Panasonic P2 Handheld Camcorder Understanding P2 Workflow: Matrox Axio Systems - Page 5

That said, a sole camera operator can easily manage data transfers and shooting simultaneously with minimal P2 cards and a P2 Store/P2 Card Reader/ Firestore device. P2 cards not currently being written to can be hot-swapped and offloaded to the P2 Store during active shooting. For those using other types of portable storage systems, Panasonic states: "In order to provide compatibility across multiple Operating Systems and computer platforms and non-linear editing systems, we suggest purchasing BUS powered disk drives that are already formatted FAT 32." Acquisition in the Studio This is where the P2 workflow really begins to rock your world! Most video editors are familiar with the mundane task of logging tapes, making edit decision lists and capturing or batch capturing. These tasks are all but done away in a tapeless environment. With P2 MXF editing, the only task similar to tape-based editing is setting in/out points on each clip-but first things first. Following in-field acquisition and transfer to portable storage devices, the next step is file transfer to the non-linear editing system. P2 MXF files can be transferred directly from the camera (in USB mode) or from portable storage devices. For USB transfer the P2 camera must have its PC MODE set to USB DEVICE. For an AG-HVX200, this setting is found in CAMERA MENU> 9. OTHER FUNCTIONS>PC MODE (Figure 4). Once this mode has been set, the user prepares the camera to be seen by the computer as a USB device as follows; 1) set the camera's Media switch to "P2" (Figure 5); 2) connect the camera to the computer via USB cable; 3) turn the camera on; 4) press the Mode button to switch the camera to its VCR mode; 5) press and hold the Mode button for 2 seconds- the EVF display will then indicate "USB DEVICE CONNECT" (Figure 6) on the EVF screen. The camera's P2 cards will now be seen as separate drives by the computer. The P2 workflow requires acceptance of another editing paradigm-that each P2 card must be treated as its own standalone folder and file structure. You cannot create a single P2 card CONTENTS folder and dump all other P2 footage into it. If you did so, you would overwrite each P2 card's unique "LASTCLIP. TXT" file and possibly the rare clip that might have a similar name Figure 4 to some other clip. Even inside the P2 Store, you'll quickly see that it's not just one large hard drive, but rather a group of partitions or logical drives. Each P2 card stores separately to each of these drives. Transferring the contents of P2 cards into a PC-based editing system requires the P2 editor to create/ name a "New Folder" for each P2 card. This folder naming process is where the wise editor can begin to create a searchable database. Each editor can  Figure 5