I’d like to add to Mike’s post a bit because what we love about our workflow is our P2 camera — and not really P2 per se. To be fair, we don’t use P2 files that much in our workflow due to some of the insufficiencies that Barry has documented quite well. What we do love is the combination of the HVX-200 and Focus Enhancement’s FireStore FS-100. We record DVCPROHD QuickTime movies to a the small portable hard drive via the firewire out of our HVX-200. We simply then transfer the files from our FireStore onto the XRAID or our MacBook Pro and we’re good to go. It is absolutely brilliant.

There have also been some recent software improvements that have helped our workflow. Recordings of individual QuickTime files are limited to 2GB each….so if you had a recording which was long, it was split across multiple movies. This made multicam shoots quite a pain. With the recent 4.0 release, you can create reference movies directly on the FireStore which link the 2GB file original recordings into one long clip.

Of course, this is not fully unique to the HVX200 or Panasonic — it can be had for JVC and Canon cameras via their other FireStore products, though without DVCPROHD support.

The FireStore capability makes up for what I consider quite poor P2 support in Final Cut Pro. In fact, the reason we’re using the FireStore is due to the implementation in FCP. Instead of using the media files directly, you must take time to convert each and every clip into QuickTime…and also lose much of the metadata that is available in the P2. While I honestly don’t care that much about losing the metadata (though many do), I despise the conversion time and duplication of media that occurs. Why can’t we simply use the media directly?

As Mike points out, our experiences have been great with the Firestore. We put out a ton of material each week via fxphd and fxguidetv. Over one weekend, we recorded over 40 hours of footage with multiple cameras at the VES Festival of Effects — try doing that on P2 cards. No thanks. We haven’t had problems with the firewire cable coming out of the HVX200 in the field. We’ve had no corruption. Maybe its because we’re not doing a ton of run and gun shooting which might dislodge the cable…who knows.

But we love it. Love love love it. We couldn’t be doing what we do without it.