Mac Pro, FCP and Pana P2 Camera

[Davowade]

Hey all, my company is looking to puchase the Panasonic P2 DVCPRO HD cam.

Wanting anyone with experience with P2 and mac systems to let me know what your thoughts are, and basically how the whole thing works.

I was also looking at the Blackmagic Intensity as an option to view HD on our 42" LCD. Any thoughts there?

We have all of the latest gear, most recent OS and FCP version etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[theWholeTruth]

Realize that the size of P2 cards are somewhat small. Some will bring a laptop to the shoot and transfer the files once the card is full. You either stop the shoot and wait for the completed transfer, or buy a few more cards; that can be expensive. Focus Enhancements has the Firestore. Works well although I feel that the 'handling' is a bit clumsy.

The workflow will definitely take some getting used to and may not be right for certain types of shoots. Are you sure this is the right camera for your types of shoots?

Blackmagic is fine for viewing HD. Don't know enough about your set-up to offer any other suggestions.

 

[bigbossbmb]

you should really head on over to DVXuser.com

it is a great resource for users of the Panasonic DVX and HVX cameras.

 

[LethalWolfe]

What types of things are you going to be shooting? The HVX fits some shooting situations better than others.

In regards to the Blackmagic card, is it for a client monitor or for critical monitoring?


Lethal

 

[Davowade]

Blackmagic is fine for viewing HD. Don't know enough about your set-up to offer any other suggestions.

You mean like in my sig?

Ok, in general the camera will be used beside SX and Digibeta. We are going to be buying multiple 8GB cards, or the 16GB versions if they become available soon enough. This will be backed by a mounted HDD DVR of some description.

We do lots of TV ads and corporate gigs, so the camera will be used taking shorter shots of what the bigger cams get and alternate angles.

Can anyone tell me how media is captured from the card from external readers?

Thanks again.

 

[theWholeTruth]

You mean like in my sig?

Well, you list some of your equipment but I have no idea how everything is hooked up. How are you capturing digibeta into FCP? Do you have a Kona card? Are you using an xSan? Firewire? Like I said, the card you mentioned will work, but maybe another will be better for your particular set-up. As lethalwolfe said, are you using the Blackmagic card to hook up a client monitor or a critical monitor?

I don't understand your last question. Do you mean how you get media off of the P2 card? You can transfer it to a laptop, you can use the Firestore like I mentioned, or use Panasonic's P2 Store or P2 Drive. I have no experience with the latter, only the former. There may be other options...

By the way, how do you plan to edit with digibeta, sx (do you mean sdx?), and hvx material?

 

[LethalWolfe]

You mean like in my sig?

Ok, in general the camera will be used beside SX and Digibeta. We are going to be buying multiple 8GB cards, or the 16GB versions if they become available soon enough. This will be backed by a mounted HDD DVR of some description.

We do lots of TV ads and corporate gigs, so the camera will be used taking shorter shots of what the bigger cams get and alternate angles.

Can anyone tell me how media is captured from the card from external readers?

Thanks again.

I'm assuming you'll be using the HVX in DVCPro50 mode since your other formats are SD. You can dub the footage to Digi as well so you have a tape copy (which takes care of how to archive/back-up a tapeless camera).


Lethal

 

[VideoTour]

If the 16Gb cards become available I'd suggest going that route over the FS-100.
I use the FS-100 because, frankly, more than two 8Gb P2 cards were outside my reasonable price range. But the FS is cumbersome, even with the camera mount kit. And it entails another cable (that has no positive locking mechanism and juts awkwardly from the side of the camera, so I'm constantly concerned about it,) and power supply issue.

If you are, as the thread has assumed, shooting SD on DVCPro50 you'll get about 34 minutes of video on a pair of 8Gb P2s, more than an hour on paired 16s once they're available.

You CAN use the FS and the P2s simultaneously to record an instant back-up, and that's a decent option if you're looking for that extra security. But you can also hot-swap the P2s and copy files immediately to a pair of external drives on two different computers to get almost identical security.

Oh, and by the way, it's a terrific camera.

 

[Davowade]

Ok, more specs.

Mac Pro 2.66, Blackmagic SDI Capture card. Full SDI video network connecting 4 edit suites (3 FCP and one Lightworks) to Beta SP, SX, Digi, Umatic.

I was asking how the media is captured from the cards to see if we can go into our Lightworks film suite. So using the card reader deck, does it connect via Firewire, USB, SCSI etc?

More info as I understand it.
The camera will primarily use a hard drive recorder for the capture of media, which will be in DVCPRO HD 720P so that we can better match digi quality.
Cards will be used for higher frame rate shooting as they can apparently handle that better (That is just what I am told).

Wholetruth not sure I understand the question of how we plan to edit, as it stands we capture all media into the suites usind the SDI network through the blackmagic and run everything on FCP.