Alan Okey
5
COW Coins
2
DaVinci Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Devin Crane] “Actually Ikegami still sells Broadcast CRTs.”
Complete with fishbowl geometric distortion…
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[brian47] “What do Mac users do if they wish to export a video file (say, a project from Premiere Pro to a single .avi file) that is larger than 4 GB to an external hard drive?”
You’ve just hit on the main sticky wicket in Mac/PC workflow. I’m not aware of a good solution at the moment for your situation.
If you have a Mac and a separate PC, you can transfer files via Ethernet by putting the 4+ GB file in the Public folder of your Mac user account’s home directory and enabling Windows file sharing in System Preferences/Sharing. You could then connect to the Mac from the PC by using the network browser to navigate to the shared Public folder and copying the file to the PC.
You could also transfer the files via ftp: Open a DOS command prompt on the PC, ftp to the Mac’s IP address, log in with your Mac user account’s username and password, cd to /
/Public, and get the file. Obviously you can’t use the network transfer option if you’re using OS X and Windows on the same computer. 😉
Aside from any third-party solutions that I might not be aware of, there’s no way OS X can write a 4+ GB file to an external drive that can then be connected to a Windows PC and read. Windows doesn’t recognize HFS or HFS+, OS X can’t write to NTFS, and FAT-32 is limited to 4GB files.
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Some general observations:
Regarding permissions, it’s important to realize that OS X is built on UNIX, and as such, behaves like UNIX. UNIX was designed during a time when computers were still large and expensive, so many users had to share time on a mainframe or mini. The Super User, or root account, was the administrative account for the system. User accounts by design had limited access, permissions and capabilities.
OS X still retains a root account, but even an OS X Administrator account does not automatically grant root access. Therefore, Administrator is not root – it’s more like a very privileged user. OS X is kind of a weird hybrid in that it has an underlying UNIX core that Apple has tried to disguise and hide from the user as much as possible in order to retain the simplicity that is the hallmark of the Mac OS.
As you discovered, messing around with disk permissions on the system drive is a BAD thing. UNIX permissions are not the same thing as file permissions in Windows, and should not be thought of as analogous. Leopard has added access control lists, which are more like what Windows uses.
Much of the way in which OS X behaves is dictated by 40+ years of UNIX evolution, so don’t expect the underlying structure to change in any significant way to become more like Windows – it won’t happen.
As for the Finder, as someone else pointed out, File Open/Save dialog boxes in OS X are application-specific, and it’s up to the application developer to decide how they work. In other words, File dialogs within an app are not the Finder, and may or may not behave like the Finder.
I worked with Silicon Grphics workstations before working with Windows PCs or Macs. SGI’s IRIX had some great features (UI and otherwise) that aren’t present in either Windows or OS X, but I don’t expect them to be there. Each OS has its own set of quirks and conventions, and it’s a bit silly to criticize one for being different from another simply because it’s unfamiliar territory. You simply need to become adaptable and accept each for what it is. Posting to forums like the Cow is a great way to get tips and tricks for working with an unfamiliar OS. Be careful how you phrase questions though – you may come off as being a bit of a troll if you frame everything in terms of “Windows does things like THIS. Why can’t OS X do it that way too?”
Try to learn about and practice using OS X-specific features like Expose and Spaces, and explore various hotkey options for faster navigation. In the example you gave of a two-monitor situation where clicking off of the app onto the desktop requires you to reselect the app, you can simply use option/tab to reselect the app with no mouse movement required. The single menu bar position for all apps regardless of on which monitor the app is running is a common complaint, however.
OS X may never be enough like Windows to meet your complete satisfaction, but if you can adapt to a different way of doing things, it will become second nature. I still use IRIX along with Windows and OS X, and I feel completely comfortable getting around quickly on any of them.
Good luck!
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FYI –
Apple is now selling the hardware RAID card as an upgrade for the Mac Pro, meaning you can buy it separately.
As far as I’m aware, the Apple card is the only hardware RAID-5 card that supports the Mac Pro’s internal drive bays. It’s also bootable and has a battery backup.
$1000 is not a lot, comparatively speaking, for this kind of hardware.
If you want to use an external enclosure, there are other options like the Highpoint RocketRSAID series.
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[Warren] “When I make a final master DVD I’l use compressor or BitVice depending.”
Nice to see another BitVice user on the forum. I absolutely love the quality of BitVice’s encoding, but Innobits is a company in need of serious help. They’ve promised BitVice Pro for over four years now, with nary a word on how close they are to completion.
I wish that they would either A) sell their technology to a company with greater resources to devote to optimizing and enhancing the performance of the product or B) make it a priority to find some wealthy investors that could provide them with the financial resources that they so sorely need to help accelerate their development process.
It kills me to see their great technology languish (relative to products with bigger names) due to their lack of marketing muscle and painfully slow pace of development.
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[JavierC] “I have this only as a final, concluding question to this thread since I’m now simply wondering how shoestring budget indies get made using 16 film on computers far less powerful than the G5 I have here. Did they (do they) get their shot film processed and sent back to them on some sort of non HD format (VHS/DV tape, etc) that their system can handle? If so, then they can work with it, but the footage simply won’t have the best resolution . . . “
Javier,
Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous, but I think you’re blurring the line between editing and finishing. Lots of great film-originated work has been edited on cheaper computers at offline resolutions and then finished on a higher end system.
Instead of trying to do everything on desktop systems, it may actually be more cost and time effective to do an offline SD edit / negative cut list and then finish the film using high-quality HD transfers or 2k DPX datacine scans in a high end finishing and/or color correction suite using tools like Smoke or Lustre/Scratch/da Vinci. Compared to what it costs to get a single film print made, money spent in a high-end online finishing suite is a relative bargain.
Even if the project will never go back out to film, there’s a lot to be said for finishing at the highest possible quality/resolution and down-converting as a final step. Any compositor or colorist would much rather work with high resolution/high quality source footage to get the best possible result. This also has the benefit of allowing one to create a high quality master archive in case a film out is ever a possibility in the future.
You can certainly work with 2K material in Color, but it will bring even the best octo-core Mac Pro to its knees, and require a very large and fast storage system. Make sure to figure that into the overall cost.
Also realize that from the producer/director’s standpoint, going the D.I.Y route may not end up being the most cost-effective solution, especially if time is of the essence. There’s a significant amount of time and money that must be invested in order to finish a film on a desktop system. While it’s certainly possible to end up with a very high quality product, it happens at a much slower pace than what is possible in a high-end finishing suite. The person paying the bills may decide that it’s a better use of their time and money to spend the $$ in a high-end finishing suite and have the luxury of real time interactivity and near-instant gratification.
It’s the old saying: Good, Fast, Cheap – pick two.
If saving time and money aren’t of critical importance, and if learning the craft of color correction is your goal, then by all means, dive in!
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[JeremyG] “it will whisper softly into you ear as you fall asleep next to your computer after a long night’s editing.”
Your is being nice. Mine screams “WAKE UP!” when I nod off during those painfully long client-attended edit review sessions.
Joke:
Q – How many producers does it take to approve an edit?
A – I don’t know, what do you think?
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You must have misread the diagram – the Kona LH is only compatible with the Power Mac G5, not with the G4.
The Kona LH is a PCI-X card. It only works in G5s that have PCI-X slots.
The Kona LHe is a PCI Express card. It only works in newer G5s that have PCI Express slots and in Mac Pros.
Neither model works in the Power Mac G4.
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[szumlins] “It looks to me like the original footage was output at 23.98 and a pulldown was applied…frame through it and it goes 3:2:3:2 “
That’s exactly what it is. 24p recorded to 29.97 with 3:2 pulldown. You can use Cinema Tools to remove the pulldown fairly easily.