Okay, this is another newbie question. I have installed the P2 driver and a plug-in called Calibrated. I loaded the footage I shot to my Macbook Pro hard drive via USB 2.0 and when I clicked on "import" in FCP, there was no "Panasonic P2."

What am I doing wrong here? Do I need to download a converter? As you can probably tell, I have no clue as to what I am doing. Any help is greatly appreciated.

In Final Cut hit Apple + Shift + 8 (opens log and transfer window).
Your clips should appear in the window. If not, you have a problem mounting your P2 on your Mac.

-C

Thank you so much. Log and transfer did the trick. By the way, do I need to purchase any 3rd-party software to speed up the work flow? If so, what would be best software for now?

To to capture - edit - deliver. Final Cut Pro Studio can do all these things. 3rd party is usually for specific things. If you don't like Apple Color there is Magic Bullet. If you are trying to manually sync audio there is Plural Eyes. If you are trying to create "WOW" factor transitions, there is GenArts Sapphire.

Different tools for different jobs.
-C

But if you have Calibrated, you don't have to do Log & Transfer -- that's the whole point of getting the Calibrated plug-in! You should now be able to just drag the MXF files directly to the timeline without going through the L&T process.

Barry, with Calibrated do you drag all the components of the MXL files into the bin or timeline.

Paul Hudson
Lizardlandvideo.com
Phoenix Video Production

I just drag the MXF files in the Video folder right into my FCP bin and I'm good to go.