Workflow with the HVX-200 and the P2 Card in post

---Editor's note- I wrote up a few postings about my experience doing the Baltimore 48 Hour Film Project but I need to revise them. Deal with techno mumbo jumbo for now----

I know, I know, you’re all jumping out of your seats with the same question- How does one work with this media in post? Thankfully, I have some answers. (Disclaimer- I am not an expert, so don’t blame me if things don’t work out for you using my methodology. I’ve only done this once. Hopefully many more however. Anyway.)

So you’re about to work on a shoot with these cards. Your presence on set has been requested, something to which you’re not used to. Editor? On set? Is hell experiencing a cold front? No, but you’ve got the equipment, or will soon, to handle the media that comes from the camera’s cards. Being on set also gives you an advantage- if the cards come to you fast enough, and this stuff is storyboarded out enough, you might potentially catch errors the script supervisor or director don’t catch and can get them to shoot another take. Or get more pickups. Or invite the DP over to beam in the bask of his lovely footage from his lovely camera.

Right, anyway, so what do you do? Follow some steps here, and you should be alright.

1- Have the latest OS update on your machine.
2- Have the latest version of Quicktime on your machine.
3- Probably the most important- have the latest version of Final Cut on your machine. Right now it’s 5.1.1.
4- Download the P2 driver from Panasonic’s website and install on your machine.
5- If you will be working on anything other than a PowerBook, get yourself a card adapter.

Now that your machine is taken care of, time to make sure you have 2 external drives. Why 2? Here’s where listening to the workflow method I’m about to lay down here is very fucking important.

Have a clean drive handy. Make a bunch of folders labelled P2Card 1, P2Card 2, and so on.

When you slap the card into your laptop, you care going to copy the contents of the card (that’s everything on the card, don’t forget that lastclip.txt or you will be screwed for the most part) over to the external hard drive with the folders you’ve pre-made. Once copied, kick out the card. It’s easier for the DP or Camera Operator to delete the cards in camera.

Now, you’ve got the card contents on 1 external drive. Hook up the second external drive. Set your capture scratch to the second drive. Open up FCP and choose File/Import/P2 card and navigate to the P2Card media you’ve just copied over. Import all the shots you want. Final Cut Pro is transcoding the files from the P2 card to quicktimes (they’re MXF files before that). The first hard drive acts as your “tape” and the second hard drive is the one you edit from. This way, in theory, your “tape” is safe in case the other drive dies or something. And if you really wanted to be safe, you would burn DVD backups of the media on another computer.

Check out Creative Cow for really good support and information on the camera, and there’s a tutorial you should check out which is basically what I’ve just typed out. In the link. So don't be lazy.