Ugh I'm just too impatient!

No more tapes, no more tear and wear; though at a high price.
 

Well, if you spend $1,180, you can live in peace without having to worry about replacing your deck's or camera's heads every a certain amount of hours.

I was reading Macworld today and there it was. The Datavideo DV Bank, an external firewire hard drive, that acts like a tape deck. So you can hook it up to your DV camera and capture up to 9 hours of footage --120GB. Isn't that something?!

According to the review one of the advantages of this device is that you can get "instant random access to all of your captured footage." On the other hand, it biggest weakness is that the process of capturing your media to your Mac happens in real time --IMO, no big deal.

After all, maybe this DV Bank isn't that pricy. How much does it cost to replace your camera's heads? About $1,000? At least that's what it will cost me for my PD150.

These devices were recently discussed in this thread. I'm still interested to hear any first-hand experiences.

Thanks for the link.

I had thought it would've been great to have a mini laptop for the same purpose, but didn't know devices like DV Bank existed already.

I think one of the questions is how much abuse can one of these machines take. If you bump it and the disk crashes that would be a bummer.

New Convert
 

After years of being prodded by my best friend to "make the switch" I've finally seen the light. Actually, I still have my windows laptop so I'm not a complete convert. I plan on using FCE as my main editor and wanted to know what people suggested as an educational source for someone converting from using "Vegas" and "Premiere". I know I can still use Premiere on my Mac but I had already pretty converted over to Vegas for the past several months having never really felt comfortable with Premiere. I can't believe the world I've been missing as I've completely fallen in love with this machine... God, I can't believe I just said that. :) Thanks for any help in advance and now I'm off to offer sacrifices and prayers to the Mac Gods...

Max

FCE Online Training/Tutorials ??
 

I picked up FCE and a 160gb Lacie D2 firewire drive at the Apple Store yesterday at lunch. I watched the dvd that came with it, along with some of the manual, but I'm still looking for other good online sources for training/tutorials. Any suggestions? I'm sure it will take time to learn all the features, but it sure is a giant improvement over iMovie!! Thanks.

BTW, I have been viewing the forums at Apple, and it seems many people are having problems getting an external drive and dv camera to work together. I just plugged the Lacie into my iBook, and the GL2 into the Lacie, and it works great!! I just changed my scratch disk to the Lacie in FCE, and capture there with no problem.


Kirk

AVID runs on both PC and Mac.

Max...

I'm a Media 100 editor but have played a bit with FCP. It's somewhat similar to Premiere and other NLE's in basic function.

For detailed information there's a book entitled "Final Cut Pro For Macintosh"
by Lisa Brenneis.

I've been reading rave reviews for the upcoming version 4 of the program. If I had to start over today I'd go with FCP. Great value for the dollar and a very extensive upgrade path.

Good luck with the switch!

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

ton of tutorials
 

most of the sources I know about are tutorials on final cut pro. 90% of that information will be appropriate for FCE but a google search on "final cut express" and tutorial will undoubtably turn up quite a few options. There are tapes, dvds, books and more available for FCP and similar things, I should assume, for FCE. For a start, check out http://www.creativemac.com for some FCP tutorials....

Thanks guys for the help. I bought a copy of "Final Cut Express for Dummies" at Barnes and Noble because it was the only book there that I could find on it. I have mixed feelings about the "for dummies" books but I thought it would at least have a nugget or two of good information anyway. I also saw a DVD tutorial on the web that looked kind of cool too but like anything I'm sure the best way to learn is to just roll up my sleeves and get dirty.

DVD-R vs DVD+R
 

What's the real difference between DVD-R and DVD+R formats? I think DVD-R is more compatible with set top DVD players, but the DVD+R camp loves saying how superior their format is. Wouldn't this be similar to CD-Rs having two different formats, both playing essentially the same data, but both can only be recorded on proprietary recorders? Whats the point?

I'm confused. Somebody please help.

G5?, Q37?, Smeagol? - New power macs
 

The rumor mills are stepping up discussions on the new 970 based Power Macs -

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1121730,00.asp

Notice, that like a recent Business Week article this article is not from your traditional rumor sites.

The rumor sites still have the 970 as being announced at Apple's WWDC - with Steve Jobs giving a demo of 10.3 (Panther) on one of the new machines.

FCP 4 question
 

FCP 4 comes with a "full 32-bit floating point per channel video processing".

What is it and what does it do?

Confusion is all around regarding this. Basically they are just
competing formats with the same feature set. Currently -R
seems to be more compatible indeed, but +R has always
claimed superiour compatability. However I don't believe
they have delivered on this promise (although DVD+RW seems
to do good).

Basically it looks like that for record once -R is king but for
rewritable +RW seems to be liked.

I (nor anyone else for that matter) can tell you which format
(or perhaps both) will prevail. More newer players seem to
support both, but that is also not garantueed by any means.

If you are looking for a new DVD burner I personally would look
into any of the multi format burners like the Sony DRU500a
(replaced by the 510 I believe), the new Nec (don't know what
the model number is) and the just released Pioneer A06. They will
all do -R/+R, -RW/+RW & CD-R/-RW. The main reason to buy a
multiformat burner is that you are more or less garuanteed to
be compatible in the future (can never be 100% sure on this,
ofcourse).

Also media compatibility with players is very important and that
is even more fuzzy....