"Blessed be the pessimists, for they hath made backups." Exasperations 1:1.

Just unplug after your system went down and DO NOT plug back in till the electrical system is stable and running for a day or two. You will be having brownouts and surges while the entire grid is brought back up online for a while. I placed a call into NY to my friend to let him know that I wanted my servers unplugged till the whole thing is stable and running ( I am in New Orleans ). Being a former electronics tech I am forecasting there will be a massive disaster on the computer and electronics front with this blackout as the electricity beging to flow again. The only way that things will be ok is to remove them from the grid completely untill it is stable. Bringing back a grid to full capacity is a time consuming and dificult process, it takes time to become reliable again. While you are waiting - be shooting some footage. Wait a couple days to plug your expensive equipment back in.

A UPS should be your first line of defense to get you down safely and cleanly unmounted. If you are not using one and not making backups, SHAME ON YOU.

Great reply, Kevin! Do you think, when the power outage happened, that computers got fried, or is it more of when they start coming back up?

heath

It really depends on a variety of factors:

How did the power fail; hard or with lots of surges & sags.

What was the system doing when the power failed: was it doing disk writes (BAD).

What's the best Mac program for cataloguing DV clips? I found FootTrack at the Apple site, but that's the only one. Any others?

Thanks I will read some more, specific to gray scale

I compressed examples from a video I made and got the size down to 2.5Mb per minute. This was with the cable modem preset in compressor. How long is your program?
Also you might want to set it up with a streaming header for easier downloading.

-Brian

Nathan hits the nail right on the head. If you are regularly doing disk intensive work then your really need to be using a UPS. The size of the UPS depends on how long it will take to safely bring your system to a stop. Will the software allow you to stop the render? Can you stop optimizing mid-stream, etc.?

This is the critical point. If you lose power on disk writes you stand a very good chance of major data corruption - possibly even permanent drive damage.

The UPS will also let you get through the brownouts and transient spikes with nary a blip. Either one may cause your computer to decide it needs to reboot - oops. If a portion of a grid goes down you might actually have a spike before you lose power entirely. The spike can damage the CPU, the brownout the data on the disk if you are writing. If the problem is from lightning in the area you can have the electricity work fine but fry your motherboard with a spike coming in through the phone line.

Running a computer, especially an NLE, without a UPS is like playing russian roulette with more than one barrel loaded. Then again, if you start on a long render and then leave, even a basic UPS won't help. It could run out of juice before the render is done or you are back to safely bring the system down.

John,

I have the personal edition of CAT dv.

http://www.squarebox.co.uk/

It does the trick for what I need.

Bill

Thanks for your reply.

My video is approx. 5 min. I got it down to 8 megs.

It is located at www.ransom-rosen.com/mda.html

I would appreciate any feedback from ya'll.

(frogive the dl time, we have a slow connection right now)

THANKS!

I've given up on iDVD 3.0.1.
I had too much trouble with chapter menus. They'd work fine in preview mode, but never worked correctly once burned to a disk.
If you go plain vanilla, use the templates given, and don't do anything custom, then you can get disks to burn and work... (I could).

I'm having less trouble and more fun with DVDSP 1.5.2.
v2.0 should be coming this week. he he hehe. I'm so excited.

Joe, I have made disks using the disk image built by iDVD3 and Toast to burn the disk.

I do not recommend Cleaner 6 for DVDs. It's a fantastic piece of work for web or CD based videos, but the MPEG2 encoder is too slow, and has too many artifacts in fast moving scenes even in the higher bit rates.
The new Compressor with FCP4 does a MUCH better job.

BUT, Cleaner 6 and Compressor only encode your video into MPEG2. They don't let you author a disk. You'll need DVDSP for that...

(To be clear - iDVD authors a disk AND encodes the video.
-Cleaner 6 and Compressor encode Video.
-Toast will burn a pre-authored disk image.
-DVDSP authors a disk, creates a disk image from previously encoded video, and burns an image to disk.
-there IS other software that will do encoding, authoring, and burning; some cheaper, some much better and more expensive, but I don't use them and can't comment on their capabilities.)

First off, I'm still a beginner with this stuff, so please forgive me if I don't get the terminology right...

I recorded some footage on a Canon ZR-70 using 12-bit audio. Did some editing in iMovie, which worked fine. Unfortunately, trying to fine-tune audio problems in iMovie seems close to impossible, so I thought I'd export the edited footage to tape, dump it into FCP and work from there.

Final Cut Pro does not seem to recognize 12 bit audio - it's either 8 or 16 and that's it. So now what? What are my options for changing the audio? Running it through something else? I am very confused!

Also, the tape I exported from iMovie didn't have any sound at all. Apparently the camera reverts to some default setting where it is anticipating incoming analog footage(?). So I've got to re-export the edited footage again after changing the audio settings, and try again.

I was trying to stick with the simple stuff (like iMovie and then straightforward audio tidying in FCP) so I wouldn't end up going through editing hell like I have before (read - in over my head, with a deadline). Alas, for now, it hasn't worked!

Thanks in advance. Y'all are so smart. :)

-Jennifer

I just finished a project that a client had rough cut in iMovie, then I was to add compositing and effects in Final Cut.

Not wanting to re-digitize from the original tapes if I didn't have to, I just exported out of iMovie to disk, then imported THAT file as the source footage for FCP.

I believe that if you export using the Quicktime DV codec, it does not recompress at all. You might also be able to tweak the dialog boxes to still use the DV codec (no recompression), but resample the audio to 16bit. Then FCP should see it fine.

Just go to File>Export Movie and select Quicktime. Look around the dialog boxes and settings, and you should figure it out.

Thanks Scott. Appreciate it.

This is kind of like trying to listen to someone in their native country, speaking to you in a language you learned for a bit in the 8th grade!

I understand about choosing Quicktime DV for exporting. Not sure if I understand what you're saying about resampling the audio to 16 bit. I've got my little Peach Pit Press FCP book and two iMovie books - between those and experimenting with the dialog boxes and settings, maybe I can do a little research tomorrow and figure it out...

Thanks again for your help.

best,
Jennifer

Have you captured the audio yet in either iMove or FCP? If so, what version are you using? FCP can be set-up to capture 12 bit, 32kHZ audio. You just need to change your video settings.

Hello Jennifer,

Final Cut Pro can handle 12-bit no problemo. As Jeff suggested, you need to set up your preferences properly EACH TIME you start a new project or each time you attempt to capture something different than before spec-wise.

Read the following and let us know if you have any additional questions, ok?
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/audio_camera_to_fcp.html

Would love to know more about your project and how you make out! Please do keep in touch.

- don

Thank you so much, Jeff and Don. I am now smacking my forehead gently, going... well, duh!

Good to know that this is possible...

Don, thanks for the link to Ken Stone's article - I printed it out and will keep it next to my computer in the closet (that's really where it is). Interesting professional experiences you've had! I'm especially jealous of all the travel. My father was in both the Air Force and American Embassy, so we spent stretches of time in both Manila and Madrid overseas. I'm itching to move overseas again. Maybe later when my kids are older.

In answer to your question about my project - it's really more of a question of the blind leading the blind... I'm primarily a writer (essays, fiction and non- and am currently writing a screenplay). About three years ago, I decided I wanted to learn more about filmmaking. I thought the best way to do that was to learn together WITH someone. So I bought some equipment and started teaching filmmaking classes to kids. I feel like my storytelling skills are solid, and with each class, I learn more and more about the technical aspects.

I just finished a class teaching DV production to a small group of African American, low-income teens at one of the properties that the organization I work for owns (an affordable housing nonprofit, rich in services for residents to help them get ahead). We shot a short film which will probably only end up being about five minutes long. We're going to add some high-energy, royalty free hip-hop which should add a nice feel to things. We edited as much as we could before the class ended and school started up again. Now it's up to me to finish at home...

My boyfriend helped me get the footage I did have into FCP using an analog in and converting it. Wish I would have seen these posts earlier!

Thanks again to both of you for your help. :)

best,
Jennifer

How big is your movie? If it's really big then bandwidth will be an i$$ue.

My experience with Windows Media Player is that it doesn't always work. It's hard to get WMP7 or higher to work on win95/98 and for other versions of windows they don't always download the right codec (you have to keep trying, which most people don't realize). Quicktime with soreson3 video mpeg4 audio at low resolutions (320 X 240 and under) will play decently on all computers given that the viewer has QT Player 6. If bandwidth is really a concern then I would use a PC (emulator) and encode in divX.

A lot of this depends on your audience (how large and how tech savvy). A safe route would be to do both WMP and QT and give good instructions.

MPEG1 is a good format if you don't mind the low quality. It is the most likely to work. A free program called "movie2mpeg" does a better job of encoding than Cleaner, which is horrid at mpeg1. TMPGENC on the PC is better for encoding MPEG1 I believe. Check out vcdhelp.com

Hi Glenn, thanks for the help. You seem to have quite a bit more experience in this area than me, so I hope you don't mind a few more questions.

I will be assuming my audience to have little tech sense and would therefore like to make the cd as automated as possible. I was really hoping that I could write an autorun file that would allow the client/user to pop in the disc and the computer would do the work from there. Unfortunately, with all of the different formats and codecs and viewers, I'm guessing that isn't too possible right now. I also thought maybe I could include both mac and pc files, but I don't have a program on my mac that will save pc media files. I'm sure there is one out there (I am going to download movie2mpeg right after this message), I just have to locate it.
It would be nice to run a higher resolution, but I think 320x240 will be okay for now. That seems to be the generally accepted size for internet videos, so hopefully it will be okay for this project.
As far as the quality being stuck at mpeg-1 level, I don't know. I'm not very familiar with that compression quality, but by your description I'm guessing it isn't so hot.
Now for the big one... the movie is going to be approximately 30-40 minutes long. I'd like to break it up into sessions, but the producer says no. Hopefully you'll have some pointers as to what format (if its even possible) for that long of a presentation.

Thank you very much for the help.
nicholi

After converting a wav file to AIFF, I'm getting terrible, distorted sound when dropping it into Final Cut. It plays fine in Quicktime. Anybody have an idea what I'm doing wrong? I'm using Quicktime Pro to convert the file.

Is there a mistmatch between settings? The AIFF should usually be 48khz to match DV footage (if the DV footage was shot in 16bit, which it should have been).

I'm using a buddies iMac to edit a wedding video I shot a few weeks ago with a GL2. I'm a PC guy with Premiere and Vegas, but I learned editing on Final Cut Pro 1 back in the day (really a few years ago) so I thought I'd try out this Final Cut Pro Express. The program seems very powerful for its low price. My only problem i've run into is when I am playing my capture tape I see the audio levels move up and down in FCPE, but no sound comes from the speakers. Now if I capture video, then play it, sound is fine. Any idea what the problem is? I went into the MIDI settings and the GL2 did not show up as a device for pass through audio. I'm trying to decide whether to switch to a G5 with Final Cut Pro for all my editing, and small gripes like these make me want to stick with what I know. Any ideas appreciated as usual. Thanks guys/gals..

Michael Botkin

I figured it was something like that! I think I was doing it at 44khz. Thanks a lot!

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/autorun.htm
that should give you some information on making an autorun CD.

MPEG1 is about VHS quality. It's blurrier than VHS when played on a TV. 30-40 minutes of video should take up slightly more than half of the CD's available space. You could put 2 versions of your movie onto the CD. A divX or real player 9 version should give you near DVD quality (you'd have to fiddle around with settings to get the very best quality). More advanced users can figure out how to play the higher quality version. sorenson3 might give you quality close to divX or RP9. It may not be worth the time doing that though (it depends how picky your audience is about quality and and it might confuse people).

You can also make a VCD (encoded in MPEG1) that plays on nearly all standard DVD players. I think this might be the best choice, since you can make it autorun on computers too (haven't tried this, although I wish I did when I made my own VCDs for distribution). Having done a VCD myself, it was a pain to do (duplicated the CDs using the school's computer lab full of CD burners and did labels myself too). It's a learning experience though.

When encoding do small chunks first to get your settings right and to see the kind of quality you are getting. Encoding can take about a day to finish for 1 hour on a DP500 G4. Use TMPGENC on the PC side if you are looking for the best quality. You can get a free demo of that. You can emulate it if you need to. VCD making help can be found at vcdhelp.com (which is now dvdrhelp.com)

Go into device control or capture settings and turn speakers on. You will hear sound through computer speakers when it is capturing.

If you captured and you aren't hearing sound it's because FCE/FCP is playing sound out through firewire into your camera. Disable it by going into the settings and changing the external video settings.

The G5 is extreme droolage, and Final Cut Pro is better than Adobe Premiere in my opinion. Premiere has some quirks that are really annoying, such as allowing you to lose sync.

I may be dumb, but I don't see any audio settings in the FCE capture settings box. The only thing I see in FCE is the setup of the material being imported, ie: DV NTSC FW 48khz etc. I don't see anything to "turn speakers on". I get audio after I capture the clip fromt he speakers fine, just not during capture preview.

DOH! Final Cut Express is not Final Cut Pro. The developers took out some of the settings menus to make things easier. If you want to hear sound open up your camera's LCD screen or hook up headphones/speakers to your camera.

DVD Studio Pro 2 is apparently shipping. I have yet to see any comments/bugs on it. There are some screen shots at various places.

ive recently bought an XL1 and since im finding i want/need more and more equipment. but there a bunch of questions i need answered to determine what i really need and what is a pipedream at this point.

please forgive my ignorance:

1: first thing i need to get is a new monitor. i will also be using a G5 with it. so im wondering what kind of video card/capture card i need in order to use it properly with FCP and after effects and the like.

i was looking at this one:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=252972&is=REG

it seems to have a nice resolution though its kind of big. which i dont mind.

here at work in the production department they have a firewire adapter for their monitor but that seems like it would be quite expensive and unecessary?

so what do i need to make that monitor work like in the production studios with a G5? pci video card or some kind of adapter?

also does the connection on the production monitor make a difference in viewing quality? like bnc vs. s-video or composite?

2: what can i get to capture at the highest quality possible. i want to make sure that on my machine it looks the same as it does on the monitor when reviewing the tape. so is firewire really good enough for this. or should i look into other better higher quality equipment to do this. would a card with s-video or composite or anything like that make any difference at all? also this ties in with going from my machine back to DV tape or VHS or something like that. people have also said i should look into buying a deck. i wont be doing any offline tape to tape editing. it will always be on my machine. so do i really need this? will it make a difference in quality? and do i need a separate card to hook it up to my machine to even use it?

i have other questions but dont want to ramble on too much. thanks for any help anyone can give.

cheers.

I can hardly wait to get my hands on this piece of software. I believe it will help me make DVDs in a much easier way than before.

It looks really nice:

http://www.creativemac.com/2003/08_aug/reviews/dvdsp2030818.htm

Jake

If you can budget for it you should really look at the sorenson suite or Squeeze for Flash MX on it's own maybe.

http://www.sorenson.com

Jake

Extensis Portfolio

http://www.extensis.com/portfolio/

Jake

You do not need a capture card as there is already a firewire port on your Mac. If you want to work in uncompressed then you will need addition hardware which will raise the cost of your system by several thousand. If you are going back to DV or VHS then you will not see better quality (in fact it will be a little bit worse).

Getting a deck will reduce wear and tear on your camera. It also rewinds faster, has various inputs and outputs, and some other features. It may be necessary depending on how much work you do (and if you batch capture a lot). A deck will also allow you to record onto full-sized DV tape (for stuff 2 hours or over).

To have the monitor work you can hook it up to your camera if it supports analog-digital passthrough. Otherwise you'd hook it up to you DV deck if you have one. Otherwise you would get a video card with S-video output or the analog-DV converter from Canopus. S-video is higher quality than composite.

I have a question about DVD compression, especially that done by iDVD 2. I have a problem with greens, especially in stills. For example, a title screen done in photoshop and brought into iMovie and composited with footage looks fine in iMovie (and on the passthrough TV). However, when I burn it to DVD and play it back it has jitters - blocky areas that pulse

Other stills that have a lot of leaves do the same thing, especially if there is a lot of contrast between the green of the leaf and the dark shadows. It is especially bad on some rainforest shots.

I've observed this on multiple DVD players on multiple TVs and with several different DVD burns.

Is this a compression problem? Is there anything I can do to make it go away?

Thanks.

Sounds like a compression problem to me. What settings are you
using?

Whatever the default settings are for iDVD 2 - can they even be changed? I do have QT Pro but am not sure how that relates to choosing compression for iDVD.

I am looking to buy an editing system and I wanted to know some thoughts on which one I should get.

Right now I am looking at AVID Xpress Pro with Mojo on PC or FCP 4 on Mac on either a G4 or G5. I am looking to get a job eventually as an editor in Hollywood. Which system would be better, more versital, more reliable, and will produce better output quality? Is AVID still the number one choice for high end stuff or is FCP makings its way up the ladder? Should I go with the top of the line dual G4 or a Dual G5 with average components?

Which core system would you guys recommend?

I am on several lists that post job availabilities. I would say, that on average, more jobs being posted, are for FCP editors at this time. Overall, especially for film, more job opportunities are for Avid editors, but the tide is turning.

I would get a G5 dual processor with FCP 4. If you can't budget for the dual processor, I'd still go G5 over a top of the line G4. The future is the new machines. FCP will be optimized for the G5 64 bit processors soon.

I LOVE my flat panel iMac dearly..but I am looking into a faster system to run FCE and other graphic intensive programs for school...

My budget would allow me to get the single processor 1.6 ghz G5 PowerMac at educational price of $1799...

At the same price I could get a G4/1.25GHzDP at Small Dog for the same price!

What do you think is the better deal?..

TIA

New G5 will win, no question. My best guess, is the slowest G5 is faster than the fastest G4, in most tests and applications. The G5 will only get faster, as the OS and software is optimized for 64 bit operation.

Pro Max <http://www.promax.com/specials/FCP4.lasso> shows that they are selling them until at least Sep. 30th

I just got a g4/1.25g single two days ago at CompUSA. Glad I managed to get one of the last boxes that will run MacOS9... will start thinking about the g5's and OSX next spring :-)

The G5 will likely be significantly better at Photoshop because photoshop doesn't take advantage of the second processor very well. And then there's the news about Adobe releasing a patch that makes Photoshop "75%-200%" faster.

Pretty soon some G5 vs Dp1.42 benchmarks will come out I expect. There are going to be demo units in stores.

Actually no, they haven't, you can still get G4 from the Apple store. It's just down the side column of the store page, not in the center of the page.

Hi-

For some reason I have lost the ability to scrub my audio in the Viewer or the Timeline. I have the RT Scrubbing area checked under the Sequence menu.

any ideas?

Dan, Make sure audio scrubbing is toggled on. It's in the View menu too.

Hi,

I am about to purchase a mac system for editing, and I was wondering what would be the minimal resolution requirement for running FCP. I know it takes up a lot of room, and more is better, but I'm restricted by my budget.

What it comes down to is that I can either get a dual 1.25 ghz G4 with a 20" Cinema display, or a 1.8 ghz G5 and a 17" Cinema display.

Right now I'm more leaning towards the G5, as it is a G5 but I am worried that all the tool boxes and such will clutter up the workspace.

Another question: how fast is the dual 1.25 G4? I know thats a real subjective question, but what I guess I'm asking is -- at what point does it choke and have to sit and render? after so many layers? color correction? I'm a PC guy so I don't really know what constitutes fast in the mac world.

thanks

Get the G5, future versions of the OS and FCP will really take advantage of the advanced architecture of it's design. The difference between the 17 inch and 19 inch is not that much as to really make a difference in size and spacing of the palettes. There is really only one good reason (other than budget) for getting a G4 today and that is the compatibility issue of legacy software and OS 9.

I'm pretty much in the same situation as you, Nik. From what I've gathered, You're much better off getting the best computer you can afford, and getting a relatively inexpensive CRT monitor, which can be upgraded much more easily than a computer later on. CRTs have (typically) higher resolutions, and you can get an awesome CRT for half the price of a good LCD. I'm looking into this one:

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10037

It's $800, 22", flicker-free super high resolution. Of course, if you don't want a 60lb behemoth on your desk, then you'd need the LCD. Apple displays are among the best I've seen, so you can't go wrong in terms of image quality.

If I were you, I'd get the 1.8GHz G5 and a good CRT, and use the rest for lots of RAM and storage space.