NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2004

[Dan Uneken]

Hi,

Planning on buying a dual G5. Have an iBookG4, nice and new. Will want an external HD to switch between both, not just for FCP, but also database of photos and locations etc.
Any minimum specs that I should be aware of? Any known brands or combinations that I should stay away from?

Thanks folks!

Dan.

[Patrick Pike]

Actually the Deck performs the Digital to Analog conversion of the video. You _could_ hook a monitor directly up to a spare video card and do it that way, but it would not be as acurate because the video card would be doing the Digital to Analog conversion.

[Shane Ross]

Best to go thru the camera or deck. That is the TRUE representation of what your video looks like. The monitor must be connected thru the firewire out, and the only way to do that is thru a deck...or converter like the ADVC-100.

[Shane Ross]

7200 RPM with an 8MB cache. minimum.

I have heard many complaints about Maxtor drives..and some people who still defent them. But any complaints...expecially the amount I have been hearing, means there are issues with them.

Western Digital or Lacie are good bets.

[Jay Silver]

The more I look at it, the more I think that G Nicer will get me just as good (if not better) a result without all the extra work. Thanks for the help, Graeme.


-j

[Collis Davis]

My firewire stopped outputting any data from the camera. I took it to Canon here in Manila, and they said the motherboard in the camera was blown, that the firewire component was no longer working.

Luckily, they had a new motherboard in stock, and replaced my old one at the hefty cost. When I picked up the camera this afternoon, they connected the firewire to a Toshhiba laptop to demonstrate that the laptop did indeed detect the presence of the firewire data from my XL1-S.

I was satisfied, and came home and plugged everything in. They had made the point that the camera SHOULD NOT BE POWERED WHEN CONNECTING THE FIREWIRE. I believe I had connected it in the past many times while the camera was on, but suffered no adverse effects. There is nothng in the users manual about connecting the firwire to a camera already powered.

Now, tonight, I mistakenly had the firewire connector (the 6-pin connector) in the computer upside down. I proceded to turn on my Mac G4 and the camera, but found that Final Cut Pro was still not detecting the firewire.

What is going on here? Is it possible that putting in the 6-pin connector wrong would or could blow the mother board in the camera?

Since the 6-pin connector's form factor is square on one side while pointed on the other, doesn't that prevent any disallowed contact between the wrong pins in the connector and the computer connector?

Any wisdom on this topic would be appreciated.

Collis

[Jeff Donald]

My understanding is, that putting the cable in backwards can indeed cause a short. The cable could also have a short as well. Have you tried other FW cables?

[Peter TK Lee]

Hello Collis,

Firewire is meant to be hot swappable. Hardware-wise, this is fine. Software-wise it really depends on the application, I think. Some apps have difficulty recognising FW devices when hot swapped or moreso, the change in FW bus speed may also affect applications.

My Final Cut Express went wonky when I pulled out my camera while it was running a movie in the timeline (at which time it is busy accessing the external FW HD) because the bus speed suddenly changed.

As for connecting the 6pin wrong, you really must have forced it in to have connected it upside down. The connector shape forces the user to connect it correctly. If indeed, you forced it in all the way, you would have reversed all the pins, but more importantly, interfaced the power and ground pins to the signal pins - which is really asking for it.

Just need to be careful in how you connect these devices and never use extreme force.

Try the following to see what is working:

1. reconnect your camera properly and see if Final Cut will recognise your camera.

2. if not, try a different FW port

3. if not, try a different FW device on the original port.

4. if not, try your camera on another Mac (or PC)

cheers,
Peter

[Dan Uneken]

That's cool because LaCie is what the guy who sells Mac here offered me. (one guy for a population of maybe 1 million in the entire province...) ... and thanks!!!

[Collis Davis]

Peter,

Many thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I have isolated the problem, once again, to the camera.

I checked the cables using my Sony Media Converter box (has a FW interface) and digitized some analogue video. No problem there.

I am not quite sure that I "forced" the FW plug into the computer, although it seems that the FW jack on the G4 is feels looser than the one above it. This makes me suspicious.

But I am quite sure the 6-pin went in upside down when first conecting it, and it's easy for me to see the dire consequences of doing this wherein pins are consquently reversed.

I am depressed about this, and it seems reasonable that such an action might blow out the FW component on the mother board.

Collis

[Collis Davis]

Jeff,

Yes, I tried other cables besides the original I was using when the problem occured.

I bought another cable, thinking that it was the cable that was strained as I opened my G4 to add some RAM without really disconnecting any of the cables attached to the rear of the computer.

But this was not the case, meaning no cable failure or short.

I tried a 6-pin to 6-pin between the cam and my Sony Media Converter which was then outputting analog to a field monitor. The screen was black upon playing back a tape via the Fire Wire.

As explained in my reply to Peter, the FW connection to and from the Sony converter box works just fine.

Operator error seems to apply in this instance. But thank you for your response anyway.

Collis

[Benjamin Taft]

Lacie doesn't make the harddrives themselves, they put drives from other manufacturers in their external enclosures. I've had a Lacie 250GB drive a year or so, no complaints on it's performance but it does make a constant hissing noise and it makes enough noise when writing to bug me.

Now I'm getting a "Samsung SpinPoint P80 160GB_IDE ATA/133 8MB cache 7200RPM" to put in an external box. I have two of these in my PC and they are much quieter and cooler (as in generating less heat) then my Seagate 200GB drive that I have in the same machine.

This is the firewire enclosure I'm checking out now since they have it in the same store I'm picking up the harddrives.
http://www.zynet.com.tw/download/manual/ee/D5-U2FW.htm

Any better alternatives?

[Andrew Lawrence]

I'm a first time user of FCP (just purchased FCP 4.5) I'm shooting a Canon XL2, 24p normal 3:2 pulldown. After capturing at 29.97 I reverse telecine to 23.98 with Cinema Tools. After importing the reversed clip into my FCP project I attempt to add it to a sequence with a preset of 23.98 fps.

It requires rendering. This seems counterintuitive to me - is this proper or do I have some preset qualities set wrong?

Any help appreciated.

[Mark Shea]

Hi
I am using FCP HD with a DV PAL VIDEO CAMERA.

I captured a projects footage as 'DV to OfflineRT PAL(PhotoJPEG)', mainly due to lack of disk space because of another large project I am working on.

Now that I have edited up a short 10min project, can I recapture just the footage needed for the project as 'DVPAL 48 kHz'?

If so, how do I go about recapturing the footage so I have a DV PAL master?

[Michael Galvan]

Hi Andrew,

If you plan to edit in a 23.98fps timeline, you should shoot in advanced pulldown mode (2:3:3:2). Final Cut Pro has the ability to remove the pulldown during capture to extract the true 23.98fps source footage for you to edit in that kind of timeline. You just have to make sure you have it set to remove advanced pulldown in your capture settings.

As for what you've done with your footage, you shouldn't have to render. Did you change any other settings in your clips that you performed the reversed telecine on?