When you are all finished importing and logging clips, you should eject the SxS card volume from your desktop like you would any other disk. At that point you can unplug the USB cable from the camcorder and format the card(s) if you wish. One odd thing that happened to me more than once...after renaming a card, transferring clips and then ejecting it (and waiting a few seconds before unplugging the USB cable), the camcorder would sometimes display that it needed to do a Rebuild. This process took all of about 2 seconds to complete, and I never figured out why it would do this. It seemed to happen about 50% of the time for me. I never lost a clip, and haven't seen corrupted or odd files yet (though I do have about 55GB of video to review still, so perhaps we'll find something at a later date). I am assuming it had something to do with renaming the cards on import, as it seemed to start doing this after adopting that workflow. I would appreciate some feedback or explanations from other EX1 users who have experienced the same behavior.
The EX1 clips edit in FCP just like any other long-form GOP format. Not blazingly fast on my 2.7 DP G5, but I certainly get realtime playback with color correction and limited effects. The only real complaint I have is some odd behavior with bins containing a large number of XDCAM format clips...at perhaps 40-50 clips in a bin, the UI will start acting a little wonky. When you select a clip, the clip above it selects instead of the one you clicked on. It's not unusable, but it's really irritating. I have seen this behavior in two of my dozen or so project bins. I haven't figured this one out yet, any helpful tips would be appreciated.
Overall I am pleasantly surprised with the XDCAM Transfer utility and import/logging/performance in general. The UI is useful and performance on my system was snappy. Clips load and preview quickly, and creating subclips is a simple three-click process. USB import directly from the camera isn't particularly fast at 10 min for a full 8GB card. Assuming you've got 30 minutes of footage on a 8GB card you are looking at 3x faster than realtime. However, ExpressCard slot transfers are much faster, so MacBook users have a definite advantage. For P2 users the workflow should be very simple to pick up, and those used to tape will appreciate the ability to non-linearly grab and import scenes and subclips from a card without capturing/importing the whole thing.
Thanks again to both DSC Labs (www.dsclabs.com) and Midtown Video (www.midtownvideo.com) for making this EX1 test series possible. Check out our EX1 link page (www.freshdv.com/go/ex1/) for more test results.
-MJ
