Dumping P2 to a hard drive through the camera

[Paul Chiappini]

Just to be clear -- if using USB-OTG there is no 15-transers limit. Correct?

[Gene Brockhoff]

We are getting 2 4gig P2's. We are shooting some b-roll in 720/24pn. That's what about 16-20 minute's (I don't know the math exactly) We would go to the firewire drive be it at home or in coffee shop or in our car, with an adapter, where we can plug it in, and dump the footage, clear the P2 cards and resume shooting right. Am I missing something? So the drive can only have 15 transfers which would be about 16-20 minutes per P2 x15 transfers = 225-300 minutes of 720/24pn. So in order to get more footage onto that drive we would need to what? Re-format? Or just clear the footage from it? Also, it sounds like a 160 gig drive would work for this workflow. This sounds like a do-able workflow for us. Please tell me I got this right!

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Paul Chiappini

Just to be clear -- if using USB-OTG there is no 15-transers limit. Correct?

Correct. You could use a terabyte drive and fill it all up.

Also, with the firewire offloading, it creates partitions the size of the card. With USB-OTG, it just allocates enough space to copy however much is on the card, so if you've only filled up half the 4GB card before offloading, it'll only take up 2GB on the USB drive.

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Gene Brockhoff

We are getting 2 4gig P2's. We are shooting some b-roll in 720/24pn. That's what about 16-20 minute's (I don't know the math exactly)

20 minutes.

We would go to the firewire drive be it at home or in coffee shop or in our car, with an adapter, where we can plug it in, and dump the footage, clear the P2 cards and resume shooting right.

Correct. Although I find it much more useful to offload to a laptop, where you can also use the P2 Viewer program to review your clips. But a firewire hard disk is an option.

So the drive can only have 15 transfers which would be about 16-20 minutes per P2 x15 transfers = 225-300 minutes of 720/24pn.

20 minutes per card if you're using 8gb's, so that would give you 300 minutes. But if you're using 4gb cards then it's 10 minutes per card, for a max. of 150 minutes.

So in order to get more footage onto that drive we would need to what? Re-format? Or just clear the footage from it?

If you want to keep using that drive, you'd have to copy the contents onto your editing system and then reformat your transfer drive.

Also, it sounds like a 160 gig drive would work for this workflow.

If you're using 4gb cards, the most you can use for firewire offloading is 60gb. No need to get a 160. If you're using 8gb cards that number jumps to 120gb.

[Paul Chiappini]

I just received a response from Macally regarding:

http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/stor...hr_250otg.html

They claim 2 to 2.5 hours of continuous use.

[Bill Noland]

Originally Posted by Paul Chiappini

I just received a response from Macally regarding:

http://www.macally.com/spec/usb/stor...hr_250otg.html

They claim 2 to 2.5 hours of continuous use.

Has anyone used the USB 2.0 On-The-Go method with the HVX 200? If so, what is the download time for a 4 GB card? Also, can anyone recommend a specific 60 or 100 GB 2.5" internal drive known to be especially reliable?

[Charles Marshall]

you would reccomend as far as on the go hard drives that would act as host

[Pedro Faerstein]

Barry, my only concern with the usb otg solution is that you wouldn´t be able to check if the content was recorded well (right?). With a firewire solution you should be able to see the footage recorded there using the hvx 200. Has the usb otg failed you? 100% success in all the transfers?

Does anybody have a good firewire, either battery or ac powered, solution (not counting the ipod)?

My camera will be getting here in Brazil soon, and I need to decide which way i'm going.

Bring in da noise!

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Pedro Faerstein

Barry, my only concern with the usb otg solution is that you wouldn´t be able to check if the content was recorded well (right?).

Correct.

With a firewire solution you should be able to see the footage recorded there using the hvx 200.

Not really, no. You can see that there is a directory on the hard disk, but you can't see the footage on it. It is for this reason, and others, that I say a laptop computer is approximately 1,000 times more useful than direct drive offloading.

Has the usb otg failed you? 100% success in all the transfers?

No failure, 100% success in all transfers, but I've only done about 20 or so.

Does anybody have a good firewire, either battery or ac powered, solution (not counting the ipod)?

Not really. I've only found two battery-powered hard disk enclosures that use firewire; one is the QuickStream which is in my opinion a decidedly not-too-reliable product, and the other is a no-name enclosure that actually works well but the battery is drained after just five cards, so it's not a very useful solution.

AC powered is a whole different story, you can use any AC-powered firewire enclosure. Just make sure it has the Oxford 911 chipset for high transfer speeds. And don't spend a lot of money getting a too-big drive; if you're using 4gb cards the max. the camera can take advantage of is 60 gb per drive; if you're using 8gb cards the max. it will take advantage of is 120gb per drive, so don't go spending extra in getting a 300gb drive because you can't use the extra space.

[Jaser Stockert]

barry,

what do you mean 60gb is max for the 4gig card? are you saying that once transferring up to 60gb of footage, the p2 card cannolonger transfer footage to that drive unless it is reformatted? ie: tranfer 60gig, erase drive, repeat?

[Barry Green]

The camera allocates a new partition on the drive for each card transferred.

The camera's OS only allows for a max of 15 partitions per drive.

Therefore, if you're using 4gb cards, the most you'll be able to use on a drive is 60gb (15 partitions of 4gb each). Or, if using 8gb cards, you should be able to use 120gb.

[Robert Lane]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

This limitation has direct consequences on just how much footage you can shoot if you only have one drive to transfer to. Here's some examples of what I'm referring to:

Let's say you only have (1) 4gb card to shoot with and you're shooting 720p/30PN which gives you approximately 8 minutes of record time. That means with the 15-transfer limit you can only shoot and transfer a total of 2 hours of footage to the same drive.

However, using the same shooting scenario above except now you have (2) 8gb cards to work with. Now you have about 32 minutes of total shooting time before the cards fill up, and with the transfer limit a total of 8 hours of footage transfer to one drive. That's a significant difference.

Keep this in mind for your shoot planning and do the math based on your P2 media size.

I'm correcting myself on this one: The camera equates (1) P2 card as 1 HDD partition in the transfer - even if you're using 2 cards at the same time, the camera does NOT transfer both cards at the same time into one partition. That was my mistaken assumption. 1 P2 Card = 1 HDD Partition on FW transfer.

Which means that my math above about using (2) 8GB cards is over-estimated by double; the actual maximum time that can be transferred with 8GB cards is 4 hours, not 8.

So, that means if I want to keep the same workflow that I've planned (and the simplicity of not having a PB on set) then I'd need 2 separate HDD's to get my preferred maximum of 8 hours transfer before the HDD would need to be wiped.

This just makes the Cineporter potential all that more viable and cost effective - one massive P2 device and no transfer limit worries.

[Bill Noland]

I am trying to cobble together a temporary workflow using a battery-powered USB OTG which is to act as the host in acquiring files from the P2 card. (It isn't practical for me, for the time being, to use either a powerbook or a firewire drive in the field.) The drive is supposed to be pre-formatted. I'm having trouble getting any transfer to occur. It's possible that the HVX is doing its job but I'm not certain. The error LED on the drive lights up not long after the copy button is pushed on the drive. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I may be doing wrong here?

In a possibly related matter, I subsequently tried to connect the drive to my Powerbook, which recognized the drive but didn't mount it. Instead it asked me if I wanted to format it, but when I tried it stalled as it tried to partion the drive.

Any guidance from the many knowledgeable users out there would be most appreciated! I'm getting frustrating because I'm not really getting to test my new camera much.....

[Robert Lane]

Hi Bill,

I have zero experience with any OTG USB device, however it's fussy behavior sounds like the onboard controller doesn't want to communicate. If possible, return and exchange it for another unit or, see if it requires any firmware update/upgrade to address this behavior.

[Scott Auerbach]

Here's a thought (possibly half-baked?)-- I'm not sure what the draw is on a typical external FW drive, but I assume it's not very high. You could probably wire a V-mount or Anton plate (they're available as stand-alone items) to a Xantrex or other micro-inverter, and run the drive off an Antron Hytron brick or other high-capacity battery already in your camera kit (I use them, for example, for Steadicam and my field monitor).

Does this seem reasonable?

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

Philip,

Self-powered battery drives aside there are options for having an external drive with limitless power.

Any typical A/C powered external drive will work for studio shoots. For location work less than $40 gets you a Xantrex X-Power inverter that plugs into a lighter socket of any vehicle to power both camera and external drive.

And, when getting to a car isn't possible because of location restrictions you can also get portable power in the form of large, rechargeable battery packs. They range from $150 to $1500 depending on how much wattage you need and the physical size limitations you may have. These packs often amount to a typical car battery inside an enclosure with a built-in inverter and A/C plugs to plug your devices directly into. Xantrex, Tripp-Lite and others make such packs. However, you won't find them at places like Best Buy or Radio Shack you'll have to go to a specialty electronics store or on-line.