I have had no problems with the external firewire box made by Granite Digital (GD). You buy the bare drive, place it in a GD enclosure and slide it into the drive box. It's even hot swappable. I always buy the fastest IDE bare drives I can. Last one was a 7200 rpm. I have heard that some of the laptop internal drives are only 4200 rpm. What also appears to matter is the "bridge" or transfer protocol. An Apple guy demoing FCP4 said the Oxford 911 bridges are the most reliable, and that's what the Granite Digital uses.

Since bare drives are getting so darned cheap, I've started buying a new drive for each new project and keeping it online, rather than erasing the drive. That way, if there is a change a couple of months, a year, later, it is no trouble to load the whole project back into the box and make changes.

LS-A

I dont own DVDSP as of yet but yes it will allow over 90 min for it lets you adjust the bit rate when convering to mpeg2. I'm sure some of the DVDSP users here can give a more in depth answer on this.

Sounds like a lot of double talk to me, Charles. Some models had a separate FireWire connection on the board. I think this has been done away with.

The Oxford 911 bridge board set the standard for FireWire 400. Oxford has a new chip set out for FireWire 800, the 922. Indigita (http://www.indigita.com/) is also doing great work on a FireWire RAID card that is said to offer best of class performance.

Any IDE drive can be paired up with an enclosure. Good enclosures can be had at OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/), Granite, (http://www.granitedigital.com/) and Weibe Tech (http://www.wiebetech.com/). For comparisons look at Bare Feats (http://www.barefeats.com/)

Sounds like the sales droid is just under the impression that retail firewire drives that are "pre-built" are somehow technologically different than firewire enclosures that allow you to buy the drive separately.

Examples include the Maxtor or Western Digital "drive in a box" packages that are already housed, versus a Pyro box and an OEM drive that you just toss in. They're really no different, everybody uses the same tech on the inside, as described in the above posts. About the only difference I can think of is that usually you can get a better deal on the empty enclosures and an add-in drive.

No, the iMovie transitions only work in iMovie. But, as you have already figured out you can export and import your footage between the two programs.

AE plugins are available through many small companies. Use Version Tracker (http://versiontracker.com/) to search for various plugins.

Many people feel that Joe's Filters (http://www.joesfilters.com/) are an essential for FCP. Joe is also a member here at DV Info.

I don't remember what that does. So I guess that shows how often I use it. I am away form the office for a few weeks and I don't have FCP on my laptop. You can use the help function, within FCP, to find your answer. Sorry to pass the buck. Anyone else remember what it does?

DVD SP is limited only by the total size of your project, bit rate you choose and the media you are going to. General Authoring media is limited to around 4.3GB of data. I know the disc says 4.7GB but it's the difference between bits and bytes. There are also some files that need to be present as part of the DVD spec and these take up 100mb or so.

Could anyone tell me if iMovie2 can capture more than one channel (audio)? If yes, how?

Thank you.

Anybody?

Doesn't my question make sense?

I don't use iMovie, but to the best of my knowledge it captures a left and right channel (channel 1 and channel 2). It should do it as a part of the normal capture. iMovie help indicates that iMovie uses 3 tracks, one video and two audio.

If it doesn't capture to both tracks it may leave one track for music and sound effects.

When feeding two separate channels of audio off a miniDV tape via firewire into imovie2, does it end up mixing the two down to one channel or am I missing something here? For separation of two channels, do you have to go to FCP or can imovie do that? If so, how?

Lynne, I posted the same question today myself, but haven't gotten any solid answers yet.

Hope someone will respond to your threat with THE answer.

Hi I'm new to the forum so if this question has already been asked please forgive me. I'm using FC3.01 and upuntil now I've been working on an NTSC system. Well due to some technical reading and a good deal on ebay I've sold my XL-1 NTSC and bought a PAL xl-1 but I"mhaving hella problems with FCP. First I noticed that when i was importing video in NTSC that was 16:9 the program went ahead and letterboxed it for me but would not do that when I imported the footage in PAL. I played around with my settings and switched everything over to PAL but now either my program won't load or when it does it won't read my camera a a deck, I know that the camera works because I was usigng ti to import footage before I started messing around with it. Has anyone else made this switch or does anyone have any suggestions?

did you just switch your settings or trash your prefs? I switched from PAL to NTSC and ended up missing one setting and the same thing happened. Try trashing your pref and see if that helps.

I feel like a real twit, turns out I had an NTSC project open with all of my audio vdeo settings switched over to PAL. Opened up a new project with the new settings everything worked perfectly (as happens so often with FCP) even the 16:9 was letter boxed. No just a matter of getting good sound and audio to go into the project...
Thanks Joe.

Man don't worry I was sitting there for 3 days complaining to my wife before I realized I hadnt switched from PAL to NTSC.. It happens...

shot with shutter @ 1/250 under florecent lights, yeah, i kn ow, how could i? shooting kids....makes me in inattentive and crazy.
anyway, how can i take 1 frame and strech it out for 5-10 seconds?
thanks

There is no way of seperating the audio that is imported in from the camera into L & R tracks as far as i know.You can stack audio tracks on top of each other if you need to mix more than 2 seperate stereo tracks.This works pretty well say for a voice over on top of a music track on top of camera audio but if you start overlapping too many tracks its gets complicated telling them apart in the audio timeline.

nevermind, found "freeze frame" function.

Hello,

I was thinking that I would like to monitor the video I work on in FCP. But I have no idea how to go about doing this.

How do I send a video out to a tv monitor from my Mac? Do I need to get another video card with composite or s-video outputs? How would I send just the preview from FCP to that output?

please steer me in the right direction. Thanks.

Hi Ricardo

Firewire cable out of mac into your camera then, video and audio cables (RCA) out of camera and in to TV with RCA inputs.

good luck
Scott

You can also get a second PCI video card that has s-video out, like you suggest. I have a Radeon 7000 Mac edition that I sometimes use for this. It supports two monitors each with independent resolutions. So, I can actually use 3 or 4 screens: 21" studio display connected to the G4's original AGP card, 15" LCD connected to the Radeon 7000's VGA port, and s-video to a 27" Sony WEGA. I often use a switchbox to toggle the WEGA between my camcorder's s-video (via firewire) and the Radeon, but I could actually connect a 4th monitor to the camcorder.

In FCP, under the external video setting you can choose either of the Radeon's screens or firewire. The PCI card cost a bit over $100.

My friends G4 just decided not to recognize his firewire any more. He tried connecting more than one camera and iFilm doesn't detect it. I also believe he checked in the device manager (or whatever the mac equivalent is) and it doesn't see the port. No settings were changed, nor were any new software/hardware installed. The only thing he did recently was remove the firewire cable. I don't see how that could cause the Mac to not be able to connect to any cameras or not detect the port?! Any advice in what he can do? Thanks in advance!

Probably the first thing to check is the cable itself. It is possible to fry a firewire port but a bad cable seems to be a more likely culprit.

I was having all sorts of problems getting a firewire drive to be recognized until I switched cables.

Thank you, guys.

Anyone know of good NLE software that will run in Spanish? Could be Mac or PC I suppose, although I think they are using Macs now. This is for a friend teaching video among indigenous folk in Guatemala.

Avid has multi language support

Thanks Richard - I'll pass that along.

Hey everybody,

First of all I like to say hello to everybody out there. this is my first post in the forum and I am excited to be in this DV world.

I have a G4 Mac and a TRV900...recently my camera got busted because of a firewire problem. The service guy at the store told me that the my G4 powermac with OS10 is burning out my firewire circuit in my DV camera because of the high voltage from my Mac being delivered to my camera DV firewire inputs.

I like to ask if anybody has a suggestion or advise on this. Does that means that in future I cannot connect my MAC to my camera anymore? This is distressing for me as I just bought the MAC machine and is looking forward to begin my editing career.

Thanks.

Regards,
Daniel

Daniel...

Check to see if the G4's firewire ports work with anything else just to rule out the G4. If it's able to mount external drives or other cameras then you know the problem is definitely the camera.

There's no way for the G4 to zap your camera through the firewire cable, unless there's a major problem with the cable you're using.

The G4 has a 6-pin socket which does supply power. However, the camera's socket is 4-pin, which is identical to the 6-pin except that there's no provisions for power.

Apple was among the first to adopt the firewire standard and, as far as I've experienced, all of them work as advertised. I have three Macs here at home and several more at work. None have had the problem you describe. I've connected an XL1, XL1s, Sony deck, Kodak DCS 620x, external hard drives and a Canon Elura without incident.

You might want to check with a store that provides Apple repair service to make sure it's not the G4.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

I have been experimenting with Plugins lately too. I have bought Joe's Filters, Virtex Filters and the big one BCC (Boris Continuum Complete) I got the Motion pack that includes Boris RED too.
BCC you can install into AE and FCP and RED too. RED is like AE but I'm still trying to get my head around it. New version or RED out soon too. I think I'd like Final Effects too but it is quite expensive here compared with BCC. i think their site is www.borisfx.com

Is there a program that converts swf to avi, with the wav sound, that can be easily used in premiere? (other than using quick time, and seperately getting the sound)

If you have the original .fla file you can export it as an .avi in Flash MX. I think Flash 5 will do it to, but not Flash 4 or earlier.

Daniel, you might also inspect the cable. I saw a cheap cable bend the pins on a Sony D8 4pin port, effectively disabling the port and shorting out the PC firewire card. (Luckily, it wasn't my camera, cable, or PC...). When in doubt, replace the cable first.

Anyone know of a confirmed shipdate for FCP4 yet?

From the Apple web site -

Enhancements in QuickTime 6.3
Support for 3GPP, the new standard for multimedia on wireless devices, including:
AAC and AMR audio
MPEG-4 and H.263 video
3G Text
Native .3gp file format support (available via the 3GPP Component, a free download at apple.com/quicktime/download)
Playback of .amr and .sdv files (available via the 3GPP Component, a free download at apple.com/quicktime/download).
Automatic detection of streaming transport. [?3214344?]
Improved MPEG video playback in Keynote. [3069390]
Significant improvements to DV audio and video synchronization. [3144077, 3178468, 3243786]
Import and playback of Kodak DCS Photo Desk JPEG files. [3171514]

QuickTime Pro users also get access to an enhanced AAC encoder.

Confirmed, no. Thinksecret is reporting June 9.

Hey folks,
I have a fcp project I would like to burn to VCD... I have Cleaner... and I tried it out... its now saved as an MPG file... i burned it to CD. the dvd player recognizes it... plays it.. goes through the time code... but the image stays on the DVD players main window... and no audio... Damn it, Im a filmmaker... all this computer stuff is giving me such a headache! lol Actually... you people have been more then a world of help. I appriciate it so much. With your help I will become supper savy with all this sh#t


Thanks
Michael

Is ther a way to automate stills to the timeline with a default transition between each in FCP3 like there is in Premiere? Or do you have to add the transition manually between each still?

dies anyone else notice slower load tiems when playing m2v files? IT's taken me like 5 times as long to open an m2v file as it did in quicktime 6.2

i just got my system online, so naturally, the first thing i do is download the OSX upgrade combo. Have lost the viwer and browser windows off my 2nd (left side) monitor. computer seems to see it in prefrences. also, mouse now move in opposite direction.

any one? and thanks.

nevermind, again.

There is always a way.

Drag your still from your viewer to your canvas and drop it on either Overwrite with Transition or Insert with Transition. FCP 4 should allow an even easier button or quick key to be assigned.

To semi-automate the operation, lay in a series of stills onto your timeline. Then, making sure your playhead is set to the beginning of the series, select the series in the timeline (dragging a marquee around them is the easiest way) and drag them up into the canvas, until you see the option "Overwrite: With Transition". Drop you selection here. Back on your timeline, you will see all of your stills with your default transition set in place (likely a cross dissolve, but you can change it under the Effects menu).

As an additional note on this, remember that any sequence can work as a template for future work. If you find you regularly create a series of stills with the same motion, effects and transitions, keep that sequence as a template (ie duplicate it, and call it "My favourite transitions". You can then simply copy from another still, and paste attributes, content into a still in the sequence you want to change. Only the content changes, not the parameters you had set previously. Repeat for the rest of the stills. I am sure you can see how this "a Sequence is a Template" technique has some far ranging implications, especially for people who produce wedding videos or other projects that are likely based on templates.

Good luck. Hope this was helpful.

Thanks, Duane. That's exactly the info I was looking for. Not as simple as Premiere, but certainly not difficult either. I've discovered over the years that no matter what the editing system there is usally a way to do what you want, sometimes it just requires a workaround! Again, thanks for the assist.

Jeff, take a look at the posting I made again as I thought a little longer and revised my original post. It just keeps getting simpler.

I was under the impression that FCP 3 in OS X did not support AE plug ins. Can someone let me know if my understanding is correct or not? Preferably someone using a specific AE plug-in describing what version of FCP 3 they are using and what version of OX X.

There are programs that can record (to an avi) changes that
occur on your screen (these tools are usually used to make
instruct videos to learn someone else a tool). These might do
what you want if you can't find any other way...

Thanks again, Duane. Worked like a charm!

Somewhere... there is a question in there! What settings did
you use in Cleaner?

After Effects 5 can import SWFs and export AVIs. I've never used it to convert one to the other before though.