A P2 card is a solid-state memory device that plugs into the PCMCIA slot of a Panasonic P2 video camera, such as the AG-HVX200. The digital video and audio data from the video camera is recorded onto the card in a structured, codec-independent format known as MXF (Media eXchange Format). Specifically, Adobe Premiere Pro supports the Panasonic Op-Atom variant of MXF, with video in DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD formats. A clip is said to be in the P2 format if its audio and video are contained in Panasonic Op-Atom MXF files, and these files are located in a specific file structure.

The root of the P2 file structure is a CONTENTS folder. Each essence item (an item of video or audio) is contained in a separate MXF wrapper file; the video MXF files are in the VIDEO subfolder, and the audio MXF files are in the AUDIO subfolder. The relationships between essence files and the metadata associated with them are tracked by XML files in the CLIP subfolder.

The video and audio on a P2 card are already in a digital form, as if the P2 card were a hard disk, so there is no capture step involved in importing media from a P2 card. The process of reading the data from the card and converting it to a format that can be used in a project is sometimes referred to as ingest.

For your computer to read P2 cards, you must install the appropriate driver, which you can download from the Panasonic website. Panasonic also provides the P2 Viewer application, with which you can browse and play media stored on a P2 card. See the Panasonic website for details: http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_pp_panasonicp2.