truly beginner FCP questions

[Greg Ball]

One thing I can tell you is you can not have media 100 and FCP on the same computer unless you have them on separate bootabe hard drives.

[Paul Nevison]

hi marguu

In a parallel universe I used to be in the reverse position – in our old studio there was a dusty media 100 in the corner that I avoided having to learn at all costs 🙂

in answer to your digitizing questions. for analogue capture you have a few options either an SD/HD capture card such as made by Blackmagic Design or AJA with analogue input or in some cases depending on your source, you maybe able to route through a dv camera and capture over firewire (not that pro but it can work)

Your best bet may be an AJA IO – basically a breakout box that depending on the model has either analogue or digital inputs or both which connect to your mac via firewire….very easy to use and you could actually rent one if your forray into FCP land is only short term.

there are several ex media 100 converts here who i’m sure can help in the weeks to come….walter biscardi in particular regularly wakes up in a cold sweat thinking his shop has been transported back to the late 90’s – complete with media 100s 2 video layers to burn and expensive service contracts…..ah yes those were indeed the days 🙂

G5 DP 2.0 (Power PC)
4.0G RAM
OS 10.4.8
QT 7.1.3
FCP 5.1.2
BMD Decklink Extreme 5.7.2
PAL Land

[Walter Biscardi]

Marguu, just so you know, there is a Final Cut Basics forum on the Creative Calf as well and many of your questions may have already been answered there.

https://creativecalf.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_view_posts.cgi?forumid=8

Or certainly use the Search Posts function here to find many answers.

As for Analog I/O for your system, AJA makes a nice box called the AJA Io which also comes as an Analog Only version called the Io LA. What’s really nice about this box is it gives you S-Video / Component and Composite In and Out via an external box so as you upgrade your equipment the Io will continue to work.

Internal capture cards sometimes have to be replaced as the Macs mature, such as the PCI-X G5’s converting to PCIe Mac Pro’s. Any PCI-X internal capture card would need to be replaced if you moved to a PCIe Mac Pro.

I left Media 100 in 2001 and all I can tell you is it will probably take you about a week to just figure out where the buttons are. About 2 months to really get comfortable and probably within about 4 months you’ll be faster on FCP than you ever were with Media 100.

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

[Lynne Margulies]

Oops, I thought I did post this on the ‘basic’ forum, guess I switched over without noticing. Thanks for all the info everyone. Even though I love media 100 and will certainly keep using it (as I have 3 systems spread out around L.A.), I am excited about being forced to learn FCB. As to sharing M100 with FCB on one computer, will it work if FCB lives in an external LaCie drive? Will that function properly?

[Lynne Margulies]

Oops again, I meant FCP, of course.

[Walter Biscardi]

[marguu] “will it work if FCB lives in an external LaCie drive? Will that function properly?”

As far as I know, FCP 5.1.2 cannot run on an external drive, it must be on the internal drive. It used to work in the past, but I don’t think it works anymore. If anyone has it working, I’m sure they will chime in here.

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

[Lynne Margulies]

Hmm. What would be the solution here? I have a dual drive G4, can I boot off of one drive?

[David Roth weiss]

[walter biscardi] “As far as I know, FCP 5.1.2 cannot run on an external drive, it must be on the internal drive.”

You can clone your system drive to an external drive, boot that drive and install and use FCP on it.

DRW

[Alan Lacey]

I’m no expert, but since upgrading to FCP5 (now 512) I’ve had no issues with booting and running FCP off a FW external drive.

Alan in PALland

[Lynne Margulies]

David, sorry to be a dolt, but can you expain how to clone my system onto the external drive and then boot off of that? And Alan, yes, my first temptation is just to try using the external drive and see what happens.