My client shot on P2 cards and transferred his media to a firewire drive.

The drive was brought to my Adrenaline, we connected it via firewire to the Mac's front firewire port.  The media tool saw the drive but could not locate the media. 

So I "import p2 clips" into a bin.  Great, now I can see the material and the clips are in a bin.. A good second start..  However, when I quit Composer and re-launch, Composer does not remember where it found those P2 clips I just imported. They're in the bin, but show up as off-line.  Its a real pain since I have to now re-import p2 clips each time I re-launch the application.  This is becoming a much bigger problem now since more material is being shot and added to additional folders.. 

My workaround for now is to consolidate all the media to my media drives from that firewire drive which ALREADY contains clips.

This seems to defeat the purpose of shooting on p2 if I always have to copy everything to a media drive.  It also doubles my storage requirements.

Anyone else experiencing this?  Is this only a mac problem?

Thanks!

Avid apparently did exactly as you requested.  See "Importing P2 Clips ... " in the built-in help.

Using File > Import P2 > Clips to Bin, will result in the clips being offline everytime you restart.

Using File > Import P2 > Media will copy the media to a location of your choice, using the Media Creation Settings.

 

Yes, this is what I'm saying..  Why on Earth would I want the Avid to forget where the clips were every time I reboot?  I mean, when the application comes back up again, it shows the location where the files were (and in the case STILL are) but Composer wont access them until I re-import the clips.  Remember, the objective here is NOT to import them to a media drive as that defeats the purpose of P2.

"Remember, the objective here is NOT to import them to a media drive as that defeats the purpose of P2"

Where did you hear that was the "purpose" of P2 technology?

Although you "can" edit directly off the P2 cartridges, who has, or can afford, enough P2's to keep "all" your media online while you're editing.  A very standard workflow is to offload the P2's onto DVD's or RAID protected HDD's for safety, and also onto media drives for editing.

I tend to agree with Cutsonly here. The new .7 versions of XPro and MC allow for P2 media to be dumped into a folder on a hard drive which can then be accessed as a "virtual P2" card. This in fact is a very nice workflow because it allows you to DVD archive your P2 cards and have a 1 to 1 correlation between your working media and your archives. If you should ever transcode your media to DNxHD, then you lose the link to your original media and to the best of my knowledge you cannot then relink back to your DVD archives.

I also would like the Avid to remember where I've imported p2 files from so I can keep my media in individually named (and archivable) folders.

Chris

If you want to use the traditional offline/online process, or plan to recapture in the future, you'll need to Transcode at least once.  This will establish the Avid MOB ID's.  MOB ID's are required for linking between the various versions of the media, and their respective sequences.

This is fine example of arrogance. As a user, we want the process to work exactly the way "cutsonly" requests. Its a perfect workflow and saves time moving, consolidating etc. etc. just as connley states. Why wouldnt 'you' want that!? Why is this so difficult?

It only matters if you want to take advantage of Avid database capabilities.  P2 media does not have a Tape Name or an Avid MOB ID.  Both of these are required for a traditional offline/online process.

If you "finish in the box" you can store your P2 media anywhere, and in any way, you want.

Ps - comment was not directed at you personally Randal.

the purpose of Import clip is so that you can preview the clip from the FW drive or P2 card before you spend time importing Media.  I perfer that method over importing everything, then sifting through what i want and what i don't.

 

 

Randall L Rike:

If you want to use the traditional offline/online process, or plan to recapture in the future, you'll need to Transcode at least once.  This will establish the Avid MOB ID's.  MOB ID's are required for linking between the various versions of the media, and their respective sequences.

This is just it, Randall. As far as I can tell, once you've transcoded P2 media, in fact, you lose your connection to the original media. It still doesn't assign a reel/tape/card number to the media and there is no way to relink to the original media ever. In fact, if you ever unlink your media (to assign a source, for instance) you can't relink it.

For this reason I was excited to hear about the virtual drive capability of the .7 release. I thought that we would now be able to put our P2 media in folders and archive the original cards 1 per DVD. If we ever lost media, we could rebuild our folders and restore the project. But having to re-import each card every time you start the project is unworkable.

The other thing I noticed the other day, which horrified me, is that Avid apparently treats transcoded P2 media as a 'precompute." The implications of this are vast: I occasionally throw away precomputes to free up space. I also throw away precomputes if I've been working in SD mode in an HD project so that I can go into HD mode and re-render them all as HD versions. Well, surprise, surprise! I found out if I do that in a P2 project all the media gets thrown away. This isn't so good, in my humble estimation.

It all boils down to the fact that Avid doesn't quite have it all figured out in the world of P2 workflow. I have a meeting with  Michel Rynderman from Avid tomorrow afternoon, and I hope to be proven wrong in some of my findings. If not, I hope Avid will at least listen to my concerns and make some improvements in this area.

Chris

conleec:

t having to re-import each card every time you start the project is unworkable.

Entirely correct and reasonable, Chris. And the Avid P2 pre-compute file methodolgy,while functional, is also a non-starter with regard to reconstructive workflow.

Media management is touted as a strong suit of Avid. Hang onto that as long as you can...

Chris ... how'd your meeting with Michel go?  He spoke at the Avid User's Group also,