If you use the Duel Adapter for P2 data transfers with a Mac laptop, do not upgrade to Snow Leopard. There is no driver to support the card, for that matter, my recollection is that Duel seems to have stopped developing Mac drivers for their card some time ago. There have been lots of complaints about reliability and compatibility with Duel Adapters, but they've been the only game in town if you want to import a single P2 card with your laptop (and not tie up the camera). I personally have not had any issues but there are a lot of complaints out there.
The good news is that Panasonic announced that they will be releasing a single card P2 card reader in Spring 2010. They don't say what the interface will be. Let's hope that somebody makes a Snow Leopard driver for the Duel card before then.
Posts
5 comments:
One of the filmmakers I know on Twitter had this very problem. Glad to hear that from Panny but at the same time, I'm starting to feel P2's a little long in the tooth!
How is P2 more long in the tooth than SxS? It's just one professional storage medium among many. Panasonic has done something that everyone is always screaming about: consistency. Now that they are giving consistency, people are screaming because they haven't come up with something new. I do think that their possible sin was being tone-deaf to the needs/budgets of the indie/no-budget film makers that that came up from DVX's to their HD products.
Their new, improved codec (AVC Intra), is still consistent with the existing workflow. There is no need to buy new storage. The cards are meant for professional use, extreme conditions and virtually unlimited number of uses (the A series, anyways). This is why they are not cheap. Maybe they should have created a cheap, throw-away version.
The biggest advantage of SxS was entirely unintentional: that people would be able to us off-the-shelf flash memory as a replacement.
I don't know about SxS but my stated "feeling" was more of an observation that for the lower-budgeted filmmaker, Panasonic itself is moving away from P2 media, witness the AG-HMC series using SD cards.
I mean if you have the bucks, you could just buy one of their multi-card readers anyway.
I own three working duel adapters. I say "working" because the one I used to have died and I figured I better have backups. I own three because I bought them used and at a good deal, but I am still looking for other alternatives. (I really like the old G4 Powerbook w/PCMCIA slot solution.)
In the end, my cheap compaq PC laptop with a Western Digital MyBook external drive (which can be read by both Mac and PC) have always been my die-hard stand by.
I also can't comment on the people screaming for Panasonic to come up with something new, as I am not aware of that. (Only because I'm not that into the fray.)
Don't get me wrong, I love my HVX and the P2 format and so do a number of my friends. The cameras are quite versatile and the quality is great. I much prefer p2 to any AVCHD workflow, that's for sure.
My comment was more to point to the fact that everything seems to be going in the AVCHD direction.
BTW, the single card reader is here...
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/prc/11907.html
Yeah, saw that. What is hard to understand is why Panasonic is so slow to react to the marketplace with these products. A single card P2 card reader seems like a no brainer and should've been on the market years ago.
Post a Comment