P2 workflow
February 1st, 2010P2 workflow
P2 cards are solid state memory devices. Inside a 32Gb P2 card are 6x 32Gb areas and a RAID device. The RAID device records all data to all 6 areas to ensure reliable data capture. HD video requires about 1Gb of space for a minute of footage. Panasonic P2 HD cameras have 5 slots giving you over 2 ½ hours of recording time.
There are two programs to use when doing transfers, P2 Content management and P2 Viewer. Content manager is great for transferring and creating a database of your footage at the same time. P2 viewer is better for clients as it makes an exact copy of the P2 card.
Using P2 Content Manager
When a card is full, the DP will hand the card to the Media Handler for downloading.
- The MH will first make the card safe by switching the tab to the locked position. The card now cannot be formatted.
- He inserts the card in the PCMCIA slot on the computer and opens the P2 Content Manager software.
- He creates a database which is the name for the folder that your P2 content will be placed in.
- He selects the card from the dropdown box, selects the destination drive and proceeds to copy (ingest) the footage to the drive.
- When the clips show up in yellow, he knows that all clips were transferred to the destination drive and were verified.
- He ejects the P2 card and immediately copies the clips to a second drive for back-up purposes.
- Only when he is satisfied that that he has all the clips saved on two separate drives does he hand the card back to the DP. He declares to the DP that all clips are copied, verified and backed up.
The DP now makes all other cards in the camera safe before formatting the card handed to him by the MH. He opens the P2 menu on the camera and selects “format card”. Only when he has closed the menu does he unlock all cards for recording again.
Using P2 Viewer
- Insert the P2 card reader and the drive into your computer.
- When the destination drive shows up create a Folder with the shoot title.
- Now open P2 viewer, click on Tool< Setting Virtual P2 card.
- Click on the doted line box top right. The computer will open a box to allow you to pick the destination drive and folder.
- Click on computer, and then the external drive.
- Select the Folder you created earlier and click OK
- Back in P2 Viewer, click on View< Show the secondary bin, and select the folder you created.
- The top window will now show your P2 card and the bottom window will show the destination folder.
- Click on one of the clips, press Ctrl+A to select all clips and drag the clips from the P2 card to the destination folder.
- When the transfer is complete, safely eject the P2 card and play some clips off the drive by double clicking on a clip.
When possible, do not do media handling on set but rather after the shoot in a controlled environment. When a card is formatted the footage is GONE. There is no recycle bin! Consider using LACIE rugged drives, which are powered from the computer they are connected to, or power your external drive using a UPS. We have had drives corrupted when power was lost on set before. It does not affect the data on the P2 card, but the external drive had to be formatted.
Make sure that you download the latest P2 drivers if you are using Windows7!!
P2 and Final Cut Pro
Connect the drive with the P2 footage to the computer. Open a project in FCP and set the sequence settings to the format that you shot in, 1080-25P in most cases. Click on File > Log and transfer. A box will open up letting you select which folder you would like to ingest from. Select your folder you created and all the clips will appear. Don’t go further in the file structure than your folder name, stop before the folder called Contents otherwise FCP will not see the footage. Play each clip by clicking it, and select in and out points with room to spare, in other words, cut out the junk! Next click on “Add this clip to queue”. As FCP ingests the clip it will appear in the bin and will be in your Capture Scratch folder. When all clips are ingested you are ready to edit.
Pick your codec carefully! |Prores 422HQ is a great codec with balance between file size and quality, important for longform productions, but working in native with AVC INTRA 100 is just amazing quality! Be aware that even if you tell FCP to change your Sequence setting to match the clips, it will still select Proress as the codec under the heading”Compressor” in the Sequence drop down box. I suggest manually selecting 10bit uncompressed to make the most of the AVC Intra codec that you originated in.
P2 and AVID
Editing from clones of your data on an internal and/or external hard drive:
Naturally, you can edit from hard drives. There are various methods to get your footage onto the hard drive. You could have recorded directly to the hard drive or you could have copied your files from P2 Content Manager. Whichever method, now that it is time to edit, simply connect your hard drive to your Avid Media Composer.
KEY POINT: Make sure that you are at the root level of your drive and that you have copied all the folders and files from the original data.
Open Avid Media Composer.
Mount all drives.
Click on File > Mount All
Open Media Tool.
Click on Tools > Media Tool.
Identifiy the external drive.
Click current project
Copy or drag clips into bin.
The clips will appear in the Media Tool, either copy or drag selected clips to your bin and start editing.
Visit Brad Cordeiro’s website for more info on streamlining your P2 workflow on AVID.
Also read P2 and AVID document on Panasonic website.
Editors using AVID NITRIS DS have informed me that using P2 viewer to copy P2 content to external drives is a better workflow for them. P2 viewer makes an exact copy of the P2 card as opposed to P2 Content manager seperating each shot into a seperate folder containing it’s group of P2 folders. They also informed me that installing AVC INTRA drivers, then P2 Viewer and lastly P2 Content Mananger sorts out the issue of Viewer and Content Manager conflict.
Thanks to Johno and Alistair at Foghound studios for their help with reseach into the Nitris-P2 workflow.
The editors at Omage, working on AVID media composer NITRIS DX, use the following workflow:
- Copy footage to a drive
- Click on “Options” and select “Link to AMA Volume”
- Footage will open in the bin
- Select “Menu”, then select “Consolodate/transcode”
- Files will be transcoded from P2 to AVID MXF files
Thanks to Beau and Ningi at Omage for their help
DVCPRO HD vs AVC INTRA 100
AVC INTRA 100 is a new codec superior to DVCPRO HD. The compression is better and INTRA will record 1920×1080, where DVCPRO HD will record at 1440×1080. Intra use a 4:2:2 sampling, 10bit intra-frame coding in full 1920×1080 raster master quality, a great balance between quality and file size. We ingest P2 AVC INTRA 100 in the Pro-Ress 422 HQ format (Quicktime) for the best results in maintaining quality. Final Cut Pro 7 however, will work with Intra in its natural codec for fantastic results but take care! Be aware that even if you tell FCP to change your Sequence setting to match the clips, it will still select Proress as the codec under the heading”Compressor” in the Sequence drop down box. I suggest manually selecting “10bit uncompressed” to make the most of the AVC Intra codec that you originated in.
Archiving your footage
“Tape is still the best archive method, why not just shoot on tape?”
P2 Solid state recording has put master quality 1920×1080 recording within reach of the average budget. To shoot the same quality on tape you would have to shoot HDCAM SR which would cost about 4 times more than the Panasonic HPX2100. Remember that the Sony 750 or 900 HDCAM shoots only 1440×1080 to HDCAM tape.
Some solutions are to back-up to two different hard drives and move the footage to a new set of drives every few years. Three years seems to be the number mentioned mostly on internet forums. Alternatively back-up crucial shots to Blue-Ray discs. This is a costly route but with new generation discs, manufacturers are now promising a hundred year period of safe storage.
So P2 isn’t perfect, but find your way around the archive issue and you have an image solution comparable to what George Lucas had on Star Wars at a fraction of the cost!
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