[Bj Ahlen]

I didn’t think there were any SVHS decks without TBC, but then I recalled there were actually less expensive decks that cost a few hundred instead of the $1800 I paid for my AG-1830 SVHS deck back in 1998.

You did adjust the tracking, right? That sounds like it could be your first problem.

Find a post outfit that can do the transfer for you, shouldn’t cost much.

Then you would get the TBC and a 4:2:2 transfer to say DVCPRO50 instead of the miserable 4:1:1 (DV25 I presume) through your camcorder.

A post house may also have a deck with better heads that can pick up poor tapes better.

[Bj Ahlen]

Glad to be of help, you became my hero after you did that microphone comparison a few years ago, it saved me a lot of time!

Firefox has had its share of problems lately, so make sure you have the latest 3.6.12 version.

[Bj Ahlen]

A virus wouldn’t bother messing with character encodings unless there was a specific vulnerability in them.

The font cache is your best bet.

You did do a complete OS restart after cleaning out the cache also, right? That’s necessary.

[Bj Ahlen]

That is not likely to be an Apple Mail problem (if so, it would be an issue of the character encoding of incoming e-mails being interpreted incorrectly, very unlikely).

The first thing to check is whether you have a corrupted font cache.

OnyX is a free OS X utility that can fix this and more. You can download it from Apple.

[Bj Ahlen]

It’s not likely that Steve Jobs would jeopardize his reputation by saying “it will be awesome” etc. if they didn’t have a major upgrade coming.

If they didn’t have something cool in the pipeline, I believe Steve wouldn’t have said anything.

As many have noted, if the next version of Final Cut arrives on the regular schedule, we’re looking at next summer.

That is also the announced time for the roar of OS X 10.7 Lion, which may have some new things under the hood (APIs) that are needed for a 64-bit Final Cut 8.

[Bj Ahlen]

[Jessica Newman] “color smoothing 4:1:1”

Yecch, are you shooting DV?

Chromakeying DV25 is not one of life’s greatest pleasures…

If so, start by moving your Project to DVCPRO50 to get 4:2:2 output from your filters.

Also, blondes are hard to shoot against green screen.

For that, you’re better off with blue screen.

[Bj Ahlen]

In editing a documentary, I got a 120 degree wide panning shot where someone had kicked the tripod right in the middle of the pan.

The camera dropped about 20 degrees, and I didn’t have enough “air” to do tracking. The client was devastated, because the shot was just unusable, and it was an important part of the story.

I solved it in less than a minute by inserting a lens flare in the trailing corner at the exact moment the camera dropped.

This was enough to distract the eye, and when I showed the clip again with this fix, nobody saw anything wrong with the shot.

[Bj Ahlen]

[Dylan Hargreaves] “”I still dont understand why they build cameras able to use 18db- anything needing that would look TERRIBLE anyway…””

Not on a 2/3″ camera.

But they have less random sensor noise to amplify together with the good signal. It’s all about the signal/noise ratio which doesn’t change when you amplify both.

For grainy/noisy footage, Topaz Enhance for FCP/AE can create wonders. They have a 30-day unlimited trial so you can test with your footage.

[I have no connection with Topaz other than as a very satisfied customer of several of their plug-ins.]

[Bj Ahlen]

When I first heard about ChronoSync last year, I downloaded the free trial and found it to be one of the buggiest pieces of software I’ve seen in a long time. At least it Force Quitted by itself each time it died.

I then tried GoodSync, and haven’t looked back since.

Works perfectly always, and it’s well thought out in that it can also save you from understandable but unacceptable mistakes.

[Bj Ahlen]

Read the Apple support document I linked to above.

Apple says that pairs have to match, other than that you can mix manufacturers and sizes [as long as the specs are fulfilled].

I did just that, adding 4x2GB sticks from OWC to the 2x1GB sticks that came with my Mac Pro.

This has worked perfectly for two years so far, and others have had the same experience.

There is no surprise here, as Apple explicitly says this is OK.

Just read what Apple says for your particular version of Mac Pro.