Dumping P2 to a hard drive through the camera
 

The thing that first got me interested in the HVX200 was the ability to dump the P2 cards right to a firewire hard drive through the camera (albeit not real time).

I'm curious as to how well this is working for people, how long does it take to transfer a 4GB card through the camera to a HD? Any problems or issues? Any minimum requirements for the hard drive?

Transfer limit
 

Dylan,

Since all you can do is transfer data from the HVX to an external drive the only real requirements would be that you have a drive large enough to handle the amount of content you want to transfer.

The speed of transfer will vary depending on the fastest data rate of the drive the HVX is connected to; the faster the drive, the faster the transfer so in theory there really is no minimum drive requirement. Remember, we're talking about *simple* data transfer, not capturing.

There is a strange limitation however: since the HVX is the controlling device when in HOST mode it only allows a maximum of 15 transfers to the same drive. After that you'd have to either use another drive or, dump that external drive, wipe it and start again.

There's been no explanation that I've seen as to why this transfer limit was created and I personally don't understand the logic but "it is what it is" and we all just have to learn to deal with it. Maybe in future firmware updates this limit will be greater or better still, just lifted altogether but for now it's a characteristic of the transfer process you need to know about.

Keep in mind, this limitation applies only to HOST mode transfers, not capturing to external devices.

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.

Well Dylan, as I'll be looking at the HVX pretty soon, I've been wondering the same thing. From what I've read, everything that Robert just said is true about the copy restrictions in host mode.

However, the chances are apparently about zero that you'll actually run into the 15 dump limit because there doesn't appear to be a portable Firewire drive on the market that will even stay powered that long. I think the last one that was tested made it through 5 transfers (at 4G each).

I suspect someone could make a lot of money selling a firewire drive enclosure running on standard Pana camcorder batteries. The price for the P2 Store is just too close to the Firestore and Cineporter.

www.philipwilliams.com

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.

Indeed, that seems to be the best solution right now.

In the meantime, if I get my hands on an HVX we'll probably stream live to a PC in the studio and I'll just use a laptop in the field at first. I'm hoping someone comes up with a nice compact battery powered Firewire drive in the coming months, otherwise I might bypass the whole "host drive" option and put the money saved towards a Firestore or Cineporter and be done with it!

Hmm... I didn't know about the 15 transfer limit.

As far as self powered drives, what about using an Ipod as people were talking about months ago? Did anything ever come of that? Small, plenty of power, and a 60GB drive is 15 transfers of 4GB cards...

For travel and such, running it into a laptop, or carrying a large battery pack to run a hard drive is not a viable option for me.

Good question. You may find the following thread a good read. I know you did not ask about the Cineporter, but there's some good info from some experienced forum members on the iPod portion of your question.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...pod+cineporter

Thanks Derek, that was a good read. I'm still liking the iPod, although I'm looking for other low-cost, high volume storage. The Lacie portable Firewire drives would work, now I just have to find a small battery adapter. Or make one......

I'm really wishing Panasonic had just thrown a couple of bucks on the price and provided a powered firewire port. Yes, it would drain the HVX batteries quicker, but batteries are cheap and portable.

www.philipwilliams.com

Or a USB2 port which would open up a ton of other options.

Well, there is a USB2 port.

Just not one that supplies bus power.

In host mode, can you transfer your files off the P2 through the USB (with a powered USB drive)? I'm asking instead of just assuming you can. :)

This limitation is no stranger to me. I'll throw in my ten cents here.

The AG-HVX200 creates a hard drive partition for each P2 card transfer, regardless of the amount of footage or clips on each card. The 15 transfer limit likely (*ahem*) has to do with the limitations of the MBR (Master Boot Record) that is standard on x86-based PCs running MS Windows or Linux. Technically, MBR allows only four partitions, but the fourth partition may be delegated into 12 partitions within itself, which gives us a maximum of 15 partitions. It is no surprise then that the Operating Instructions manual states that the product includes software licensed under the GPL and LGPL (See page 4). If you visit the URL listed in the manual, and go to download the source code, you will notice that the software is based on a.out binaries running under the Linux operating system, which includes some applications and libraries relevant for this camera such as DOS filesystems, Busybox, and PCMCIA controllers. Am I surprised? Not at all.

This means at least a portion of this camera is running some form of the Linux operating system. The file system tools for Linux and DOS, specifically fdisk, allow for the creation of up to 15 partitions on a single hard drive.

So there you have it. Perhaps the next question is whether or not there is going to be a firmware update that allows multiple OP-Atom Content "bins" from multiple cards to reside on a single partition, which to me seems entirely feasible. Panasonic took the easy way out on this part of the design. The need for such a feature is especially important for today's increasingly large hard drive capacities.

Cheers!
Bob

No, because the camera doesn't have a USB Host mode, it's only a USB Device. So the drive would need to be the host.

If you're using a USB2 On-The-Go drive, then yes you can do exactly what you're asking. But the drive has to be the host (hence the On-The-Go requirement).

Ah...
Gotcha.

Thanks Barry!

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

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!

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.

20 minutes.

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.
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.
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.
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.

USB OTG device...
 

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 successfully tried this?
 

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?

any models
 

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

Usb otg failure?
 

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!

Correct.

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

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.

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?

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.

Correction
 

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.

USB On-the-go
 

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.....

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.

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?

It works...
 

With Barry's help, I have gotten the USB OTG drive to work. It was simply a matter of reformatting it on a Powerbook using the MS-DOS option, which is FAT 32. After that the camera recognized the drive and pushing the copy button got it to acquire the files from the P2 cards. The drive mounts on the Powerbook, and footage is unwrapped and opened in FCP according to the white paper workflow that Barry has linked to.

I'm able, therefore, to go out in the field with the camera and a battery powered 60 GB USB OTG drive (total cost: about $130 not including shipping). I can then later return home and offload the files to a firewire drive through the powerbook. So far, no corruption or problems with the files. The only drawback is that you can't confirm the footage is okay until you open it up in the computer (and I only have FCP 4.5 on the laptop, so I can't see it until I get to the desktop). But the system really works and will allow me to take the HVX on a trip tomorrow as planned.

Thanks, Barry!

Nice. I want to do this as well. Where did you buy your USB OTG drive from? What was the price and model?


Thanks


Justyn

Ive been using two of these with my HVX200, and it has worked great. .

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec....iteria=AA30310

suggested by Barry. You can add your own HD or buy one with the enclosure from MWave. This is cheaper than the one previously mentioned in this thread. .You can buy four of these WITH hard drives cheaper than you can buy one P2 card. I use a 60gbdrive. . .

What kind of offload speed are you guys getting with those MWave enclosures?

Mine still hovers around 10 minutes, whereas others are reporting as low as six...

They offer up to 100GB 7200rpm drive. One assumes the faster the drive the faster the copy. In order to really use this on location you need slightly faster than RT. Is that possible?

Ideally, one needs a box like this with 4 drives running RAID 50 for almost 2X greater Xfer rate and redundancy.

Would this allow RT Xfer?

Hitachi has -- or will have a 3.5 1TB 5400rpm drive. Wonder if there are enclosures that take 3.5" drives because that would be cool.

There is a website

www.barefeats.com

it is a great resource for storage solutions... Drive performance and such..

Where to buy in NY
 

Hi,

Yesterday BH told me they finally shipped my camera her to Brazil. Saddly they dont have USB on the go, and they are the only store I know that ships to Brazil. But a friend of mine is going to NY next month, so if anyone could please, tell me some adresses there, where he could buy that enclosure, it would be much apreciated.

advices on the best enclosures and hard drives for this purpose are also welcomed.

Thanks,

Pedro

Pedro

EBAY!!!!

There are lots there, and I'm sure many will ship to you.

The only time I tried to buy something at ebay it never got here. Since I have a friend going to NY next week, I would still like the address of a store where i could buy that. But thanks for the tip.

Pedro

Funny, I shipped a payment to an Ebay seller in Brazil once, it showed up 8 months later. I had long forgotten about it until nearly a year after, the item showed up in my mail, one day before I moved out of that address. I'd definitely use something with a tracking number next time.