Hi Guys!

I've got a little dilemma here, I'm running a G4 500 (AGP Graphics) and I've already got 2 internal HDs, (27Gb original and 45 Gb IBM Deskstar) and as it happens, space has run out again and I'm thinking of adding another HD. There's space (I think) for another HD in the bay and I'm considering getting another ATA drive. Problem is... the ATA controller that came with the computer is already taken up with 2 drives and so does that mean that I have to get another ATA controller (PCI card?) or am I better off with an external firewire drive (more expensive!). Anyone with any experience of firewire drives (to be used as a capture drive with FCP3, dropped frames? 7200rpm? 5400rpm?)

Any help at all regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated!

cheers!

Adrian

Hi all: Just pulling this off into a seperate thread, 'cause I think this needs to be a question all by itself:
What's a good - economical - VTR for DV work? I was considering the Sony GV D-1000 video walkman, the DSR-11 and the DSR-20. But - hold your breath - while the DSR-11 will play and record DV (it's basically oriented around DVCAM), the specs say -

<<DV Format Recording and Playback
The DSR-11 is capable of recording and playing back DV format tapes (SP mode only)*. The standard-size cassette can record for up to 270 minutes, while the mini-size cassette records for 60 minutes.
* The transition from cut to cut may not be smooth when recorded in DV (SP) format. In between scenes where the recording format is changed from DV to DVCAM, or vice versa,
transition may not be smooth. This is a normal and expected phenomenon.>>

1. Does this mean what I think it does? Are there issues with pulling DV off this VTR, and printing DV to tape on it? Does it only work OK with DVCAM?
2. Now my head's spinning: Can I pull DV footage off this VTR (i.e. shoot DV) edit it, and write back to tape in DVCAM format?

I thought I had my understanding of formats OK, buuut this one has me stumped...Anyone out there know more about these beasts?

Best,
Ram

FireWire drives work fine for capture. Go with any 7200rpm drive or the great big 5400rpm 160gig (size does matter). If you go the internal route check out the Sonnett RAID 0 cards. Sonnett http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html builds great cards and that will give you the ultimate speed short of SCSI. It requires 2 drives to stripe as a pair and the card controls them. I think a total of 4 drives can be hooked to 1 card. But FireWire works great

Jeff

Great news Paul. I always like a happy ending. Thanks for the update.

Jeff

I have been working with stereo classical music DVDs using Studio Pro. Early on I printed both the PCM tracks and the AC3 tracks to a test disc just to toggle between the two. Using a playback system of "moderate" capabilities typical of what most consumers might have, I could detect no distinct difference between the two.

Just my two cents worth.

check out the firewire boxes(add your own drive) by granite digital @
www.granitedigital.com. they also make swapable bay drives with cheap bays like $30 so you wouldnt hve to keep buying those boxes if you end up needing more drives.
another advantage over building your own drive is at least you know what kind of ata is inside.

that is if you decide to go the firewire route!

Jeff,
Can you believe that this mac doesn't have a modem in it? I'm typing to you on my PC. I just bought a modem on ebay (26 bucks for a genuine Apple internal thankyouverymuch-ebay) so I'm going to get this thing on line and download every new driver I can. Once I get that done, I'll get back to you with all the details.
Stand by. You guys are GREAT!
-Kyle

It only records and plays back SP mode not LP. This is because of the difference in width of the tracks between mini DV and DVCam. The caution about cuts is meant if you are doing linear editing (tape to tape). You can not mix cuts of mini DV and DVCam when you are doing linear editing. If you do edit mini DV to tape, then switch to DVCam, the scene may break up at the edit. This deck will work fine as a source deck in transferring to a NLE system. It will also be fine to print your timeline to tape. You can mix mini DV and DVCam in a non linear fashion without a problem. It is also listed as being compatable with FCP3 by Apple http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/qualification.html

Jeff

I am using the Tempo ATA100 card, it has worked great so far, I have a 400 G4, and now I have 5 drives running. If you get the PCI card, make sure to put your two new drives on the far left hard drive plate. There are three plates to mount your hard drives to and when I tried stacking two in the middle, I tried closing the door but something didn't quite want to fit right.
There are two extra power plugs in the G4 I think. Follow the power cables, it should be tucked up behind where the cd-rom drive is. Get a long pci cable too.

I had an external firewire drive, after I upgraded to OS9.2, it wouldn't recognize the drive so I have to re-initialize it, a big hassle since I had over 500 video clips for a project I'm working on. I ended up batch capturing all the footage to my internal drives, now I don't use the external anymore. when I get a laptop, I'll use it for that. Also make sure the external drive you get is fast enough to capture DV. Mine wasn't as I found, playing back was okay, but I had to capture to my internal drive, then copy the clips to my external. A direct capture dropped so many frames, it was useless to use it to capture directly. I was in a bind and needed some extra space in a hurry, it was the fastest drive they had 7200, but Logitech makes bad drives. Spend the extra money and get a fast, big, external drive if you go that route. That extra money for a good drive is worth it.

That's interesting news. Which bit stream mode and compression preset did you use? Did you encode it as a stereo track, stereo with a sub frequency channel, 5.1 or...? I listened to the audio through a professional pair of studio monitors, so maybe that's why I instantly noticed a difference. I'll try encoding my audio again -- and this time experiment with various settings, burn a test disc and listen to it on my cheap surround sound system.

Jeff:
Thanks a ton! I was aware of the LP/SP issue, but the ambiguously worded specs made me suspicious. I couldn't find the DSR-11 being used for DV among the local digital filmmakers - though more than one is using it for DVCAM. [And therein lay the rub... :-)]
Incidentally, I believe printing to tape on the DSR-11 creates audio issues, with a loss of somewhere near 6 db reported by a few filmmakers I know - since the DSR-11 doesn't have a VU diplay, they've learnt to set levels by trial-and-error. Just for the info of all the folks out there...
Best,
Ram

My first choice would be to replace the 45 Gb Deskstar with the newer 120Gb Deskstar if you can off-load the 45's contents temporarily. You'll easily be able to move that 120Gb to a new system when you upgrade and it will buy you plenty of breathing room.

Second choice would be to use an external Firewire drive, such as Maxtor's 160Gb drive. It's only 5400rpm but that will be fine for handling DV captures and edits. Frankly, if you're editing video frequently, a large Firewire drive is just a good thing to have around and not prohibitively expensive.

Remember that you do not have to keep footage online when a FCP project is completed. The small project file has all of the information required to re-capture and recreate the project. You can dump your capture and render files when you're finished.

Also remember that (if you're using FCP3) you can use the more highly compressed offline RT file format for your edit footage. That can save alot of space with little or no sacrifice to your edit process.

OS X 10.2 is available for $69 on the educational discount plan from the Apple Store. My son, 9, is eligable. Lowest price I've seen yet and no rebate form.

Jeff

Is there a software package out there that will capture screens on my Mac. On the PC I know you can hit "Prt Screen" and place the capture in a document. I've got to imagine that the Mac has a similar function....but I would prefer a stand alone application.

Shift+Command+3 for taking a picture of the screen. Shift+Command+4 let's you mark a portion of the screen. On OSX there is an app called Snapz Pro X that is dedicated to doing stuff like that.

I use Snapz Pro X and really like it. You can get it here http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=11530&db=mac It saves your grabs as Quicktime movies or tiffs, jpegs etc. It's very usefull.

Jeff

I guess I am a little confused. Does Snap Pro X come installed on the Mac or do I need to purchase it?

Hi new friends! I have a problem. I am in post production on the motion picture Zombie Planet. Check us out at www.zombieplanetmovie.com . Well I am now viewing our tapes for the edit. We have made clone copies of everything and once in a while we would catch these big block artfacts. We were told it was cross tape usage so we started using only JVC tapes. But now I am playing the tapes back through a brand new Sharp VL-SD20U and I am seeing lots of them! We have seen this before and then played them on the small JVC I have and they are fine! Can anyone tell me what is causing this? Thanks very much in advance.

Paul,

Do you have System 9 or X? If you have X, then a program comes with it called "Grab." Look for it in the Utilities folder inside your applications folder.

You can download Snapz Pro X directly from Apple at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/snapzprox.html. If you like it, you'll have to pay to keep it.

But why spend money? Like Martin_M says, just use the control+shift plus either 3 or 4 and you'll get the screenshots you need.

John,

Thanks for the reply. I figured it out after messing with it. My OS version is X. I guess my Mac "newness" is showing through.

Paul,

We all get started at the beginning...don't sweat it. That's the beauty of these boards...you've got beginners and seasoned veterans all in the same place...and all willing to help.

I'm relatively new in DV (two years), but have using Macs since the 80s. I learn new stuff here every time I visit...even with the Mac stuff.

So...never hesitate to ask.

What camera did you record with? Can you play the original tapes and see if they have a problem? If your editing nonlinear, use the camera originals to transfer to the hard drives. If you editing linear try cloning again and see if the problem persists. The artifacts you describe can be tape path alignment problems or dropouts on the original or the clone. The different players have different alignments and are playing them back differently.

Jeff

Hi Jeff, I shot on a Canon XL1. The artifacts come up only on the Sharp I just bought and the Sony playback deck that we use occasionally. The JVC we bought seems to play them just fine. I am going to run it through the Xl1 to be sure. I will be back to you very shortly. Thanks very, very much.

Hi Jeff, I played a known artifact section back through the XL1 and it played fine. Should I send my Sharp cam back. Here is the kicker, we shot with 2 cameras and it has shown up on both! On different playback units! We really thought we had a contamination problem but then it played just fine through the JVC camera from both XL1s.

It sounds like tape path alignment. The spec for playback is loose enough so that tapes from different units can be interchanged and still playback. However, you will occasionaly get a unit that is adjusted at on end of the spec and another unit that is adjusted at the far end of the spec. The tapes from these respective camcorders (VCR) can't playback each others tapes (I hope this is making sense). A service technician can adjust (in almost all cases) one of the camcorders to playback the others tapes. When you send one in, enclose a tape that has problems playing back. They can use it as a guide in adjusting the tape path.

Jeff

Is there a way to print my fonts for reference. When I am in FCP, it would be nice to look at a list and make a font selections. I don't really want to create a document and type each individual font.

Thanks,

Paul

Font management programs like FontReserve and Suitcase will allow you to print out a type book of all your fonts in a variety of formats, I'm not sure if OSX has this feature built in or not. Anyone else?

Barry

I wish I was totally new on Macs again. It was great fun to learn them. Enjoy it :)

Well it is kind of fun, but I hate the slow down in production. It is going to take me a bit of time to get used to the Mac world. After being a "PC" guy forever, it is almost counter-intuative (sp?) to use a Mac.

I like the easy of navigation on the Mac. My concern was that this would take a bit of time, but it really has not. The thing that I am not used to is how the operating system works. Having grown up from DOS to XP, the steps to learn it are the same.

I use Extensis Suitcase http://www.extensis.com/ but it is fairly expensive just to use to print a book of fonts for reference. FontBook is a shareware program that does exactly what you want http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=11418&db=mac I used it for printing a book of my fonts and it worked just fine. You can download it and try it, the registration fee is only $10.

Jeff

Thanks for the help so far guys... One thing is.... I've been hearing different things about firewire drives. Some say its perfectly alright for capturing and editing DV, but there are also some others that say that its not fast enough, resulting in dropped frames etc. I'm a little confused by that. If I remember correctly, Apple didn't used to support any firewire drive for video capture (I read that some time ago, while doing research for my 45Gb Deskstar) Are things different now?

Adrian

A resonably-spec'ed drive (5400-7200rpm) will be just fine for capturing. Just make sure that your OS is up-to-date (you're running OS 10.1.5?) and your FCP3 is up-to-date. Dropping frames in FCP is generally caused by other factors.

If you're concerned, and want to use a FW drive, spend a bit more to get a 7200rpm drive. Maxtor has a 120Gb 7200rpm drive for a reasonable price. Others worth looking at are FireWireDirect.com and Weibetech.com. I have FW drives from both places and can tell you that they're good outfits, particularly WeibeTech.

I went to a freeware / shareware font location and was able to print off each page of example so I could see what they looked like for future ref. and also to see it they were free or not

Yep, I'm running OS 10.1.5, and FCP 3. OK, another question here... what if I decide to go the ATA route, I'm considering the IBM Deskstar 120 Gb, I suppose that will go into the 3rd bay in the CPU, and I will have to get a HDD controller card as well that supports Ultra ATA 100 right? If i remember correctly, apart from plugging the ATA (IDE?) cable into the drive, there is also another power cable to be plugged in. My question is, is there an available power cable in my G4 (considering I've got 2 drives in there already) or will the HDD controller card come with its own power cable? Sorry if I'm rambling but I'm a bit ignorant about this whole thing.

Thanks!
Adrian

Yes, you would need to get another controller to install a 3rd drive into your chassis. Open the Mac and you'll see that you have another cable.

Ken Stone's site has some instructions on the process:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/install_third_ata_drive.html

Hi Ken--

Is the below true for rendered titles that weren't part of the captured footage? Are they saved as part of the project file?

Thanks



>>Remember that you do not have to keep footage online when a FCP project is completed. The small project file has all of the information required to re-capture and recreate the project. You can dump your capture and render files when you're finished.<<

Vic,
Yes, the project file "knows' about every clip including clips that were generated within FCP. Like any other clip that requirea a render, though, you will have to re-render such synthetic clips upon re-creation of the project.

I am new to osX and keep reading threads where someone shares functions of osX that are really usefull. . . like how to capture a screen shot or how to turn on a system resource meter, both of which can be done with osX right out of the box, but what I want to know is are there any online resources like forums or sites that specialize in osX features and functions. Mac seems so proud of the fact that osX is super easy to use and intuitive that they make their instructions about 10 pages long. I would like to know how better to exploit the functions and power of this very awesome os. Thanks in advance for any links or useful tips you might have learned.

Make that two of us. I am also new and struggling to get up to speed with the Mac OS. If you have any web sites that you could recommend, I would greatly appreciate it!

At Apple's request, OWC has pulled it's iDVD enabler. The details are here http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0208/12.owc.php

Jeff

DITTO...

try this site: http://www.macosx.org/
I've had OS X installed for a couple of months but haven't really used it, I should make the jump and switch all my work to it so I'm still learning myself. hope this link helps.

<<<-- Originally posted by chorizosmells : try this site: http://www.macosx.org/
I've had OS X installed for a couple of months but haven't really used it, I should make the jump and switch all my work to it so I'm still learning myself. hope this link helps. -->>>

Rik,

Thank you for the assist. It appears that this site will go a long way towards helping me learn the OS. The other sites that I found have not come close to what this one offers.

What I did when I made the switch from OS 9 to OSX was to spend a couple of hours at Borders reading OS X Bible (or some instructional book like that) I didn't think it was worth buying but just reading through the book at the bookshop, I was able to see what the OS was capable of, and made some mental notes about things to try out. I read it once and now I'm using the OS a lot more efficiently. A low/no cost tip, hope it helps.

Adrian

Well, I didn't have time to re-encode the AC-3 audio, but I did burn a test disc with both the Dolby Digital and PCM streams on it, and here's what I've found:

The difference in quality is less noticable on my surround sound system than what it was on my studio monitors. I image there would be no noticable difference when played back through standard television speakers.

The AC-3 audio was, however, noticeably lower in volume.

I suppose I'll just put both audio streams on the final disc and let the users decide which one to use; PCM for a better audio experience, or Dolby Digital for smoother playback on some systems.

Someday I'd like to try a 5.1 surround mix and compare that with the PCM stream.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Tanaka : Welcome Daniel!
Interestingly, I was recently considering attending one of the workshops up in Maine (the 2 week documentary class). I think Charles Papert, one of our other moderators here, has also been an instructor up there in the woods. -->>>

Hi Ken,

The Maine Workshops is an excellent learning enviroment and community unto itself. The summer FCP classes have basically winded down now, but they will continue again next season and we will have a good time being there.

For those who want to know more, visit:
http://www.theworkshops.com

Happy filmmaking,

Dan
--
Daniel Berube
Apple Certified Trainer
Member, Apple Consultants Network

noisybrain. Productions
digital_storytelling/
www.noisybrain.com
(781)-740-5012 tel/fax
(617)-331-8991 cell
----------------------------------------
President/Apple Ambassador
Boston Final Cut Pro User Group - BOSFCPUG
http://www.bosfcpug.org
Email: dberube@bosfcpug.org

For those who wish to learn more about the power of OS X, add these following sites to your favorites list:
Apple's OS X page: http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Apple's OS X Support page: http://www.info.apple.com/usen/macosx/
Mac OS X Hints: http://www.macosxhints.com
Mac OS X Resource Center: macos.about.com/library/blmacosx.htm

This is a good start!

Happy Filmmaking,

<<<-- Originally posted by Simon Davies : Hi there.
I was inside a room filled with fluorescents and although there was no noticeable effect through the PD150 viewfinder or screen, when I got the footage back home and watched on my PAL Tv there is a distinctive flicker.-->>>

Simon,

Many people strive to get the film look and it looks like you did it without even trying!:)

You might wanna give the Flicker Filter in FCP 3 a try, although I cannot guarantee the results without having seen your footage. In FCP 3, go to the EFFECTS menu, select VIDEO FILTERS, then select VIDEO, and then select FLICKER FILTER.

Give it a try and experiment with the values pertaining to the filter. Let us know how it works out!

Thank you all so much!

I went most economical way i could with 80gb laCie drive @ 7200rpm
(they have a 120GB 7200rpm now)
has worked all but one time in 6 months of heavy use.
the time it didn't i was encoding a iDVD project to the drive using files that were also on that drive because mac HD was nearly full, and it froze up,
i had to do the 5 second power-down and it crashed my imac real hard,
had to boot up w/out extensions in 9 and then boot again in osX and then mac wanted to check and repair the disk,
so now i've taken to trying to work from mac HD and transfer video files i wasn't using to the 1394.
my buddy has western digital firewire drives strung around his suite like christmas lights on Clark Griswald's house, so he must think they're okay.

also I don't know if i'd settle for 5400 rpm's- video files are so picky and if you have a segment with a couple of audio tracks the read arm has to jump from the video to the audio to the other audio track, and 7200 will surely eliminate some dropped frames, but i have no proof.