Time to do the PC-Mac transition right

[Walter Biscardi]

[Bob Cole] “Disk Warrior — okay for Intel Mac?”

Yes, the latest version is good for Intel.

[Bob Cole] “Trash/Restore Prefs: FCP Attic seems great to me, but I’ve heard lots of praise for FCP Rescue. Should I flip a coin or is one better?”

Never used either, I just do it manually. Never had a problem.

[Bob Cole] “Applejack — it says you should use this only in single user mode or disaster might ensue. I have one “user” listed in Finder, “Bob.” Does that qualify as single user “mode?””

Never heard of that one, we have four users on one of my machines and three users on another. My machine just has me. No issues with any of those.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[13]

“Applejack — it says you should use this only in single user mode or disaster might ensue. I have one “user” listed in Finder, “Bob.” Does that qualify as single user “mode?” ”

no that is not single user mode, for that restart the computer holding down the s key, however I don’t see any big advantages to using Applejack I prefer to keep a external drive with a copy of the OS that I can boot from for trouble shooting.

“Carbon Copy Cloner — okay for Intel Mac? Disk Warrior — okay for Intel Mac?”

Yes

“Trash/Restore Prefs: FCP Attic seems great to me, but I’ve heard lots of praise for FCP Rescue. Should I flip a coin or is one better?”

Never used FCP Attic always used FCP Rescue

[Jeremy Garchow]

FCP Attic is ‘best’ for people that need to take settings with them to other edit suites, a la freelance editors. It backups up more user settings than FCP rescue does.

Bob, what do you mean the MacSpeak sounds geeky? What problem are you having? basically get used to the terms trash your preferences and repair permissions, both very easy to do. I watched a buddy of mine trying to get under the hood of his windows laptop the other day and I couldn’t believe how hard it was to even reinstall the operating system. I think you will find the Mac way more easy to troubleshoot.

I have never heard of Applejack, but I am sure that you will find that you don’t need a bunch of utilities to keep your Mac running smoothly. If things to go awry, a reinstall of the operating system on top of your current applications(save and install) can usually shake loose any gremlins if you have any. Good luck in your switch.

Jeremy

[Bob Cole]

[JeremyG] “Bob, what do you mean the MacSpeak sounds geeky?”

Sorry, I don’t have specifics, but I’ll start jotting geeky terms down as I see them. Thanks to this forum, FCP was relatively easy. But I have had strange encounters with: Networking (“Fix Alias” – and why do I have to do this each time?), Soundtrack Pro (saw some inscrutable error messages while trying to round-trip with FCP — and round-tripping really needs work), iTunes (trying to transcode an audio file for use in FCP defeated my best efforts).

On balance, I’m happy, and thoroughly committed to making this transition successful for myself. I really just would like to get a recommendation for a good book, geared to video post-production if possible, from someone who has preceded me in this PC-to-Mac trip. For most things, the Mac works transparently; when it doesn’t, it seems much harder to me than the PC.

— Bob C

[Jeremy Garchow]

Hmm, I don’t know of any books specifically. I’d probably get some book on OSX and a book on FCP. That should cover you. You have seen this book I take it?:

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Cut-Pro-Avid-Editors/dp/0321166493

Fix Alias – haven’t seen that before. Is that when networking with your PC or another Mac? When do you fix alias?

You are absolutely correct about STPro it does need some work. Although, if you are careful it works okay. If working in a multitrack project, there really is no round tripping, which is goofy.

iTunes as an audio converter works, and it’s really easy to set it up, but compressor works much better. Bring in your files, choose the advanced audio conversion to 24 or 16bit, 48k and away you go.

iTunes, you need to set up your preferences on the import tab. This works just fine, but compressor works much better and you won’t have to change your iTunes preferences every time you want to plug in your iPod or work with other music other than for FCP.

[Dave Jenkins]

In compressor – learn how to make a droplet that converts your audio to 48 k and it will be a simple drag and drop operation to convert audio.

Dave

[JeremyG] “iTunes as an audio converter works, and it’s really easy to set it up, but compressor works much better. Bring in your files, choose the advanced audio conversion to 24 or 16bit, 48k and away you go.

iTunes, you need to set up your preferences on the import tab. This works just fine, but compressor works much better and you won’t have to change your iTunes preferences every time you want to plug in your iPod or work with other music other than for FCP.”

[Walter Biscardi]

[JeremyG] “iTunes as an audio converter works, and it’s really easy to set it up, but compressor works much better. Bring in your files, choose the advanced audio conversion to 24 or 16bit, 48k and away you go.”

Or you can also use Quicktime Pro which is what I do. Simply export the audio as a 48Khz aiff.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Sean Oneil]

[Bob Cole] “Networking (“Fix Alias” – and why do I have to do this each time?”

That’s not normal. Perhaps your PC’s IP address keeps changing?

[Bob Cole] “Networking PCs and Mac. I have been totally unable to figure this out. My Mac will see the PCs but not vice versa. Is there a source of wisdom on this issue, whether it is on the web, in a book, or even in the form of a human being in the Baltimore-Washington area whom someone can recommend?”

Go into System Preferences -> Sharing -> Turn on Windows File Sharing.

Do that first. Then there are less than obvious steps to finding your Mac from within Windows. The Mac OS X Help explains how to do this.

Sean

[Kyle High]

As far as networking the the two platforms….
Our IT guy is a Unix/Linux freak. He went way under the hood (and way over my head) to share two of my drives on our otherwise all PC network. All I know is that he used the ‘Terminal’ and edited a system config file. It took him all of 5 minutes to set it up. I couldn’t even begin to try and explain it.

I mention this to say that if you know a GOOD ‘IT’ guy or someone who knows Unix/Linus
you can probably get them to set it up for a pizza and a coke/beer.

I’ve never used it myself, but I’ve read that PC MAC Lan will also do the trick.

postman

[Bob Cole]

Thanks for all the great suggestions.

Here’s a link that might help others in my position:

https://lifehacker.com/software/mac/hack-attack-a-guide-for-switching-to-a-mac-224674.php