Gary, I'm sure I can help but I'm not following your post at all. Can you explain in detail a little more what you're trying to do and what's not working. The last hot roll I had was in a restaurant.

Internal Hard Drive Question
 

I currently have two hard drives inside my Power Mac (Quicksilver dual 1 gig) and I know there is a space for a third drive.

My question is: do I need any type of PCI card to utilize a third drive? Or can I just install the third drive the same way I put the second one in?

I'm sure this info is in my Power Mac users manual, but everything is packed up right now for an upcoming move.

Also, any opinions on Maxtor drives? I just saw a really good price in a Best Buy ad. My second drive is a Western Digital and I've had no problems with it.

Thanks guys!

Hello Mike,
Yes, you will need to install a 2nd ATA adapter to install a 3rd internal drive. Given the cost of the drive and adapter, however, consider using an external Firewire drive instead of a 3rd internal drive.

Thanks Ken. I appreciate your speedy reply. You've been a great source of information as I've transitioned over to the world of Macintosh!

sorry, old tape term...a "hot roll" was what you did when your source tape had a broken control track or time code. you would then stick another tape in the record deck,and play youre source tape and "hot roll" you're rcord deck, creating a cohesive time code so you could the edit from the record tape. but you would lose a generation that way.

i meant it as just rolling my record deck and slapping the space bar and rolling the time line, as opposed to "print to video."

im thinking the problem is my tape isnt grabbing the video cause it cant get a hold of the control track from the time line cause just 18 frames in i have a blank space. after i return from my shoot this morning im gonna lay some black color in those spaces and see if that does the trick.

That indeed was the problem, sweetness on a stick!
thanks again for the forum, for if i had'nt had to write it down i would have never figured it out!

Need help making an image overlay in FCE
 

hello everyone, I have lurked here long enough.

I want to create a small transparent logo on the bottom of all my videos (like the comedy central globe). I am using Final Cut Express, and when I followed the tutorial in the book, the image comes out looking really crappy. and you really can't read it well.

Is there a trick to doing this? I used photoshop to make the logo and then imported it and set the opacity down a touch, it looks good on screen but when I preview it on a tv, it doesn't have the clarity I'm looking for.

Has anyone had really successful/professional results when doing this?

any help is appreciated.

minidisc for mac
 

I'm just wondering what would be a good mid range minidisc recorder that is mac compatible? Or is there something else that would be better for a second sound recording than mini disc?

Joe,
Do a Search on this, as it's a frequent and well-worn topic. Here's one recent long thread.

Hi Ricardo, thanks for posting and welcome to DV Info. Rather than re-invent the wheel (or FCP tutorial) let me direct you to one of the best sets of online tutorials for using FCP. LAFCPUG maintains a get resource of tutorials and articles about FCP. The tutorials mostly work for all versions, so don't be worried if you don't see the tutorial for your version of FCP. If you have any difficulties with any of the tutorials post back and I'll gladly help you over any bumps.

Newbie Software questions
 

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is where this should go, but since I use a Mac, I figured this might be a good place to start!

I'm interested in getting into some FX and 3D work to integrate into DV movies. I've read a lot about After Effects, Combustion, Electric Image Universe, Lightwave and Commotion, etc... Can someone tell me which products compete with each other, and who people recommend? I think that After Effects and Combustion compete with each other for doing essentially the same thing, and that Commotion, Universe and Lightwave are all handling the same thing as far as 3D creation and artwork. Is this kind-of correct?

thanks for any help!!! :-)

The dual approach seems to make perfect sense to me. That's the way FCP is designed to work.

I too am worried I missed something! (See newest post on other thread.)

imo, After Effects is a great place to start. the entry price is pretty low, and you can upgrade to the Production Bundle later at no cost penalty. it gives a great combination of animation control, compositing, and Fun. =) a lot of work on tv is done with just AE, nothing more expensive than that.

I like how each Mac OS X update seems to be a beta release. It fixes problems people were complaining about in the previous release, but watch out because here come a bunch of new bugs! Sometimes it is scary to update, because you know the new system will have bugs, but you are not sure if they will affect you.

Usually the bugs are related to 3rd party software or hardware. As OS X becomes more popular, more vendors are producing hardware and software. This presents increasing problems and an increased likelihood that an update may have issues with specific products.

I always update within a day or two to get the performance benefits offered. For me the benefits out weigh the slight risk of new issues introduced by the update.