[Bob Cole]

[Mark Slocombe] “We are backing up the boot drive via TimeMachine; does the TimeMachine BackUp work as a clone in terms of being able to boot from it?”

No. Carbon Copy Cloner (and perhaps other programs) will create a bootable drive.

I think the received wisdom is to use TimeMachine often, to create incremental backups for the data on your drives, including your boot drive, and to use CCC somewhat less frequently, to create a bootable backup drive.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Rick Wise] “There is still so much I don’t know.”

Too modest by half, but Rick makes a good point. When you receive a response in the forum, a lot of other people are looking at it, and if it’s stupid, they probably will let you know.

[Bob Cole]

[Steve Wargo] “However, if you let others use the gripheads, they will destroy them.”

Isn’t that the truth.

Which of the two sizes do you prefer? I need to travel as light as I can, so can only take one. The main light I’m modifying is a Kino Flo Diva light.

[Bob Cole]

Check the thread below (“Cheap on-camera light”), which will give info on some alternatives.

[Bob Cole]

Thanks for the tip. I have had my first shoots with the FloLight 128, and it worked well. It’s a nice amount of light, not terribly large, & runs a long time on a battery. I wouldn’t want to use the bigger lights on a camera, at least not for run-and-gun.

I used a minusgreen, frost, and CTO filters (provided), and got a very pleasing quality of light on faces. Although there is a little slot for them, the filters’ flexibility will allow them to fall out, so you do need to secure them with tape.

The ball socket mount can be a bit tough to tighten up enough to keep the light pointed correctly. The height the mount provides makes it seem a bit unwieldy, but at the same time, it’s good to have the light that much higher than the lens, for the subjects with eyeglasses.

Very good recommendation – I appreciate it, Michael.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Thax Clave] “I’m betting the presenting problem is in the CONVERSION of sample rates from the Audio station.”

I agree, and I hope that when you find the solution, you’ll share it, because on rare occasion I’ve received material recorded at oddball rates.

You may want to take this question into the FCP Forum. I suspect that you could make an adjustment to your FCP project that would solve the problem.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Sam Mallery] “This is why familiarizing yourself with scanning and making it a habit is important.”

Interesting point, and something I’ve never done. I simply turn the wireless on and check it. Are you saying that having the wireless receiver do the scanning will pick up a problem that my seat-of-the-pants practice does not?

I’m thinking of buying an additional wireless set (probably the Sennheiser G3), and have two questions:

Band A or Band B?
Small camera-mountable receiver or larger receiver? My application is mainly run-and-gun, which argues for the former, unless the larger receiver would be far superior.

Thanks!

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

Thanks for the posts — very interesting ideas.

re the argument that “it has always been this way.” History has to be written in the context of the time. Napoleon on a horse looks slightly humorous to us – but he looked like a VERY scary guy to his contemporaries. Similarly, imho some of the examples in this thread lack historical context. Re NLE’s delivering low quality as an example of “good enough:” This looks truer in retrospect than it really was at the time. I was an early adopter, and I was not telling clients how compressed the image was – I was talking about the freedom to edit non-linearly, to tell better stories, and to spend most of our editing dollars carefully crafting a show, rather than hemorrhaging cash in an online suite. Nobody noticed the compression, so was it really inferior? Was it merely “good enough?” I don’t think so. It was a terrific advance. (Besides which, until NLE’s offered online quality, most of us used them to create EDLs for a much-shortened trip to the online suite, so there was no loss of quality at all.)

After reading these posts, I think the phrase “good enough” is unfortunate, because it connotes “poor quality,” rather than “appropriate quality.” A better phrase would be “results rule.” If the end product is a 320×240 Internet video, it had better be really entertaining, because if you make a boring show, your Internet viewers are going to be clicking off of it faster than you can say, “But I shot this sucker on a RED and isn’t that fabu-”

The Internet has contributed to a results-oriented culture. So have the advances in technology which have demystified the process of filmmaking. And this current recession has sharpened the client’s focus on results.

Although this is a “business” forum, there are relatively few of us here who are PRIMARILY businesspeople. Most of us (me included) are really more oriented to the various crafts of production, which made us prone to be seduced by HD even while the marketplace was going Flash. If you take a macro view, the people who are involved with “real money” from video are not even on this forum. They’re the businesspeople and entrepreneurs at Google, YouTube, how-to websites, Hulu, etc. I think they would agree with the notion that “Good Enough” is a growing (“disruptive”) phenomenon, because the earlier they recognized it, the more money they made.

From my own experience, the emphasis on results has grown over the years. And I love it, because it has tilted the playing field in my favor. I’m still doing fine, even while the image-conscious post-production houses, with their personal chefs and plush sofas and great-looking receptionists, have had a hard time surviving. My clients don’t seem to mind the spartan editing room… although I suspect they miss the great-looking receptionist. (For you MCP-haters … I didn’t specify a gender.) We don’t have to worry, as we once did, about showing up with a smaller camera; appearances have given way to results.

I enjoyed Tim’s application of “good enough” to us, not that I like it as a possible truth. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful posts; I just had to share my curiosity about the WIRED article and I appreciate that it struck some nerves among more people than just myself. If you have relied on my interpretation of the WIRED article, you should look it up, because I don’t think I did it justice. There are some interesting examples regarding health care and legal services in there too.

Bob C
(still more likely to buy a RED than a Flip, no matter what WIRED says)

[Bob Cole]

What a great post. You have a way with words, Tim. I agree with a lot of what you say, but there’s another side to this.

“Good enough” has to be, in truth, “better overall” than something else. Before it was “good enough” vis-a-vis DigiBeta, Beta SP was “the best” field format, and wiped out the vestiges of 3/4″. MP3 players and digital downloads hurt CD players and CD sales, despite the tinnier sound, because the marketplace valued convenience and low cost (or free) over audio fidelity.

Your main point is “it was ever thus.” True in some cases, but I think WIRED has it right, that “good enough” is more prevalent today than it used to be. A few years ago, computer marketers could get away with emphasizing megabytes and pixels; today, it’s all about delivering utility, and notebooks are hotter than much more capable laptops, which are hotter than much more powerful desktops. Good enough has replaced “More Gigabytes!”

Applying “good enough” to ourselves and our work – wow, you are brutally honest, Tim. And Grinner is right that at times you simply have to “give ’em what they want.” But as with other truths (“we’re all going to die”) it can be self-destructive to let “good enough” occupy any space in our own heads. For most of us, to achieve “good enough” status, we actually have to be “the best that we can be.”

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

With all due respect, Chris, I am pretty sure you didn’t look at the Wired article, and as a result I think you misunderstood my post. It wasn’t a whine session.

My point about the Apple/Microsoft ads was that they are designed to seem simple, perhaps as a result of the whole YouTube esthetic – not that they were cheap to produce!

The idea about discarding clients who accept “good enough” — that’s the surface issue, and I agree, sort of. I think Grinner got my main point, which is: if this is a major trend, how do we react in a positive way to it, as an entrepreneurial opportunity, rather than another thing to moan about.

Bob C