Weird P2 Problem with rental camera

[Dan Brockett]

Hi all:

Did a shoot yesterday, used my 170 and then asked producer to rent a second 170 for a different camera angle. We shot about two hours worth of footage and I dumped all of the shot cards to two hard drives for backup.

I am going over the footage today and one of the cards from the rental camera didn't seem to work right. I have been shooting P2 since it first came out and I have never ran into this issue.

1. The card shows 6.29GB of material on it. When you click on the contents folder, only two sub-folders show up, no Clip, no Icon, Proxy or Voice folder? Within the Video folder are two .MXF clips, one is 4.25GB, the second is 1.87 GB. In the Audio folder are 8 .MXF files, as you would expect, four for each video clips. So there is material on the card, it did record, but somehow the card structure is incomplete. P2CMS and FCP 7.03 Log and Transfer do not show anything, obviously because the file structure is incomplete.

2. Also, the LASTCLIP.TXT is there, but it is greyed out and is not locked like all of the other cards LASTCLIP.TXT icons are on the other card. Also, all of the other LASTCLIP.TXT show that they are a 4KB file, this LASTCLIP.TXT shows 0KB.

Has anyone seen or experienced anything like this? Is it fixable? I may load the material from the drive back to a card and try to "repair clips" using the camera? Any other options or advice? I am flummoxed because P2 always just works, I have never had to do forensic reconstruction to get a card to work.

Advice?

Thanks,

Dan

[Daniel Epstein]

Dan,
I don't know if there is anything specific to go on based on your description. Maybe try and talk to someone at Panasonic as they might have some experience in matters like this. Maybe you should try copying the footage into the correct folders in a complete but empty Contents folder w sub directory. You don't need the Last Clip Txt file if you are using Log and transfer.

[Dan Brockett]

Thanks for your reply Daniel. I think I have found a way around it, just to use Raylight to convert the .MXF files to QTs but I am still curious as to how and why this happened. I may try your forensic approach in rebuilding the structure. Are you sure that FCP 7x doesn't require the LASTCLIP.TXT to log and transfer? I know that AVID and Premier don't need it but I always thought FCP did?

[Daniel Epstein]

Hey Dan,
Working on a project with a Producer who couldn't afford to take me on a shoot taught me a bit about screwed up transfers and FCP. The camera person from Germany thinking they were organizing stuff actually renamed the Contents Folder on each card they shot and didn't transfer the Lastclip txt file. Back in the USA we almost had a heart attack. Luckily renaming the Contents folder as Contents let us bring the footage into FCP 7 using Lag and TRansfer without much issue. Learned this from a internet search. I think FCP used to need Lastclip.Txt when it was importing P2 footage but Log and Transfer is a bit different. P2CMS definitely needs Lastclip.txt file to work. Glad Raylight seems to work for you.