Does Camera Have To Be Shut Off To Rotate Cards?
 

If I am shooting a long form event with three 4 Gb P2 cards, and rotating as each becomes full, must the camera be shut down to remove one card to download it, or can I just eject the full one, and replace it with an empty one?

Hi David,

One of the major benefits of the P2 system is that it allows for "hot-swapping" during shooting. This is discussed is several places in the manual and in the Panny brochures.

However, you must be very careful to not remove a card that is being accessed - either in playback or record modes. Read the manual and learn what the different color codes on the P2 access lights mean - they indicate whether or not that particular card is in use at all and, what function the card is in.

You also need to be aware of how the camera handles "splitting" a clip between cards for continuous shooting. The manual also discusses this and so far is not a situation I have run into (yet) so I don't have any direct advice.

Thanks Robert.

Someone indicated that you needed to shut it down.

I didn't think so.

We have to decide today.

I take it you've fallen in love with the cam?

Hmm, considering family and friends haven't seen me since I got my P2 cards... yeah, I'd say I'm seriously infatuated. It's a long honeymoon. (laughs)

Whew. Well I am glad to be wrong (I told David that).

My producer told me that they shut the cameras down when they took the cards out. I guess he was being extra careful.

Don't listen to me anymore David.

Yesterday we shot an hour-long roundtable discussion for a national broadcast infomercial for Prudential Americana Group. Had two HVXs on dollies, and a grand total of five 4GB P2 cards. Two for one camera, three for the other. Shooting 720/24pN. We planned on it being around a 20-minute discussion, so swapping wasn't really much of an issue; the whole conversation could theoretically have fit in-camera, but I was prepared for swapping. Which is a good thing, because instead of 20 minutes they went for an hour! :)

I was easily able to stay ahead of the conversation by swapping cards; we never missed a beat due to card swaps. Hot-swapping does work. However, it was a bit hairy there, I mean, this was a minimal configuration. Two 8gb's would have been a better choice of course. And having lived through it, I would much rather try something like this using the FireStore or direct capture to the laptop. Hot swapping does work but it's not necessarily the best way to go (and you do have to be very careful to avoid jiggling the camera during a swap, or swap during a section where you know you can cut away).

So the HVX doesn't do a sort of partial eject? Do you have to hold with one hand and yank with the other?

It works exactly like a laptop PCMCIA slot. You press in the eject button and it squeezes the card free of the contacts. Then you pull the card out.

And in reverse, you push the card in to a point where the contacts make resistance, then you have to push harder that last 1/4" to get the card to seat firmly in the contacts.

Barry: thanks for the real-world usage report. For those who are interested, I also found out recently that if you run out of P2 storage and want to switch to miniDV tape to keep recording, you have to know to flip a switch on the back of the camera from "P2" to "tape." In fact it seemed to me that in order to do anything with a tape including inject or insert one, you have to be in the tape mode.

That's correct. And the camera must also be turned off and then back on - effectively re-booted.

Now I've got to be nice to you, even if you errored on this one.

Not to care, Robert jumped in and saved the day.

We'll pick up the Panny on Monday in Seattle at the roadshow.

Be careful...
 

There is one factor that hasn't been addressed with the "hot-swap" ability of the HVX:

If you're going to be continuously shooting, especially in a one-camera setup where you can't cut away to the second camera, you'll have to be extra cautious about handling camera while doing it.

In order to get the cards out of the body, you have to push the "eject" button on the body, just as Barry mentioned. And, of course sliding in and fully inserting the replacement card. If you don't have the camera completely locked down on your mount, you're going to cause camera movement and/or shake while doing this swap process.

So, make sure that whatever head you're using is fully "locked" and can't move and, make your camera handling gentle and slow so you don't inadvertently cause it to shake.

So it is do-able without noticing on the video, is what you are saying. My fear is that we would jerk the camera to snap the new card in.

You'd need a pretty heavy-duty tripod to avoid any jerkiness when swapping cards.