Thats great news Barry (and bad news as well) but thanks for the clarification.
Looks like I'm back to bringing a laptop to set and dedicating a Production Assistant to handle that job.

- ShannonRawls.com

The laptop is a far superior choice; not only does it give you the fastest and best way to offload, but it also gives you a million other things (like having Microsoft Word handy, or your production database, or Excel, or all sorts of stuff), plus you can do direct capture on the laptop, plus you can burn DVDs of the captured footage, plus someday we'll (hopefully) be running HD Rack from Serious Magic and getting live waveform/vectorscope/monitoring...

... plus, when using the laptop to offload the cards, you don't have to ever stop shooting...

... a laptop's by far the best solution. Especially since you can get one for less than the cost of the cheapest P2 card! ;)

Is this fast enough to connect the Panasonic to a laptop/desktop?

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try this place....
www.bixnet.com

Case-USB2FW-2.5 hd enclosure (usb and firewire interface)
Bat-PM85-22 battery pack - has usb power connector to power hd enclosure plus all sorts of connectors to power video and still cameras.
Outputs 5 to 11 volts, includes charger

Just add 2.5" HD and have fun.

"Yes, provided you have a video capture application that works with DVCPRO-HD. Using this configuration you wouldn't need any P2 cards at all"

Avid Xpress HD can do this right?

Any other apps? I know Vegas cannot.

Betsy asks: This would work for high definition video? You could plug the panasonic directly into it? Don't you still need a computer between them?

Barry says:

"The laptop is a far superior choice; not only does it give you the fastest and best way to offload, but it also gives you a million other things (like having Microsoft Word handy, or your production database, or Excel, or all sorts of stuff), plus you can do direct capture on the laptop, plus you can burn DVDs of the captured footage, plus someday we'll (hopefully) be running HD Rack from Serious Magic and getting live waveform/vectorscope/monitoring...

... plus, when using the laptop to offload the cards, you don't have to ever stop shooting...

... a laptop's by far the best solution. Especially since you can get one for less than the cost of the cheapest P2 card! ;)"

Barry, what's the slowest, cheapest, oldest apple laptop that would do the job? What do you think the minimum specs would be for direct to camera recording, bypassing the accursed P2 cards altogether?

I'm no expert on Mac laptops at all; someone else would have to answer that.

My guess is any 15-inch G4 laptop with atleast the capability to have 2 Mbs of RAM and a 7200 rpm hard drive. And atleast 1 Ghz.

Anything else will really bog down DVCProHD100 throughput. Need a fast internal, and need a cardbus slot for a second firewire bus to capture to if needed.

Betsy, I was referring to just copying files from the P2 card to the portable HD, you would still have to import the files via a supported app on a laptop or desktop, but at least you wouldn't have to carry around the laptop while shooting. Some of those setups are small enough to carry around in your shirt pocket.
batteryspace.com has some excellent portable power options too.

Another option not mentioned is the latest crop of Pen oriented Computers, that have the screens that fold down for writing and drawing. I think the latest ones have centrino processors powerful enough for capturing, just make sure you get at least at 5400rpm drive.

Sorry, Pen is old school...tablet pcs is the new term.