Dana,
 

I went with your option 2. When I purchased the upgrade to FCS I only installed it on one computer and left FCP5.1.4 on the other. Now I can keep my network up and running while I import on both machines.

Just out of curiosity, why do you need your airport on while you are importing. When I had the same version on both machines I would just turn airport off of one and capture to an external 500gb drive. When all capture was done I just hooked it up to my main computer via FW800 and after lunch all my footage was on one computer.

Good luck in whatever works for you.

Jonathan Schwartz
CA Video Productions

My Macbook Pro has only one firewire, so I cannot capture via firewire and go to an external. So I am connected via ethernet to my Quad, so it's the ethernet connection that won't allow it.

It would be far less expensive to go PC and convert, but the unknown is how long the converter would take with each hour-long HDV capture.

How about a Firewire hub, or daisychaining the external drive and the camera? For this case, I'd even consider capturing to the built-in drive as opposed to an external scratch disk, and moving them over to the editing computer later.

I feel your pain, Dana. I, too, shoot with up to three cameras and routinely have six tapes for a single show that I record. The two things that have saved me so far are that I don't have more than two or three of those to cover in a single month, and the fact that I work out of my basement, so I try to capture during normal activities - capture one tape while cooking dinner, the next while eating, the third while I watch TV, etc.

- Martin

What about Final Cut Express?

That would only capture using Apple Intermediate codec. So not really different from iMovie, right? BTW, Dana, I still don't understand what's wrong with iMovie?
Dino

Are you sure it isn't usable if you just change the file extension? Isn't it a quicktime m2t file and therefore usable in FCP?

Correct me if I'm wrong (I've never actually used the newer HD version of FCE), but doesn't it support native HDV as well as AIC?

Hmm...I'm 99% sure FCP doesn't support M2t. I'll try it. If it did/does, I would sell the MacBook and capture on my PC. I just don't want to have to convert anything after the fact.

iMovie gives me huge honkin' scratch files, and captures slowly. I.e., capturing an hour minidv can take 1.5 hours.

As far as daisy-chaining, my WD drives have problems doing it. Sometimes it works, but more often it doesn't detect the drive after a restart. Hit-miss quirks drive me nuts. A hub is a possibility -- perhaps the best.

No, it doesn't - otherwise this would be a great (read: cheap) way to capture to Dana's second computer.
- Martin

FCS2 is the first version of FCP I've owned. When was HDV capture included in FCP. I'm thinking that I don't need FCS2, but that an older version would do.

I believe that was first added in Final Cut Pro 5.0:

http://images.apple.com/finalcutstud...rs/HDV_FAQ.pdf

That was my first version of FCP, and I've been working with HDV natively ever since I got it. So yes, maybe try to snag a copy of FCP 5.0 on eBay...

- Martin