In our facility we've been getting alot of P2 content lately from a production house that records P2.  Their camera has two P2 card slots, and sometimes a single take gets recorded across both cards.

When this happens, Avid has difficulty properly importing any P2 media that spanned both cards.  I've done a lot of searching on this forum, and I'v seen some other threads where this issue came up, but I have yet to see a solution.  One poster mentioned this problem was fixed in version 5.7.5 of Xpress.  So i checked it out on our copy of 5.8 and sure enough, it works fine in Avid Xpress 5.8.  But on our Media Composer 2.8 machines, it still doesn't import these properly.

Is this an oversight on Avid's part?  Or am I missing something?

-j

(fyi:  all of our P2 media is transfered to a single firewire HD before importing into bins.  We currently are forced to use FCP in our workflow, because it properly handles these files as well.)

Let me send this up to avid and see what they say about the difference between 'Pro and MC.

Let me send this up to avid and see what they say about the difference between 'Pro and MC.

Media Composer 2.8 and Xpress 5.8 handle P2 exactly the same. In fact, this part of the code is identical between the versions. I checked with engineering and there are no known issues with Media Composer 2.8 and importing spanned clips. My guess is there is some other factor.

Is this media from a FS-100 or P2 cards? There is a known issue with the way the FS100 writes the MXF header that isn't the same as the camera.

You only need to import both virtual P2 cards into the same bin for a spanned clip to link up. Make sure there aren't any '/' in any of the folder or drive names. As a test, could you try copying folders with spanned clips to the desktop and import them? With the Media Composer not running, is there a Folder titled P2 in the Media Composer application folder? If so, delete it. The Media Composer creates a tempory database for the P2 cards that should be deleted when the application is closed. Before importing a virtual P2 card, try unmounting (clip - unmount) any cards you've already imported.

Bob

www.avid.com/p2

Thanks Bob, 

Can we ask. Did you recreate this for us? If so, can you tell us what system you used and how you prepared the P2 footage?

Guys, I asked Bob to jump inhere 'cause he really is the workflow expert. Hopefully he'll walk us through this and we can figure out the problem.

Thanks for looking into this.  My room is booked right now, and will test this out again hopefully later this afternoon.

Welp, got my room back, and wouldn't you know, it works fine on MC 2.8.  Chalk this one up as user error.

My guess is I must have not imported P2 media from both cards which were spanned during my initial test.

Thanks to BLKDOG and Bob for the efforts.  

-j

Sweet. Well glad it's up and working for you.