Working thru some of the problems Ive had with my P2 and my workflow (mostly me, old dog...new tricks). However, I have a problem with the P2 viewer.

The P2 card is not write protected. When I look at a clip in P2 Viewer under any shot icon I try to rename the SHOOTER. When I single or double click on the footage icon this happens. I go into the SHOOTER field change it to BOB then hit save…I get FAILED TO SAVE THE CLIP, REFRESHING VIEW over & over in a bizarre loop. In essence- it wont let me change ANY of the metadata (shooter, location, name, etc). Am I doing something wrong? From the manual it seems easy & straight forward.

For reference its version 3,5,12,0. Any help is appreciated, running on Vista.

bump, bump,

What is the physical card reader you are using? P2Store? PCMCIA slot on a notebook? P2 Card plugged into HVX202 with firewire connected to PC / MAC?

P2 card directly into expess card adapter into express slot in laptop running Vista. Thanks for any help.

I think you are in trouble ... Panasonic P2 drivers don't talk to Express Card adapter so far. They only work for USB, and PCMCIA (PC Card) - Not via a 2nd level h/w.

In your case, you need a device driver for your Express Card adapter first ... then you need to install the correct P2 driver as well - and I haven't seen Express Card as a valid choice yet.

Hmmmm. Many people on hvxuser.com suggested this adapter http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/adexc34cb.asp and from its description:

This ExpressCard CardBus adapter is a cost effective solution to add back the CardBus slot that is missing in many Notebook computer. Designed to turn any ExpressCard slot into a standard CardBus slot, with this adapter, Notebook computers that are equipped with ExpressCard only can now accept CardBus Wireless broadband card, LAN card, Panasonic P2™ Card, CardBus eSATA adapter, video capture card and many other types of CardBus adapters.

For reference, I can open & play P2 cards, I just cannot make any notations (file name, metadata changes, etc) to them. As always, nothing ever works simple for me. I assume that for most people you plug your card in an P2 Viewer lets you do what you want. My question--am I using a bad version of the software, not using it correctly, or is it because of the adapter on my Vista laptop? Thanks for your help.

What are you seeing is a mismatch between the ExpressCard device driver and the P2 Card driver. I am not privy to Panasonic source codes - but, when you install the P2 device drivers, there is a long list of equipment the device driver will support and you have to select them to install - right? I don't think you see the ExpressCard listed there (as far as I can remember). I think you merely select the "Native" PCMCIA device driver. Now, if the software driver for the ExpressCard don't emulate 100% of the real h/w (PCMCIA) - and the Panasonic's code requires some functionality that the software don't support - that's it.

Another question - why would you want to change the META data on the P2 card itself? Why don't you dump the P2 card contents to your notebook HDD and then alter the META data there? I always mount the P2 card on my equipment (other than the camera itself) with the READONLY switch turned ON. You don't want the OS or software to corrupt your only image copy ...

Thats a good point, move the footage to a large fire wire drive, then change the metadate on the virtual P2 card....thats probably a better workflow anyway. I will try it tomorrow.

Hi Mike,

Some Metadata cannot be changed. You can preload Metadata into your camera so that the correct camera person is part of the data, alon with User Clip Name, Location, and any other ancillary info you wish to thave there.

The best place to update the metadata going to archive is on the Virteual Card on its way to the Archive.

Hope you get it working.

Best,

Jan