[Andrew Rendell]

What hardware doesn’t take the source timecode when digitising from tape on a “capture now”?

I’ve done that for years (on both Avid and FCP) and never had a problem going back to redigitise clips later. That’s how we used to do the old offline at low res/conform at high res workflow, so I just take it for granted that you can do that.

[Mind you, I started in tape suites so when I started using NLE’s (which was in 1994 or 1995 IIRC) I was shocked that when you plugged in an RS422 cable to the deck you ALSO had to tell the software what kind of deck it was! So what do I know.]

[Andrew Rendell]

I don’t know, but Ethernet isn’t really designed for that kind of job, Gigabit Ethernet might have enough speed but I gather that it’s a bit more complicated than just speed when it comes to sharing media files.

I’ve been cutting recently with the media shared with another suite through Apple’s Xsan, over fibre channel, which was ok (it had the occasional speed issue when a third suite was digitising to it or playing out to tape, but that might have been that particular setup).

[Andrew Rendell]

I don’t know any particular tutorials, but I’d always advise talking to whoever you’re sending the sequence to.

For online and sound dub, the issue is track laying: keep to a sensible and easily understood layout, so for vision keep the main cut on V1 and only go up layers where you’re building up effects, and have one layer for text. For the sound, use the top tracks for sync sound, then tracks for background/ effects, the a couple of pairs of tracks for music, and another for commentary/ narration. But that’s something that you shouldn’t have to spend much time on, you should be doing that from the start of the edit.

What do you mean by Telecine? Do you mean a retransfer from film or colour grading? Either way, speak to the people you’re delivering to to find out what they need – TBH requirements vary and the most common thing I’ve had facilities say to me is “give us your project and we’ll handle whatever conversions need to be done”…

[Andrew Rendell]

I’m not entirely sure that I do follow the reasoning. Sure, if you have only one system and it breaks down your business has a problem, but having a second system on standby isn’t the only option as a backup plan.

My “Plan B” is that I do regular backups and if my system goes down I take my project to a facility that I know and carry on working there. Of course that has a certain financial cost, but it means that I don’t stop working while my system is being fixed.

Now that may not be the most appropriate plan for anyone else. I’m a freelancer and I own my own kit, FCP and Avid, so I can’t afford to have a duplicate for both of those sitting around unused, but it means that using kit that lots of facilities also have does have some influence on my purchasing decisions (obviously productivity is higher on the list of priorities and how much am I going to earn out of it is more important than the initial purchase price, but lots of things count in coming to the decision – best doesn’t always mean cheapest).

[And don’t forget that when buying a system the hardware is a big cost, so don’t assume that the price for the software on its own is much of a comparison between NLEs.]

[Andrew Rendell]

I consider that there is such a thing as professional reputation, it’s hard won and easy to lose. As such, where I might be happy to “bend the rules” under certain circumstances in my personal life, I do not break the law in my professional life unless there’s a damn good reason to do so (and I’m sanctioned by someone who is more, or at least just as, legally liable as I am).

Where the general public might reasonably be unaware of the intricacies of intellectual property law (copyright and so on), there isn’t IMO any excuse for someone working in the media not to have a basic knowledge of what’s allowed and what isn’t.

[Andrew Rendell]

Walter Biscardi did a good article on suite design here – https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/anatomy-of-an-edit-suite
(being in the UK his suppliers aren’t appropriate over here, but great ideas to borrow from).

Question: Why do you need the riser to turn? If it’s so that you can get the monitor into the right position for the seating then adjustable monitor arms, as Walter has, would do the trick (as they generally have a reasonable amount of twist in the design). If you actually need to turn a monitor regularly you’d probably be better off with a monitor turntable on a fixed height stand.

Just using Google finds a few examples of both of those things in the UK. Oh, and this is pretty similar to what you linked to – https://www.staples.co.uk/technology/computing-accessories/computer-ergonomics/lcd-tft-monitor-riser?r=bf although without as much turn or weight bearing capacity.

[Andrew Rendell]

A bit of nit-picking pedantry:

Spelling – under “Holding Microphones” you mention Hage Supports – do you mean Hague?

Prices – tricky one as prices are a bit volatile, but I noticed that you put an approximate price of £120 for a Rode Blimp as I’ve been looking at buying one and they’re typically around the £155 + VAT mark at the moment.

I like the link to B&H Introductory Guide to Portable Field Mixers, so I wonder if it would be good to have more links to places where a reader can find more technical information… maybe…

[Andrew Rendell]

Since you mention “dark content”, I like having these around for stuff with, er, less than ideal exposure:

Shadow-Highlight (free) from https://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/
Captain’s Blowout Fixer from https://pistolerapost.com/pluginz/

Some other good ones at https://straylight.tv/pluginz/

[Andrew Rendell]

I’ve got a couple that I use for backing up and walking files between computers – apart from having to use a cable that has 2 A-type USB connectors on one end, so it’s plugged into 2 USB ports on a MBP in order to get enough power (which is a bit of an issue, having only 3 USB ports on the MBP), there doesn’t seem to be much difference between them and a separately powered drive.

On the other hand USB isn’t great for editing, you can manage simple cutting for standard def in DV codec if the drive itself is fast enough but anything more than that and USB struggles.

[Enrico Lappano] “I also got a Firewire 800 converter for it since it uses USB 2.0, and initially, there doesn’t seem to be any improvement on the download performance speed.”

It’s a bit more complicated than just the data rate of the connection (USB, Firewire, eSata, etc), there are a bunch of things that also affect the performance – the rpm of the drive unit, cache size, etc., so it might be that you can only get the full speed of whatever connection standard you’re using in bursts rather than continuously (TBH without knowing the specs for the Goflex range, which I don’t, that’s really just guessing though).

[Andrew Rendell]

What I’ve done in a similar situation is create a new project, copy/paste my sequences into the new project then work in the new project, and that has usually worked.

I did have a project a couple of years ago where some media had become corrupted and playing it either as rushes or cut into a sequence crashed FCP: the cure was by identifying those files, trashing them and re-ingesting them. That wouldn’t account for a big project file size, but it might account for a sequence freezing when you copy it into a new project.

I would also delete all renders as well.