Al Bergstein
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks! I still would like to see an overview of how they did that. I’ll have to look up AE ‘rotary cut’ since that seems to be what they call that.
Al
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Strange. I’ve exported hundreds of JPGs, as recently as yesterday, and not seen this. You on a Mac or W7 machine? Have you seen this same phenomenom with AVCHD footage shot on this same camera before? What version of Pr are you running?
Al
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I’m sort of moving “back to the Mac” for a couple of reasons. I was on FCP 7. When they ended the life of it, there was a big hole, no USB 3.0 support, etc and I had a Windows 7 computer (I also do quite a bit of work with clients on Windows.) It was easy to move over to Windows on Adobe. While there I tried out Sony. Lots of good things about Vegas, stability is not one of them.
Currently because of my using an iPhone, iPad and MBPro for my personal laptop, and field capture, I decided to move back to the newer iMac.
Here’s my feeling. Win7 is ok, but more prone to problems that are difficult for many folks to troubleshoot. My experience was the Mac was not having those kind of OS instability problems. (both machines lots of RAM, big monitors, i7 processors). Windows 8 is a nightmare, IMHO. And that’s coming from a person who spent a long time using Windows in business. It truly is awful. So I would not want to upgrade to it.
The Mac OS has it’s quirks, but is very stable, and has some nice features like the ability to eject disks simply. Yes, you can do it in Windows, but the Mac OS makes it painless. I’m easily able to sync all my contacts on my iPhone and iPad with my desktop and laptop. That’s a great time saver. iCloud has been a very good product for me lately. I really don’t even think about it anymore.
I don’t know if it’s any *smoother* to edit on the Mac, it feels pretty similar. Thunderbolt drive speeds are very fast. Faster in my tests than my USB3 drives.
The tradeoff for this is cost. Macs cost more to buy. Though when I factor in support costs it’s pretty much a wash. Pay me now or pay me later. And if you compare things properly, meaning a Mac with the right power supply inside, vs a PC with the right Power supply and expansion slots, you have to buy a workstation class machine with a proper video card, and then the price is virtually identical. I kept an eye out on Ebay and found a fully configured iMac for $1900. 16GBs RAM, Fusion Drive, etc. Seems to work fine.
I’m a fan of Time Machine. For most users, it’s an elegant and workable solution, unless you are going to clone drives. Which I also do. Also, oddly, I’ve had the Mac do a better job recovering data on NTFS drives that had gotten corrupted. Now that’s odd.
There are many professional shops using Windows out there. It’s not like it was a few years ago, when Apple was really the only game in town. Adobe has been making huge strides. It almost seems as if they are doing more for the Windows world, which is logical if you assume that Apple doesn’t have a competing editing production on that platform. You won’t go wrong either way, but I think that if you can afford the Mac world, it likely won’t be an issue.
For much of the industry, there is a longer record of supporting Macs for video production, and thus a deeper pool to draw from.
Al
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Larry, you might want to consider really only a couple of options in the Mac world. The iMac 27″ fully configured with 2 or 4 GB video card, 16GBs or more of RAM, or the new Mac Pro. Optionally, you might start with a used Mac Pro from the last few years. I currently use both a Win7 machine and a 27″ iMac. I’m transitioning to the iMac entirely. I don’t know the kind of work your company does, I’m relatively simple, documentary style work. So I don’t feel I’m pushing a bunch of boundaries.
I’m using Adobe CC, but have used CS 5.5 and CS 6.0. I personally prefer working in the Mac OS but there are some things to get used to for long time Windows power users. Lots of keystrokes in the OS need to be relearned. Some things are easier some not. Some tools like Directory Compare, a great useful tool in Windows, needs to be changed out for other tools. On the other hand, the Mac OS has tons of tools available.
Al
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Todd’s right. You are extremely limited with your budget requirements, and I’m not really sure what your requirements are. You say you do animation, low light shooting, etc but those are very different types of filming. You might either save up more money to expand your choices, or talk to folks about the specific type of filming you want to do. For some people, iPhones are actually useful tools.
One of the great learning experiences I’ve had was to learn to exploit my existing gear limitations to the max. That might mean doing everything you can to learn how to shoot with the iPhone. There are tons of accessories for it. More than for any other camera in that price.
Your FS200 got very good reviews https://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/canon-fs200-silver/4505-6500_7-33483235.html. While you are shooting in SD, it has a decent zoom, and a headphone and mic in jack.
Also, there are a lot of used SD cameras around that are *cheap*. Meaning that you can buy better grade SD cameras than you have for likely little money. Just a few years ago some were much more expensive. A quick search of ebay found this.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CANON-XL2s-SD-Camcorder-Package-with-Video-Light-/331105064788?pt=Camcorders_Professional_Video_Cameras&hash=item4d17665754It’s a superb deal on an SD camera that was state of the art a few years ago. I know many people, myself included, that used these. They take excellent video quality, have pretty good low light (none of these will have great low light compared to a DSLR), and this can do just about anything you would want to do with video, other than HD. It uses mini-cassettes which actually store pretty well, better than buying tons of hard disks.
You might want to post the links to your existing videos, so we could at least comment on what kind of camera you might be able to work with. In the HD world, you could likely buy a used 7D for that price, with a standard lens. It’s a very good starter camera. Or the t2i or t3i. All good basic cameras with decent video capabilities. Great low light. But lots of limitations, again. If you buy a DSLR you will also need to buy an external mic of some kind.
You are in NYC, go talk to B&H. They are the biggest and best game in the country, and probably have a ton of used gear. They also likely have classes to introduce folks to the choices available.
The other issue is that if you go HD your video editing system might need a significant upgrade. There seems to be no end to the money you can spend.
good luck!
Al
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I own both a 5Dmkiii and a C100. I rarely use the 5D anymore. The C100 is superior in almost every way. Only problem is depending on whether you need to shoot a lot of stills with your work (I suppose a wedding shooter might). Then the 5D shines. But the quality of the C100 is superb and the package will use all your canon lenses, Batteries run for hours without buying an external battery back like on the 5D. I don’t think you’d regret getting the C100.
Al
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Ricardo, I (and I’m sure others) understand your situation. There are a huge amount of “what camera should I buy” Qs and A’s archived on this site, and others. And there is no “one” right camera. I have close to a half dozen all for various needs. A great starting point is to review some of those FAQs which should be able to help you narrow your search down. Your budget of less than $500 means used is likely what you will be forced to buy, and that, is a huge market place. If you live near a city, see if you can rent some cameras. Best of luck!
Al
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Why anyone would produce let alone watch, an unboxing video is beyond me. It’s really the epitome of a wasted mind. If you need a video to unbox a product, you obviously need drugs and/or therapy. We used to say, “Get A Life”. to people like this. but that hasn’t apparently gotten through.
Al
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So why not just do a Time Machine backup, or hook up a FW or TB cable between the machines, go to Utilities and run migration assistant but only choose to migrate computer settings (and maybe documents). I just did that quite successfully. Migration assistant is a wonderful tool. Just don’t run it over an ethernet connection. It should be direct connected.
I backed up one drive onto a RAID 1 with TM. With Mavericks you can choose to migrate from a Time Machine backup.
Al
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Thanks. Of Course. The issue is that it’s a long concert, and I wanted to break the songs up from one long cut to many. I had used the BM devices for VHS tapes I had and just assumed that it would be better to use them to break up the DVDs. But I’ll dump the video into Pr and cut it that way. I appreciate the reminder though! It still doesn’t answer why the device is not functioning properly….(G)
Al