What can be done with Powerbook and FCP

[Ajith Nair]

hi,
you can, of course, capture, edit and out pu to a beta tape using your PowerBook. All you should have is a Analog to Digital Video Converter like Canopus ADVC 110 or so and a firewire hub. In case you have any difficulty in capturing to a firewire HD you can use a USB 2.0 hard drive also.
good luck

[Uli Plank]

You’ll have problems with Digital-S, though, since AFAIK the digital transfer of that format needs SDI and there are no cardbus adapters for that format. Analog transfer would be possible with the box Ajith mentioned.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ajith Nair] “All you should have is a Analog to Digital Video Converter like Canopus ADVC 110 or so and a firewire hub. In case you have any difficulty in capturing to a firewire HD you can use a USB 2.0 hard drive also.”

The Canopus will result in the footage being dropped down to DV quality so if that’s ok, then the Canopus will work. If you want to stay Uncompressed from Beta, then you’ll need the AJA Io LA which will capture / output footage uncompressed.

You’ll need a FW800 drive minimum to work with uncompressed footage and only a few units like LaCie and G-RAID make drives that can handle 8bit uncompressed. You do NOT want to work with any type of USB 2.0 drive, that will cause dropped frames on capture and playback.

I have not tried working with any uncompressed footage on my laptop other than to run some tests a while back. DV, DVCAM, DVCPro HD and HDV can all easily be worked with in your Powerbook. You’ll need to do a lot more rendering when working with the laptop, but FCP 5 does run pretty well on the machine.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

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

[Oliver Peters]

Greg,

This works just fine. You can do uncompressed with a single FW800 drive, but don’t count on solid playback. It will drop frames but you can edit with it. You might look into a dual-channel FW800 cardbus adapter and run 2 FW800 drives striped for better performance or use the DV50 codec. To get video in and out, use AJA Io (analog & digital), IoLA (analog) or IoLD (digital) systems. These will connect on your FW400 port. Since you are a M100 guy, have you looked into their software-only versions?

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Ed Dooley]

Good advice in the previous replies. Just to add: I’m editing more and more with my 1.5g PB. I bought the AJA IO LA specifically for that because I wanted the ability to capture on the road. All I would need is a deck or a camera that I could recored from. If you’re planning to finish editing on a desktop, it might be easier (and possibly cheaper) to digitize onto a FW drive from your desktop, then use those files on your laptop. We’ve been using the DV50 codec for BetaSP footage and it looks great. Maybe not quite the same as uncompressed, but very nice. DV50 also makes editing multiple streams of video easier on a PB. For drives, Walter already mentioned 2 possibilities. I bought a 2 drive FW case, put my own drives in it, and striped it. The performance matched what barefeats.com got in their tests of the G-Raid and the LaCie BDX. It also gave me more flexibility by allowing me to swap out drives, and saved me a bundle.
Ed

[Gary Adcock]

[walter biscardi] “I have not tried working with any uncompressed footage on my laptop other than to run some tests a while back. DV, DVCAM, DVCPro HD and HDV can all easily be worked with in your Powerbook. You’ll need to do a lot more rendering when working with the laptop, but FCP 5 does run pretty well on the machine.”

I have done UC 10bit on my laptop, a lot of it in fact. nearly 150 hours of content has been cut on my laptop in 8 and 10bit Standard Def.. I use both Lacie and G-Raid’s for my storage with out any issues. I would on location with a AJA Io’s (LA or LD depending). The same drive set up can also handle 720p HD footage easily.

gary adcock

Studio37
HD and Film Consultation