Tell me if this is a bad idea

[Steve Connor]

More helpful posts from the haters to a genuine question, seriously guys why are you bothering?

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Chris Harlan]

Pretty much, Steve, I see all serious answers, here. In fact, most of them concur with your own advice. It seems to me they are indeed helpful. I fail to understand your grievance.

[Glen Hurd]

4 Sata Docks from China (thru ebay) at $19 each = $80 Docks
They’re reliable, portable, and great for swapping out drives.
4 2TB drives from PriceWatch at $90 each = $360

That’s 8 TB storage for $440 if you already have 4 sata ports. That’s just a little more than the price of the FCP X “suite”!

If you need a 4 channel Sata card – $200 on ebay right now Sonnet Tech Sata Controller
or $132 at TapeResources CalDigit 4-Port Sata

And I highly recommend purchasing SoftRaid at $125. Not for it’s raid capabilities.

SoftRaid uses some sort of algorithm developed by Google that predicts hard drive failures using SMART data – but does it far, far better than Disk Utility or other “typical” SMART status programs.

I’ve had it warn me a “perfectly good” drive was about to fail 2 weeks in advance of it going down – Disk Utility’s SMART status saw nothing.

When you’re working low budget and don’t want to invest in extra storage for back up (or client doesn’t want to pay for it), it’s great having a piece of software that will actually throw a pop-up at you, telling you it’s detecting a failure long before it happens.

Good luck on your edit, and as you may have already guessed, I’d vote for the transcode.

Transcoding doesn’t involve hair-pulling and teeth gnashing. In fact, it’s such a peaceful experience, many people choose to eat or simply sleep while it happens.

It’s not like humans run 24/7.

We’ll spend 6-8 hours every day completely unconscious and then complain that a planned project with mp4 footage slowed the edit down because it could only be ingested between 8 and 5! 😉

(Us “haters” also have a sly sense of efficiency. We’re old-fashioned like that.)

[Steve Connor]

Sorry I don’t believe Scott and Joshs answer were very helpful or appropriate.

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Chris Harlan]

I do understand your sensitivity, but–if I may–I’d like to point out that it was Josh who posed the topic question. I do believe he was in earnest, and that he was simply responding to the suggestion–however insincere that suggestion was–that he wait.

[Josh Williams]

Steve,
Sorry to hear you thought my comment on my own post was inappropriate and not helpful. I was really only trying to say that although I would love to use FCP X , I can’t wait 4 or 6 months as was suggested for it to have multicam. Wasn’t trying to be a hater on my own thread. I do appreciate your advice though. Thanks

[Gary Huff]

[Steve Connor]More helpful posts from the haters to a genuine question, seriously guys why are you bothering?

Perhaps you wouldn’t care much if he plunged full-steam ahead into FCPX and got himself into a quandary, but some of us here actually provide helpful advice when someone is considering such a move.

[Chris Harlan]

The sad thing is, he goes on to confuse one of the original poster’s responses, then accuses him of being a hater, too.

[Herb Sevush]

Cut it on Premiere Pro. Handles H.264 natively, has Multi-Cam, easier for FCP7 user to learn than FCPX, cheaper than buying new raid storage.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Robert Brown]

Use Premiere Pro and have it all. But I haven’t died it’s multi-cam yet. But if you decide to transcode everything, watch out for the gamma shift Compressor adds and you may want to do some tests to see of Q-Master speeds things up. It can make a huge difference in some cases. That’s built into OSX if you haven’t heard of it, you set it up in OSX preferences.

Also I found Adobe Media Encoder does a better job for H264 to Pro Res. No gamma shift and the multi-threading is very good. I would definitely do a few tests before jumping. The Adobe suite can be downloaded and used free for 30 days and the learning curve is minimal coming from FCP.

Editor/VFX – FCP, Smoke, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos