I plan on purchasing a tower in january--thanks for all the info. One more question-Where would be a good*safe place to price used g4's on the net?

I'm a new apple user and i'm trying to edit and output through s-video for preview on another monitor, but i can't make it happen. I need some type of mentor for editing. I sold my whole windows editing system, DPS Velocity, and i bought a FCP 4 and powerbook g4. I need a mentor, please help

Torrey C. Harris
1-225-209-9640

Once you have the external monitor plugged into the S-video output of the Powerbook, go to Apple Menu>System Preferences>Displays and there should be a tab at the top of the Displays Window for the external monitor. You will probably need to adjust the size (try 640x480 to start).

If your Powerbook doesn't recognize the external monitor click on the detect monitors button.

Mac Rumours state that is a new Apple Pro Apps update available. Has anyone downloaded and installed this yet? Any problems to report?

If you mean the Nov/Dec 03 updates to FCP4, Compressor, Cinema Tools, etc., they have been fine under 10.2.8. They are related to the Quicktime 6.4 update.

Hey everyone,

Brief: iDVD isn't seeing chapter markers from FCP3.

Quickly trying to burn a DVD of a family vacation I slapped together of last year's holidays for this year's holidays. First project I've completed with FCP3 and I'm just trying to send it through iDVD (not DVDSP 1.5) because I need it ready tomorrow (today, Sunday evening) and I don't have time to design my own menus with DVDSP.

Having said that, before I exported as a Quicktime movie, I set chapter markers using the playhead in the timeline. Hitting "m" then "command-option-m" and checking "Add Chapter Marker" and "Add Compression Marker." A little green marker would show on the bottom edge of the timeline (as opposed to the markers that show up on the actually footage in the timeline - what is the difference between the two?). I made about 7 then exported as a quicktime movie.

iDVD: I started a project, dragged the .mov in there but no scene selection menu is created. And when I "preview," and try to click through to another chapter, it just goes to black/ends.

Am I not setting the chapter markers properly in FCP3? Am I not toggling something in iDVD? Any comments would be appreciated. Though I'll give this 13 minute film to them without chapter markers, I'd prefer to get them in there....



Joshua

I'm not a big iDVD user, but I think you have to export a referenced FCP file and not a QuickTime. I think the conversion to QT strips the markers.

They are supposed to be available through Software Update via System Preference. If apps that need to be updated are recognized, the correct files will be seen as available for install or download. Use the download option. Do not update over the internet.

Ah, I discovered what I believe Andrew actually means. There is a 1.9Mb single update titled something "Pro Apps" that's out there now. I ran it on my PowerBook. No apparent change. The update appears to be basically some sort of internal patch. (Apple's beginning to look more like Microsoft's perpetual patch factory.)

God bless you. Outputting it as a Final Cut Movie with chapter markers made the difference.

Problem solved.


Joshua

Hi,
If you have iMovie 3.0.3 it's very easy. On the right side you have an button called photos. these are photos from the photo library of iPhoto , which you can usevery easily in iMovie 3.

I believe you can export from photoshop to iPhoto or to iPhoto imoprt from photoshop.
good luck

Not in front of my mac at the moment, but I seem to remember having had trouble with iMoive not recognizing a file format after scanning a photo (specific to my scanning program). Check to make sure your photos are in a supported format (usually jpg is a good bet.) Good luck...

Clay

I have an older release of Imovie. But I'm thinking of buying the new updata of osx. I did find a way to get the pictures I needed into the project.

Thanks
MG

I'm pricing an HD system for my next film, and I'm looking at both AJA and Decklink. (Pinnacle is out of the question, due to my experiences with various cards.)

What's better? AJA is top knotch, but I've never used Decklink (it's also a lot cheaper than AJA).

AJA (http://www.aja.com)

Decklink (http://www.decklink.com/)

Anyone?

heath

I just bought a new gl2 and am wondering if you guys have any recommendations on an external hd? I have a newer imac and imagine I will want an external hd soon, so I might as well buy one now. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks,

Congratulations on your new GL2, Dave!

There is really no "best" external drive. There are many brands and models out there.

Personally, I use drives from Wiebetech ( www.Wiebetech.com). Reliable, great customer service, wide line. I especially like the bus-powered models since they are completely powered by your Mac's Firewire bus and require no wall-wart power converters.

They are having a sale on selected models until year-end.

Try <www.smalldog.com>
I bought a demo model dual 1 gig and it works great, and at a reduced price. I watched their website for a few weeks before I saw the G4 go on sale.

One word of advice- buy as much and as fast a computer as you possibly can. I suped mine up to 1 gig ram- and it was inexpensive compared to other macs I've had. I then bought extra hard drive space.

Good luck!

Jeff Patnaude

Pretty neat.
http://www.ipodcleaner.com

- don

I've also seen a lot of good reviews for this one as well:
http://www.radtech.us/icecreme.html

The ones that use the oxford 911 bridge chipset are better than others I believe.

Larger drives are typically faster (which might reduce problems). And the extra space is always handy.

Be aware that some people have problems using firewire drives (dropped frames on capture and export). The workaround is capturing and exporting from an internal drive.

barefeats has some benchmarks on which firewire drives are faster. example: http://www.barefeats.com/fire29.html The numbers there are pretty high and not for real life situations. In practice you need a lot of headroom to capture DV without dropped frames. DV is 3.6MB/s, which is a lot lower than benchmark numbers. Yet some people have problems with firewire drives. So you need to take benchmarks with a grain of salt.

What you can do is to just buy a FW drive and refund it if it doesn't work (watch out for restocking fees!). Make sure you fill up the drive because some people report that the drive becomes problematic as it gets fuller.

This update has a long list of improvements, so here goes:

These are some of the enhancements that are part of Mac OS X 10.3.2 Update:

Address Book and Mail enhancements

Mail moves messages marked as junk to the Junk mailbox more reliably.

In Address Book, you can now configure Exchange synchronization with either a hostname or full server URL, including a (https://) URL to automatically use SSL.

Improves syncing between Address Book and Microsoft Exchange.

You can now move an email to a different mailbox if you use an email server that previously didn't allow this and an "The destination mailbox does not exist" alert would appear.

Improves results when using Mail with a .Mac or IMAP account and an SSL connection.

Networking enhancements

Improves results when looking for SMB-based servers in the Network view.

Resolves an issue in which the Mac OS X firewall could no longer be available if you perform an upgrade installation of Mac OS X Panther.

Allows automatic configuration of proxy servers via Proxy Auto Configuration (.pac) files.

Resolves an issue that could prevent the computer from getting a DHCP lease after certain kernel extensions were unloaded and reloaded.

Improves DNS for Mac OS 10.2 clients that use a shared Internet connection from a Mac OS X Panther computer.

Resolves an issue with getting or maintaining an IP address via DHCP, under certain conditions.
Addresses an issue in which the L2TP VPN could not connect with leftover racoon.pid.

Print and fax enhancements

The size of printouts from certain applications, including Safari, has been fixed.

Addresses an issue in which an "No pages were selected to be printed in this document" alert appears when printing from Mail or Safari, before the application unexpectedly quits.

Improves compatibility for Microsoft Virtual PC 6.1's emulated printing features.

You can now save faxes in a folder whose name includes a 2-byte character.

Addresses an issue with some USB PostScript printers, including the HP Laserjet 2300, Lexmark E310, and GCC Elite 21, in which a "Printer not responding" message appears when you add the printer in Printer Setup Utility, or when you try to print.

Improves compatibility for Brother HL 1240 printers when used on an AirPort network with Rendezvous; an alert message with "-9672" could appear when adding the printer.

Addresses an issue in which an application could unexpectedly quit when sending a fax to several recipients.

Improves compatibility for some Lexmark printers when they print an A4-sized page.

Improves reliability of Mac OS X Panther's fax email delivery feature.

Finder and other enhancements

Addresses issues that could keep a disk image from appearing in the Finder when you open its file.

You can now eject a FireWire-based volume from the Finder without entering an administrator password.

Improves security of background applications when Screen Saver is on, and when entering a Screen Saver password.

The Repair Permissions utility no longer reports a permissions issue with the printer.conf file.

Character Palette no longer appears when you log in or after the computer wakes from sleep.

iTunes will keep importing songs from an audio CD if you switch to another account.

FileVault no longer prompts to recover unused disk space each time you log out; it will now ask only when needed.

A FontBook collection's name, if it included a slash, or solidus, character ("/"), could cause issues; you can no longer use a slash in a FontBook collection's name.

Addresses an issue in which a PowerBook G4 computer may stop responding when a Classic application's window is moved.

The consonant of the first character for certain words entered using the Simplified Chinese ABC input method is no longer ignored.

Improves compatibility for CH Products' joysticks and flight yokes.

Improves compatibility for MagTek credit card readers.

Improves reliability of third-party FireWire audio hardware devices.

More reliably recognizes some FireWire devices, including the iSight camera.

You can update via the Software Update panel in preferences. Do not update via the panel, but rather choose to download the update. The stand alone installer is not yet available, but Ill post a link when it is.

Sweet, Im goin to check the site out now--

I just bought soundsoap. I own Final Cut Pro 3, but I have no idea what I did with my Peak DV disc.

Is there a way to use soundsoap with Final Cut Pro 3 WITHOUT Peak DV?

If so, could someone please tell me how.

Thank you.

I bought Soundsoap too, but it kinda stinks. I'd suggest using Adobe's Audition (used to be Cool Edit Pro) or something else with more options. Soundsoap doesn't have any options worth the money - it's to basic for something that requires lots of tweaking. I found that Cool Edit Pro was really good and also the Wave plugins that can be used with Digital Performer and ProTools are good too.

Chris

Hiya

Before I start testing and playing around with settings, I was wondering if someone can tell me what the best export and render settings are between FCP and After Effects.

I'm editing in FCP 3 with 25 fps DVCAM PAL footage, and want to have my FCP-exported (and subsequently) AE rendered files to come as close to that format as possible.

Thaks in advance - sorry to be lazy ;-)

For that workflow, I like to export uncompressed out of FCP (Animation codec 100%) and render back out to that codec from AE, take the video back into FCP, and finally render out to DV to go to tape. It sounds painful, but it preserves the quality as best as I know how.

Graeme

QuickTime 6.5 is available via Software Update in System Preferences. The update is also available as a stand alone installer here. (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone/)

Improvements are listed as:



QuickTime 6.5 delivers a number of new features and important updates, including:
• Creation and playback of mobile multimedia in the new 3GPP2 format.
• Creation and playback of mobile multimedia in the popular AMC format.
• Improved text track support.
• Enhanced DV playback options.
• Enhanced support for iMovie, iDVD, and Final Cut Pro.

What is the AMC format? If I don't know what it is, it can't be that popular. They make it sound like everyone uses it.

Anyone gonna take the plunge? I am curious what "Enhanced DV Playback Options" are. What could that possibly mean?

Final Cut Pro 4.1.1 is also available, but it is only for Chinese people. Not sure why it shows up in my Software Update panel. Livetype is also updated as well as iTunes.

At work we use a lot of external firewire drives to move tons of data around from Mac to Mac. All connectors are 6-pin to 6-pin. They all also require external AC power to operate. I thought that the 6 pin firewire configuration had the extra two pins to transfer power. So why do I have to plug the drives in to an AC outlet to work? Shouldn't they get their power from the system? If not, then why are they using 6-pin? Couldn't they use 4-pin connectors?

We have a couple smaller firewire drives (10 or 20 GB IIRC) at work that we bought nearly 3 years ago to backup a mac server. They are indeed powered by the firewire cable and have always worked fine on our old G4/450. But they're the very slow old notebook drives. I don't know if they are still made, but I thought some of those tiny "pocket drives" were also like that. Again, I suspect they're slow mechanisms, and those little drives are also usually expensive.

I've asked the same question around here before and never gotten much response. I'd love to have an external drive to plug into my powerbook that was fast enough for editing. But I'm sure that would suck down the battery pretty fast (if the powerbook is even capable of powering a drive that way).

Just judging by how warm some of my full size 160 GB firewire drives get it makes me wonder if the firewire interface is capable of delivering that sort of current. The brick on one of those says it delivers 5v @ 1.5a and 12v @1.5a.

The better external FW drives incorporate a fan also. The FW buss does not provide enough power to run a fan, drive and controller etc. There are several small, portable drives available that are buss powered and allow editing via FW. Ken uses the Wiebe Tech drives for this, I believe.

Approximately a year ago an article was published indicating that Walter Murch was using Final Cut Pro to edit "Cold Mountain". With the introduction of the film, Apple has published its own interview on their site (http://www.apple.com/pro/film/murch/). A 16 month editing job...ughh! I hope they weren't paying him by the hour.

There's also an interview in Post Magazine this month, which can be found at the following link...

http://www.postmagazine.com/post/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=79165

Can't wait to see the movie!!! Score FCP! :)

Are all those programs you listed for the mac?

I assume so, just wondering.

Which one is the best to get.

So far soundsoap is doing a decent job.

Imovie 3.0+ is free for download. there is no need to buy OSX if you dont want or need to. Just DL thought Updates in the systme preference or support on apples site.

How is it made possible to use an NTSC viewing monitor with Final Cut Pro?

Thanks,

C. Cook

Getting my feet wet here. I'm new to FCP but not new to Video & Audio. I've tried everything I could think of and I haven't had good results.

When I import an mp3 into the timeline all I hear during playback is "beep beep beep". Yes I know this means it's not rendered yet. But I never had to render audio in other programs before playback like in Vegas or Premiere.

I rendered the audio and now the music is very chopping. Does this have to with the sampling rate? and conversion quality? If so, will FC convert the sampleing rate just in the timeline temporaly so I can hear the audio right?

Does the imorted Audio need to match the project sampling rate to play correctly? Or is there a converter?

I give up!

Hi Mark,

Do a search this topic has been covered before. Export the mp3 through QuickTime and change it to an AIFF file. Also give it the properties of your sequence (48KHz?) Then import it into FCP and it should play without rendering.

Lots of ways:

1. Choose firewire for external video, plug into your camcorder and plug your monitor into the camcorder via either s-video (better) or RCA plugs

2. Choose firewire for external video, and use a DV deck, converter box or a DVD recorder with a monitor connected to it with either component (best), s-video (better) or RCA

3. Use either a second video card, a dual-headed card, the VGA or s-video out on a powerbook and choose it as your external video source.

Problem Solved. Thank you

With FCP 3 I was able to move audio and video tracks independently along the timeline...meaning when I clicked on a video track, its audio track didn't highlight as well and vice-versa. I've been trying to do the same thing with version 4 now but can't figure out how to set it to do that.

Any help out there?

There is a sync or lock button hidden in one of the menu's. Where I can't say casue I just work up, but its there and you can.

I will follow up a little latter for ya.

Aaron,

Found it. Thanks.

Should just be a button on the upper right corner next to the timeline, right? Right next to the SNAPPING button.

Ted,

I found it through the menu, but looks like you're right. I need to sit down and do some serious updating for version 4. There are quite a few new gizmos that I'm not sure about.

At work a coworker (OS X 10.2.8, G4 at a speed unkown to me) was cursin' and throwin' fits at his machine as he tried to get it to capture footage. I of course pointed and laughed at him. He rebooted and it was taking a very long time to boot. A few minutes later he blurted out "I thought Macs were supposed to boot fast!". I looked at his screen so I could laugh at him some more, but I saw something I had never seen before: A gray screen with the "fan blades" and above that was a dark grey circle with a slash through it (like the red circle/slash in those No Smoking signs). We hard rebooted again and it booted up just fine. Anyone have an idea what that screen is or means? I know it flashes a question mark when it can't find a startup drive.

It might have been an Open Firmware screen. I'm not sure.

We shot a feature film with Panasonic Ag-DVX 100 and are going to edit in Final Cut Pro 4.0. This is my first time really using Final Cut.

My question is, what are the ideal settings to import, if my ultimate plans are to press a DVD.

Do I need to have a 24p timeline, or is the footage already downconverted and I should use a 30 timeline.

I've read a multitude of boards trying to figure out the answers but it seems everyone has different suggestions.

thanks
clark

It depends what mode you shot your footage in...

If you shot in 24fps, then edit in 24fps. If you shot 30fps, then edit normally using the canned settings (should be something like NTSC 48khz [super]white).

should have said:
I shot 24p standard (not advanced)

i heard that even when you shoot 24p standard it does a downconvert while recording and you ultimately edit in 30i anyways. is this wrong?

thanks
clark

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Chan : It depends what mode you shot your footage in...

If you shot in 24fps, then edit in 24fps. If you shot 30fps, then edit normally using the canned settings (should be something like NTSC 48khz [super]white). -->>>