[Andrew Mehta]

A slight contradiction slagging off SW, AND saying you’ll buy the DV in/out version, in the same post.

I think the problem is, SW was designed as a companion for HD, not the older M100i programs.

Even today, Media100 SDe is supposed to be the new replacement for M100i, and supposedly the exchange between Media100 SDe and SW is fine.

The exchange between Media100i and SW? Yeah, it’s a complete bugger so I hear.
But then I haven’t bought SW either.

I’m sticking with my 7.5 i/XS for now.

I have mentioned I may upgrade to HDe next year somewhen, as I assume I really ought to leave OS9 behind, at some stage. =P
But everything I have does the job atm.

Probably what you’d be best doing is either sticking with what you’ve got, or trying the new SW Production Suite [11.5 with DV in/out] two week trial when it becomes available. Or even better….ask to be on the Beta programme, which I assume would give you a longer trial, and allow you to give feedback too, and have that taken onboard. [ Email m100beta@media100.com ].

Then again, even with DV in and out, it might still be difficult using SW as a companion for Media100i. (Unless of course, if with DV in&out it becomes a full replacement for your Media100 i.e. if you just use DV cameras ).

If you need a second system, might be better off looking for old P6000 or Vincent cards on ebay. Then you can run a second Media100i and assure complete compatibilty between the two.

Or else, upgrade to the newer programmes, HDe, SDe, etc, which SHOULD be fully compatible with SW no probs. But yeah, it is a bit of a bugger you can’t just buy SW and have it work seamlessly with legacy Media100i.

It has made it a useless proposition for me also, until I get a HDe system.
I would have bought SW by now if it was fully backwards compatible. As it isn’t, I just went the ebay route, and got a second M100i.
It’ll do as a stop gap, till the whole Universal Binary stuff is sorted out, and I’ve gathered enough cash to get a new Mac Pro & M100 HDe. For now, I’m cheap and cheerful with G4s and M100i.

But then I’m an ex-student playing it scavey…..

[Andrew Mehta]

I wasn’t gonna respond to this, as I thought my method might be archaic, and take too long.

But two points:
When at Uni, 1999-2003, we were always told you could import Quicktime, or Shockwave Flash straight into Media100. This was when the Uni had Media100i 7.5, and Flash was up to version 5. I believe it referred to swf files, and not fla files.
I never tried this however.

What I used to do instead was one of two approaches:
I had Flash 5 myself on my PC,
so any animation I had done, I could export to an uncompressed AVI.
Then I could import the AVI into Media100.
I say two approaches, because at first, I used to export a Bitmap Image Sequence from Flash, and then use Rad Video Tools’s Bink Video, to collate these into a single AVI, and then burn to CD, and take into Uni to import into Media100. But then a bit later, I discovered I could export straight to AVI from Flash 5 itself.

Now we’re up to Flash 8, I’m not sure what the options are.
But I would assume Flash 8 would still allow you to export a flash animation as a movie of some kind.

The only problem with image sequences or uncompressed AVIs, is they take a lot of hard drive space, and a lot of time to import into M100.

Most of my animations were around 1minute, and would take a Gig or two to export, and then a 15min wait to import.

Like I said, there are probably easier ways out there.
Just surprised no one more knowledgable has posted a better suggestion.

If the client is able to convert it to quicktime at their end, that’s gonna be better overall, isn’t it?
I assume they could open their project up in Flash, and export to any format, though I’d have to check up on the latest version to see what the options are.

[Andrew Mehta]

Woohoo! ^_^

[Andrew Mehta]

I’m sure there’s something professional that could do this.

In the meanwhile, I have my head in the games industry, and there’s a device being aimed at consumers for

[Andrew Mehta]

Heehee…I just bought a DV option for my P6000 on ebay ( so that it would have firewire )…..^_^ it came with an ICEfx Ultra card, and Final Effect Complete After Effects/Boris plugins. ^_^.

Got it altogether for

[Andrew Mehta]

Quite modest and simple:

Sony PD150 MiniDV/DVCAM

My freelance contacts also use Sony Z1s, so again, HDV.

[Andrew Mehta]

Just realised you’re in California, I’m based in the UK, so don’t know much about the area, but I have a few tapes here from various companies, you could try asking round at:

AGF Media:
14932 Delano Street,
Van Nuys, CA 91411
818/780-7400
213/467-1234
(They did an Activision PAL tape I have)

Dogmatic Inc:
320 Sunset Ave.
Venice Beach,
CA 90291
Tel: 310 450 3884
(They did a Ubisoft PAL tape I have)

Lightning Media:
They’re in Hollywood, Santa Monica, Burbank, and Valencia.
See http://www.lightningmedia.com
(They’ve done Capcom and Vivendi PAL tapes I have).

Those are the only US contact I have atm.
And I’ve never used, or spoken to any of ’em.

[Andrew Mehta]

If it’s just a one off showing, just make sure you have an NTSC compatible player and TV when you get to New Zealand.

If it actually NEEDs to be PAL, get an a/v company to do a standards conversion for you.

There are three methods for standards conversion:

1) Use some little digibox thingie to play a little trick on the system – someone local did this for me, and managed to convert from NTSC to PAL at a modest

[Andrew Mehta]

“I’m not a sales dude, but I thought you would want to know.”

Ahh, no, but a little birdie told me you were Media100’s head of support*. 😉

^_^ Hehe.

I didn’t actually know the upgrade was free though, so valid point.
😉 I’ll let you off this time.

*=If I’m mistaken feel free to correct me.

[Andrew Mehta]

I don’t really know the answer to this question.

So Floh or someone else will probably give you a proper answer.
(I’ve never used Compressor, and I only have a G4)

Nonetheless, I’ll say two things:

1) I have the Media100 Transcoder on OSX Jaguar, and have no problems with encoding Media100i 7.5 self contained movies with Cleaner 6.

2) On the Media100 website, there appear to be a new set of codecs for download. My guess is these could replace the old transcoder, and you may find these work on the newer systems, where the transcoder would otherwise crash (of course I could be wrong – this is just a guess).
Linkage is here:
https://www.support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=379
Of course, I could easily be wrong though.
The Transcoder is still online also at:
https://www.support.media100.com/KBSearch/kbDocument.aspx?id=193
So maybe the codecs don’t replace it, but are for M100 itself.
I’m not really sure.

Well these are my two cents.
Am sure someone else will come along and clear things up for you soon though, and correct me if I was mistaken in my second point.