Alternative capture software

[Tony Brittan]

If you’ve got FCP 7 on one of the machines, use that to capture, put it in the network…or thier individual drives as copies (which would best) on external drives, and edit away. Alternately, you may be able to use QuickTime Pro (not X…it’s avaliable as an additional install on a snow leopard instal disc) to capture, then give everyone copies. Don’t think you can do an HDV to Prores capture without FCP though. And I would always capture HDV as Prores!

Tony Brittan
Owner – Island Shore Productions

[Tony Brittan]

In fact, I’d make each student have thier own FireWire external and put everything on that! FCP projects are completely portable that way and they can take it home with them and plug in and continue work! FW drives may be adequate but not fast enough for more complex work when using any flavor of HD. I would try to make sure the drive they select is a 7200rpm drive!

Tony Brittan
Owner – Island Shore Productions

[T. Payton]

I hate to state the obvious, but did you call Apple about this issue?

BTW. While I don’t have 10’s of Macs. I have not encountered any unusual permissions issues with FCP X. It doesn’t handle permissions any differently than any other Mac app. In fact with DV and HDV captures from Tape is far superior and more reliable than FCP 7.

Can you be more specific about your issues?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Gregor Queck]

Also FCPX captures the original date and time of capture (HDV) as metadata while FCP 7 does not. With HDV it has an automatic scene detection feature, FCP 7 only with DV.
If I could, I would recapture my footage with X, but my HC1 died :=(

[Ian Bailey]

When our students work on video projects they book out a LaCie Rugged drive to work on. For the students who want to use FCPX, I create two sparse images on the Rugged. These are effectively two virtual disks that can be mounted independently and used as scratch disks. So there can be two projects on each drive without the Events and Projects mixing.

Info on creating sparse images can be found here:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_x_managing_disk_image_martin.html

[T. Payton]

I might add that from my testing if you use the Create Archive feature, FCP X will also just plow through timecode breaks without any complaining.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Andy Neil]

[Ian Bailey] “These are effectively two virtual disks that can be mounted independently and used as scratch disks. So there can be two projects on each drive without the Events and Projects mixing.”

I guess I don’t understand the point of this, or even what you’re saying exactly. If the students each have their own Rugged, then why do you have to do anything special for them to use FCPX? Why not just plug it in and let them build their projects on the Rugged drive?

Andy

https://www.timesavertutorials.com

[T. Payton]

[craig ennis] “the organisational night mare that is the fcpx file system”

Can you elaborate on the nightmare? Is it because you have many users needing to access only their projects? If that is the case the sparse disk image idea (one for each user) would be a great solution.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Craig Ennis]

Thanks for the HDv to prores tip. Thats going to save a lot of time.

craig

[Craig Ennis]

Thanks for all the advice.

we are running two pools of 19 macs in two teaching rooms running both open and active directory. The mac server is connected to the main college server which runs the network accounts of all the staff and students across the college. We have roughly 100 media production students in the department. the students use their college network profiles to log into the machines. we have no SAN so all scratch has to be stored locally on the individual machines

The infrastructure is completely new and was only completed a day or two before the start of term. Previously the students worked on stand alone machines that weren’t even connected to the internet. I’m completely green when it comes to networking. Support is on its way but at the moment i’m learning fast and struggling to keep pace

the initial problem that we are having is that when a student creates a new event the event folder and all the scratch is designated read only to al other users. sometimes during group work other group members my try to log in and access the project and are not able to. At the moment we are resolving all these permissions issues manually on individual files and folders which is a lengthy process.

Admittedly i havent had time to look at FCPX extensively but i have had difficulty finding out how to re-designate scratch disks. although after taking another look the default filing system may well be a good ay to separate the work of different tutor groups. I thought that a second app for capturing to the HD shared folder might be an inelegant but effective solution. any advice would be more than welcome