FCP Tips: Using P2 Technology With Final Cut Pro

Recently I had the pleasure of working with some P2 footage in Final Cut Pro. It was a great experience and I learned a few tips along the way that I’d like to share with you. These tips are brought to you by HDvision Studio.

P2 Overview
First of all, in case you’re not that familiar with P2 technology, here’s a quick summary. P2 is Panasonic’s next-generation digital video recording system. It was developed to make production workflows more flexible and uses solid-state P2 memory cards that record video and audio data in the MXF file format.

Why is P2 a big deal? For one, it allows professional video cameras to free themselves of complicated and heavy tape drives with expensive recording heads and mechanisms. This means the cameras become smaller, lighter and more affordable. Secondly, it revolutionized the post-production industry by changing the way we captured material. Since P2 records data in digital file form, you can simply transfer and ingest the footage. As an Editor this is a time-saving feature that I love!

Here’s a closer look at the P2 MXF file structure.

Importing P2 Footage
Let’s begin our Final Cut Pro Tips on Using P2 Technology by looking at how to import P2 footage into FCP.

Final Cut Pro’s P2 Import Window

1. It can be accessed from the FILE menu item, IMPORT, PANASONIC P2…

Here’s what it looks like.



2. Importing is easy. Select your footage location and enter your P2 reel name.
3. The P2 footage will be located in a folder named CONTENTS.
4. If you are importing directly from a P2 card you will see a P2 card icon, inside which is the CONTENTS folder.
5. I found it best to import one P2 folder at a time. Don’t try to import all your footage at once.
6. When you select a volume, the clips will appear in the import window.
7. From here you can preview the clips before selecting which ones to import.
8. When you have made your clip selection click on ADD CLIP TO QUEUE and FCP will start importing them.
9. That’s it. Really!

Import times will average about 8 minutes per 16GB P2 card. Now that’s much faster than capturing from tape!

Archiving P2 Footage
One really important tip I’d like to share with you is the archiving of your P2 footage before you import it into FCP. As I mentioned before, P2 stores it’s data in the MXF file format. Final Cut Pro does not work with MXF natively. Instead it unwraps the MXF data and rewraps it in Quicktime during the import process. This might not be a big deal for some but if you ever need to move your footage to another editing platform, having the original MXF files will be important.

Archiving P2 Footage to a Disk Image

1. An easy way to archive your P2 footage is to put it inside a disk image.
2. Transfer your P2 footage to your computer. (See below for detailed instructions on how to do this.)
3. The P2 cards will appear on your desktop.
4. Open Disk Utility and click on the FILE menu item, then select NEW and click on DISK IMAGE FROM FOLDER…
5. Name your disk image and navigate to your P2 source.
6. Once you’ve create the disk image, it can easily be mounted in order to import to FCP.
7. Make sure to backup your P2 disk image for safe-keeping.

If manually backing up your P2 footage is giving you the creeps, check out P2 Genie, a great little app that can automatically offload your P2 footage to an internal or external drive and can even empty your P2 cards afterwards so you can keep on shooting without wasting time. It’s by the same maker as FCP Rescue.

Transfering P2 Footage
Now let’s take a look at the various ways to transfer P2 footage onto your computer.

Transfering Clips Directly from the Camera

1. One quick way to import your footage into FCP is to go directly from the camera via a FireWire cable.
2. The P2 cards will appear as drives on your desktop.
3. Create a disk image of the P2 cards by following the instructions above.
4. Mount your new disk image.
5. In FCP click on the FILE menu item, then on IMPORT. Select PANASONIC P2… and navigate to your P2 disk image.
6. Remember to eject your P2 cards before disconnecting the camera.

Importing Footage Using a P2 Card Reader or PCMCIA Slot

1. Before using P2 cards it’s always a good idea to make sure they’re write protected.
2. Insert a P2 card into your USB P2 card reader or laptop’s PCMCIA slot.
3. The P2 card will appear as a drive on your desktop.
4. Create a disk image of your P2 card as usual.
5. Mount your new P2 disk image.
6. In FCP click on the FILE menu item, then on IMPORT. Select PANASONIC P2… and navigate to your P2 disk image.

Looking for a way to read P2 cards on your MacBook Pro? Take a look at the DualAdapter, a PCMCIA to ExpressCard adapter from Duel Systems.

Importing P2 Footage That Has Already Been Offloaded to a Harddrive

1. Create a disk image of the P2 footage.
2. Mount your new P2 disk image.
3. In FCP click on the FILE menu item, then on IMPORT. Select PANASONIC P2… and navigate to your P2 disk image.

Alternatively, Panasonic has recently released a Mac version of their P2 Contents Management software. This handy application can help you ingest, view, organize, search and backup your P2 footage.

Organizing Your P2 Footage in Final Cut Pro
Surely I don’t have to tell you that keeping your footage organized is essential to a smooth post-production workflow. A great way to do this with P2 footage is to start off by creating a bin for each shoot day, then a bin for each folder number on the P2 card. This would give you a bin structure similar to: SEP 24 > BIN001, SEP 24 > BIN002, etc.

I also recommend adding a brief description to your P2 clip names to make it easier to find shots. Names like 0018FT and 0023PN don’t give you a whole lot of info about that clip.

Editing P2 Footage
Now that your P2 footage is safely archived, imported and organized, you are ready to edit as you would with any other footage.

One thing to take note of is that since P2 footage can come in a vast array of different shooting formats it’s important to make sure that you’re using the appropriate Easy Setup in FCP. If you’ve made the upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2 you shouldn’t have any problems since it’s open format timeline supports the mixing and matching of different formats.

Sometimes you may receive some footage that was recorded over several P2 cards. Final Cut Pro will not put this footage together for you. You’ll have to manually assemble it into a single clip. This is easily done by looking at the timecode. The timecode from the second P2 card will follow the timecode of the first P2 card and so on.

P2 Project Output
Finally I’d like to touch on the topic of outputting a P2 project. Recently I outputted a P2 project captured in DVCPRO HD and sent it to my client for approval. The problem I encountered was that my client was working on a PC and was unable to playback the DVCPRO HD movie I sent him.

Alot of people assume that their PC is able to playback DVCPRO HD if they’ve installed Quicktime. This is not true. The DVCPRO HD codecs are usually installed on a PC during the installation of video editing software like AVID or Adobe Premiere.

After doing a bit of research I opted to export the project directly from Final Cut Pro as a Quicktime Conversion using the PHOTO – JPEG codec. I found this to be a good alternative when outputting to a PC because of it’s relatively small data rates similar to DVCPRO HD.

When doing this you may have to adjust the size of your movie. For example, when working with 720p footage, the image size is actually 960×720. FCP automatically makes the adjustment to 1280×720. In this case a resize of the movie’s dimensions during the export to HD 1280 x 720 16:9 is needed.

This concludes my Final Cut Pro Tips article on Using P2 Technology. You should now have a better understanding of P2 and the advantages it presents. Happy splicing!