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Auto Facial Focus vs Manual?
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Have you looked at the footage in an editor? Unless you were way to wide you were focused sharply on his face so that might be perfectly good shots there. At the very least save the footage. You are going to need B roll shots for long interviews anyway. So you’ll have the dialog.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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It came out far to wide which is strange because it wasn’t originally framed that way but I did zoom out and frame it it in magnification mode. I’ll certainly save the footage. I need to invest in a lot of HDD space though. Two hours = 52Gb and that’s just the MXF files. What storage set up do you use?
Cheers Craig.
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Yes files have become pretty large and you do need a lot of storage. On the other hand, hard drives have become much cheaper per gig. I’m on a bunch of Macs. At home I have an aging Mac Pro with a 4 TB internal raid as well as external firewire drives. I’m setting up a lab at school with 8TB raids that are hot swappable. What I suggest you get is an external raid where you can swap out drives as needed. Look on OWC. Lots of options. For archiving you can even get a dock and use it with bare drives as they go on sale. Store them with labels and plastic protection.
https://eshop.macsales.com/search/hd+dock
https://eshop.macsales.com/search/Hitachi+SATA+3.5
For hard drives look on OWC, Amazon, Frys and for special sales. Frys is a pain to deal with but they have some killer sale prices on bare drives if you know the specs you are looking for and can wait for them.
In the old days you’d save your tapes as back ups but that is not an option with media cards. And I suppose you can erase stuff you don’t need when you are finished. But really if this is an important project you might want to keep the media and buy new drives as needed. The future will no doubt let us transfer our media to much bigger storage. I just saw a 4TB drive on sale for under $200. Also USB 3 is fast enough for editing and is way cheaper than the old firewire stuff. And also you do not need the fastest drives to archive media – only for the editing. So you can back up and archive to much cheaper drives.
So I would look for a drive fast enough to edit and big enough to hold your current projects. Then when you are done you can copy all of that to a storage system and wipe your media drive clean.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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Cheers Craig.
What was the name of the 8TB hot swappable drive? I’m on OWC looking at prices. I also have an old (2009) Mac Pro with two 1TB drives and half a dozen firewire drives. One recently died on me so I feel new project new hard drives! Have you seen the new Mac Pro – total make over but with no firewire. Apples way of getting us to use their Thunderbolt I/O. It looks very different, looking forward to them to release a price! Will probably come out when the release their Mavericks OS.
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It’s either thunderbolt or usb 3 (or networked stuff which I don’t know enough about). Yes firewire is becoming obsolete.
https://nofilmschool.com/2013/05/macworld-benchmark-battle-usb-3-vs-thunderbolt/
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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a bit out of my price range unfortunately. what would work is a hotwswable that would allow me to buy the unit then fill it as my budget permits. i’m sure they are out there……
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does you compute have usb 3?
how much storage do you need for your largest project or projects being worked on at one time?
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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No it doesn’t, it’s to old I got it mid 2009. After looking around those sites I think I’ll have to get a eSata port multiplier installed into the PCI expansion slot because a lot of these hot swappable drives require them. Is that how I could get a Dock up and running on my machine? Some of these HDD enclosures have say four bays and express they can take up to 8TB storage or whatever. But what if you bought four 4TB HDs? I really need to replace the whole computer. I’m really looking forward to find out how much these new Mac Pros cost.
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Craig, tell me what you think of this solution:
4TB HDD
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD4001FAEX/
and a Dock
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD4001FAEX/All up (with the HDD case you sent me the link to) thats a cost of around $400
I was keen on getting something like this:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Icy%20Dock/MB561US4S1/
but it would cost me four hundred for only 2 TBWhat do you think? This HDD would be intended long term storage so I wouldn’t be using it to edit with etc. I use the second HDD in the Mac Pro for that. Having all this storage problems mean no field monitor oh well.
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The enclosure requires either an eSATA Port Multiplier Interface (like you said) or uses USB 2. The older Mac Pros (although PCI cards can be added) have firewire 800 for external connections. USB 3 which is fast enough for editing will be future proof and backward compatible.
So I don’t see a USB 2 enclosure as a good investment though it is cheap enough.
Internally the 2009 Mac Pro has 3 free hard drive bays not including the system drive. You could get a ssd for the system drive which will speed things up a lot and then raid the other three drives. Right now the sweet spot I think for regular 7200 HDs is 2 TB at a bit over $100 each. That gives you 6 TB for any given project and when you are done with the project you can back up what you need to archive and wipe them clean. Or just swap them out for new drives.
If you need more storage than that you can go with 3TB drives for about $150 each.
Here’s an interesting card: CalDigit FASTA-6GU3. (caldigit as a brand is high end)
Remember that when you do update to a new Mac Pro it has usb 3 and thunderbolt and no room for cards though you can get external ones via thunderbolt.
The most important thing to consider right now is your current project: how much media space do you need? Remember that no hard drive should be more than 80% full. For backing up I think the dock I suggested with bare hard drives is a cool solution. It also allows you to check on the contents of any stored drive.
I am far from an expert for large storage requirements. I need to learn this because i will be setting up a 20 computer lab soon. So if I were you and feel that these suggestions don’t meet your needs I would figure out exactly what you are trying to accomplish in terms of amount of storage and then research solutions for that. These are transitional times and it’s all a bit confusing.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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