card directly to a hard drive -- or two if using a mini Raid)? If it does, that's a nice bonus I hadn't anticipated.

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We've used both the 900 and the HPX3000, both are fantastic cameras.

 

The HPX3000 does have the CineGamma software with the Film-REC mode made famous by the VariCam.

 

We've had our 3000 since early March, and are taking delivery on our own 900 this week (we've been renting it).

 

I created a white paper on my blog about the 3000 camera and our experiences with the P2 workflow, and about authoring our HPX3000 material to a viewable Blu-ray video disc.

 

You can download the PDF white paper from my blog at http://joeincardona.wordpress.com.

 

I'll be glad to answer any questions I can, I'm no expert yet, but I've had to learn a lot through trial and error with these cameras.

 

My e-mail is joeinc@memphismediasource.com.

 

Thanks!

 

Joe Incardona

President

Media Source

Memphis, TN

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