P2 into Windows XP - transfer experiences?
 

We finally have to go over to the dark side!

So far all of our HVX/P2 shooting has been edited on Mac platforms.

Now comes the first XP experiences.

To overcome the Fat32 files issues we've purchased an XP notebook with a PCMCIA slot so we can write to external NTFS drives

But the shocker is how very long it takes to write the card to an external hard drive in Windows XP

We've tried two drives - a straight Firewire and another drive that has Firewire/USB 2.0 - formatted NTFS

With a G4 powerbook we've come to experience just less than a minute per gig for an 8gb P2 in the PCMCIA to an external Firewire drive.

With this new XP notebook it's taking 30 minutes for an 8gb card!

Does anyone else have experiences with this? (like this?)

Thanks!

It works a lot faster than that on my lappy.

One question though... I haven't seen a computer come formatted with Fat32 in about a hundred years. Why don't you format the internal harddrive with NTFS? Then you can offload it from that to an external.

I have mine setup with 2 partitions. First is my system drive, second is data, but you can obviously just copy it to your c drive if that's all you have setup. Your speed issue has absolutely nothing to do with XP btw.

are U using a 486DX2 made in 1989? Kidding but it SHOULD Not take that LONG !

Copying a 8GB P2 card on my Tablet PC (Slate, Pentium M1.5 and 1.2GB of ram) on field take me 4 minutes, then firewire or usb HDD 3 minutes max

Note there are several things to be careful with

1) PCMCIA Slot are using a lot of CPU usage
2) USB Use ALSO a lot of CPU usage, so better take Firewire

And I agree with Gene Crucean, I didn't see any PC in Fat32 since years !

U should made check our your PC

The Fat32 was the external drive method that a Mac & a PC could read/write to...

The notebook I bought is NFTS - core 2 duo - 1gb ram

After the manufacture sent me some new drivers we're down to:
9min from PCMCIA to USB 2.0 drive for a full 8gb card
still 30 minutes via FireWire

I've have some more drivers to try - but since 9min is somewhat workable I need to get through this week's shooting & transfer before I risk some issue with additional new drivers.

Thanks for your help so far!

More this weekend

Jon

P2 to Mac transfer solution almost in sight...
 

Duel Systems is nearing completion of their PCMCIA to ExpressCard adapter.

They've just started beta testing.

This will work on both PCs and Macs. They are having some trouble with the drivers on the OSX side, but that should be worked out before long.

Allan Barnwell
Omega Broadcast Group

Mac's can read/write to NTFS too FYI.

Dito with file transfer on very fast 2GHz panasonic toughbook. 8minutes for a four-gig card, it's not one-to-one and so swapping is out of the question for continuous cycle. I emagine latency and shared PCI/conflicts are the issue.

I attempted the HD version of DV Rack 2. However they set up the trial with a paranoid license scheme and it locked me out on a laptop because my time/date is regulated via the net. Didn't even to get to try it.

I then tried DV Rack on a workstation (not on the net) and captured to avi ok, but again ran into pre-trial expire issues with their optional DVCPro codec and was never able to give it a full workout.

Edius Pro 4 demo worked pretty well pulling in the 1080i on the fly on a workstation. I also tried it on the laptop with external firewire, and had mixed results. Got a drive too slow error. I traced it to my lame PCMIA firewire card. It had a VIA chipset (vs. TI) and I gave up.

I finally wound up dragging a workstation with a scsi raid out to the shoot for decent capture. No fun there.

For all that effort I should have just rented a deck, or a different camera and been done with it.

May I ask ?

- Brand name of the PC
- Which driver were involved

It could help people if they are in the same situation

Cheers

Slightly off topic but close enough I think.

Transferring my P2 8gb card to my MacBook Pro 17" straight from the hvx200 thru firewire takes a long time. A full card takes me about 30 minutes. How or what can I do to speed this up?

Darrin