[Clay Walker]

Hi Kenny,

DVDSP is simply not liking the .txt file that FCP is exporting as I guess it is too complicated.

If you open your .txt file and edit the content down to something like this:

01:00:21:07 Chapter 1
01:04:53:18 Chapter 2
01:30:36:02 Chapter 3
02:00:49:15 Chapter 4
02:11:04:21 Chapter 5
02:16:41:21 Chapter 6
02:22:54:03 Chapter 7
02:36:45:00 Chapter 8

DVDSP will import it with no issues. Hope this helps.

clay

[Clay Walker]

I was experiencing a similar issue today. I have a film that I am editing and I have been trying to simply share the FCP file with the filmmaker. He has the media on his drive & have the media on mine as I am working remotely.

Today, I was “simply” copying the FCP to his drive (as I have both drives right now) and I could not get his media to relink with the edited sequence / FCP file from my drive just as you have described.

I would try to relink it, it would find it and after it said that it was reconnecting, there would be no connection. I did this many times, restarted, etc…

I started to copy all of the media over to remedy this when I realized what was the issue.

Somehow my media was set to show the extension “.mov” while the original drive with the media was not.

I actually went into the program “file renamer” and asked it to add the “.mov” suffix to all of the source media on his drive.

I opened FCP again, went through the relinking steps and this time it worked perfectly.

[Clay Walker]

Yep, this is a HUGE issue.

My 170 suffers from this defect and is sitting in its box basically awaiting a fix. Unfortunate for me, the place that I bought it from will not accept a return on it for this defect and I may have to opt to freeze my credit card payment.

I do not feel confident in using this camera in any sort of professional shooting context at this time as I cannot use the manual focus ring.

I really regret buying this camera with its initial release and I hope that Panasonic will satisfactorally compensate those affected by this.

I’m sure it will be a gem down the road, maybe.

[Clay Walker]

I did want to follow up on this.

I did finally have the additional cabling & serial number sent to me. I had some jumper conflict issues but I do have the drive & software properly installed.

I am glad that MCE did finally respond to email & tech support issues.

I can’t say that I am impressed with any aspect of my transaction with them but hopefully the drive will work without any further issues.

[Clay Walker]

Hi Noah,

I have to say, I just ordered this drive from MCE and I did want to relate my initial experience with my shipment. I haven’t actually been able to use the drive yet so this is more of an installation comment than on the drive itself…

I’ve never ordered from this company, but I have heard of them, so I don’t exactly have an opinion of them – yet.

While MCE clearly states on their website that the drive “comes to you completely pre-configured for easy user installation” for your Mac Pro, that isn’t exactly true in my circumstance.

I have a Mac Pro that I purchased in January 2008 and this drive does not fit the existing Apple cables. The strange thing about the MCE drive, is that its ribbon connection board on the drive itself is to the far left and it is apparently connected with several layers of double stick foam tape…

Since the ribbon cable is over on this side like this, and the original optical drive in the Mac is on the far right, the second Apple bay ribbon connection will not reach. And even if it did, it would probably pull the connection board off because it is apparently holding on with tape.

I called MCE about this and they apologized and said it was a known issue and they said they would send me an extension cable. I feel like this is one more thing to cram in when sliding this back in.

And, instead of simply connecting the Apple power supply cable to the MCE optical drive, the MCE drive has a power splitter with two power connectors that leaves yet another extra power connector that will be unused to stuff in to optical drive area as well.

I tried using the installation disc MCE sent me to install the drive, but unfortunately they sent me the install disc for the external drive and not for the internal drive which I had ordered. Also, there are no installation images on their website either for installing the internal drive into a MacPro. That makes me curious.

I called MCE back and they apologized for this.

I then thought, “well I’ll at least install Toast while I wait a few more days to actually install the drive.”

The toast software arrived in the form of a MCE burned disc with a paper label with a zipped file on it. The serial number is stuck on the back. I tried to install the blu ray plug in which comes with the disc, but unfortunately MCE did not include the serial number for that.

I called MCE back and they apologized and I going to call someone who is going to eventually email me the serial number for this.

So, I am basically stuck right now as I can’t install the drive and I can’t install the software. I had a client wanting to do a quick blu ray project this week but I have told them they would need to find another vendor at this point as I was simply not ready to do anything…

MCE asked me if I wanted to return their drive for a refund but I really don’t know as I haven’t been able to actually use it yet and I really don’t want to eat the shipping costs of shipping it back and having to order another drive from someone else and paying yet more shipping costs.

All I can say is that I am really kicking myself for not ordering a drive from Other World Computer – because looking on their website their blu ray drive does not need all of the additional cabling – and simply downloading the software from Roxio directly.

My primary interest in the MCE drive was that it claims to be 6X speed even though there are apparently isn’t any 6X media at this date… The drive comes with a piece of 2X media.

I am curious if what I have described above is sort of a normal, yet somewhat difficult installation or should I send this back and try something different?

[Clay Walker]

I don’t think you can use an epson twain within CS3 Photoshop.

My 700 will not work either…

[Clay Walker]

[gary adcock] “My question is for your cameraman – why did they not shoot 1080 in the HVX to start with”

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your responses. This is a good question and I think I can somewhat answer it. The various pieces were shot all over the world. We learned that the playback format would be 1080i after one of the pieces had been shot and the crew was on the road / out of the country.

Why the switch wasn’t made to 1080i at that point, I can’t speak to… I would imagine that staying consistent and camera media storage were probably an issue.

[Clay Walker]

[JeremyG] “The Camera Operator is wrong because time is money and cross converting with compressor will cost you time”

I forgot to point out that the camera operator is also an extremely well-established professional editor with several decades of experience as well. He doesn’t offer his opinion lightly or carelessly. I just don’t agree with it.

I still would be very interested to see if anyone can/will state that you can do a quality upconvert through software? If so, would you consider it almost as good as a hardware upconvert? Better? No where close?…

[Clay Walker]

[JeremyG] “Can’t they accept a 720p file?”

I don’t think so. I think it’s being fed into a doremi or something – but I don’t know anything about those devices.

[JeremyG] “Walter is right, if the cameraman is suggesting the workflow, have him to do it.”

I will point out that we are a group who work together frequently – remotely from different parts of the US. I really do like the cameraman and he has been a friend and colleague for many years. Due to my own experience, I just don’t agree with this suggested work-flow.

I certainly want to explore every possibility here but I think my initial response, do this via hardware only, was definitely the correct solution – in terms of quality and speed.

But yes, I do agree with you both, I will suggest that he do the compressions before we travel onsite.

I really don’t want to be held responsible for the quality and technical problems, obviously.

[Clay Walker]

[JeremyG] “Another thing to do is to use the advanced format conversion in compressor and change the 720p DVCPro HD to 1080p DVCPro HD.”

This is what I used to do my initial test. When using the default settings, 2 min. of video will upconvert in about 10 minutes on my G5, if I remember correctly.

I tried a second upconvert where I tweaked the settings to highest quality, etc. and it gave me an approximate compression time of 70 hours – for 2 minutes of video.

I didn’t let that finish to see the quality, as that timeframe obviously won’t work.

It seems like the easiest, quickest & most portable solution is to lay to tape via a 1200 or 1400, and recapture at 1080i and then apply the H.264 compression.