Cinematic Arias

First, a warning to save often. I had written a massive post on this subject but wasn’t saving regularly. When I finally did, my wi-fi was down and I got the “try again” message. I hit “reload” and everything was gone.

Frustrated and angry, I’ve decided to blog using short bullet points.

Recently I was hired to AC (1st & 2nd) a shoot using the HVX200 and P2 cards. Here’s what I learned:

• Panasonic recently released a 16 GB P2 card. That gets you 16 minutes at 1080i (this project’s format).
• You need a driver for your Mac and Final Cut Pro to see the new 16 GB P2 card. Otherwise they won’t show up.
• The P2 records MXF (Material Exchange Format) files but ingesting the data into FCP will place them in a Quicktime wrapper. Note: you must bring in all the metadata, not just the “video” or “audio” content in the MXF, for FCP to see your footage.
• “Incomplete” clips aren’t really incomplete. They’re clips that span over two P2 cards. Ingest the data from both cards at the same time and FCP will make them into a contiguous/”spanned” clip.
• You may find “spanned” clip on a single P2 card. Don’t worry. Because the cards are formatted FAT32, no single file can be over 4 GB. Therefore, continuous shots over 4 minutes long in 1080i are stored as two files. When you ingest this footage into FCP, the clip will appear as one contiguous shot.
• We were shooting 1080-24pA (that’s 1080 vertical lines of hi-definition resolution at 24 frames per second shooting progressive with an advanced pull-down of 3:2:2:3) but we’re actually recording 1080-60i (60 interlaced fields per second), as if we were laying down to tape. The HVX200 can record 24p-N (24 frames per second shooting progressive in the native frame rate – no duplicated frames and no pull-down required) but only when shooting 720p.
• The filmmakers rented a P2 Store and it stayed in the box the whole weekend. Why? First, we had a G4 Powerbook (with PCMCIA slot for the P2 cards) and two 320 GB G-Raid drives to store and back up the data. Second, because of a hardware glitch, although the P2 Store is USB 2.0 capable with Macs it can only transfer at USB 1.1 rates. That means a 3:1 ratio and 48 minutes to copy 16 minutes of footage is just plain stupid.
• The filmmakers should have rented a Firestore FS-100. It’s a 100 GB portable hard drive that connects directly to the camera via firewire. I’ve only heard two complaints about this device. First, when it heats up the fan can be obnoxiously loud. Second, all reports indicate that you can’t record in the “native” format (although the manufacturer says they’ve repaired this with a firmware update). Still, this point would have been moot on our set as we were shooting 1080i and the “native” frame rate is only an option when recording 720p.
• Although some people suggested we use HD Log or P2 Genie to transfer the data from P2 card to our hard drives, I transfered material using the old fashioned method of “drag and drop”. It worked fine.

In the end, I found this workflow to be incredibly addicting. There’s nothing more satisfying than watching dailies 30 minutes after they were shot. What’s more, someone could have edited the first day’s footage by the middle of the second day. Amazing. After this experience, I’m 93% positive I want to use this camera to shoot my thesis; that remaining 7% of uncertainty is in regards to the camera having a 1/3″ chip instead of a 2/3″ and my desire to use prime lenses.