[Craig Alan]

If you want a sharper image, you need to add more light. These small cams will not shoot well in low light and then if you blow up part of the image in post you will make the grainy image even more obvious. If you are serious about professional looking quality, you need to invest more in production gear. The biggest problem with the video is a constant buzz over your voice. What do you use to capture sound? Did you record this live or record a voice over? The keyboard sounds fine but the vocal quality and buzz are distractions. All that said the instruction is well presented.

This is a FCP forum so asking about Imovie is a little off topic. The FCS is a worthy investment. You can capture almost any format out there and then use compressor to get the best quality possible for either DVDs or on-line.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Take it 1 step at a time. Install OS and run software update. Repair permissions. Install pro apps. Run software update and repair permissions. Check the site of every app you will install to see compatibility with snow leopard. Same with any drivers for devices being connected to computer. You can then copy over documents from your old system into the new documents folder. holding T key during start up on G5 will- Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode (very handy for plugging your Mac into another as an external hard drive). Do a search for how to transfer the data file of your mail program into the new mail program. There’s always some down time doing all this but you’ll end up with a clean well running system. In the meantime you can still get stuff done on your old one.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

what happens when you just turn airport on/off from menu bar?

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

when you say the latest QT, do you mean QT X or 7? You want to install QT 7 from the snow leopard install disc.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

this is for a digital still cam but I think it could be useful.

https://www.nyip.com/ezine/people-and-pets/peopleofcolor.html

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Jessica,

Great advice here. I learn all the time from these folk. Here is some more to chew on, some of it already covered.

Acceptable sound acquisition is way more difficult on limited budgets than acceptable image quality. And for the type of shoots you plan, it is way more important.

A $150 handheld wired mike, a price point that is used by many professional ENG teams, has WAY better sound than a $600 wireless lav kit. The Audio-Technica AT831R Richard mentioned is another wired solid option. This mike requires phantom power so be sure you either get the option with battery power or have gear that provides it.

I know the lavs look better on cam. To get good audio with wireless lavs requires $1200, at least, just for the two lav kits, and trial and error and experience to get them working well. All that said, we use those kits all the time.

Here’s some more links —

2 of these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/618741-REG/Sennheiser_EW112PG2_B_Evolution_G2_100_Series.html#reviews

Or 2 of these (which gives you the option of a wireless handheld mike with included plug in transmitter (a really great tool for run and gun style interviews. No need to wire the subject up with the lav mic and transmitter (more tricky than it sounds):
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/618735-REG/Sennheiser_EW_100_ENG_G3_A_Evolution_G3_100_Series.html

1 of these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/292980-REG/Sound_Devices_302_302_Portable_3_Channel.html

1 of these
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Porta+Brace+MXC-302&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

1 of these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/49510-REG/Sony_MDR_7506.html

1 of these: (I use these if I am not using an audio adapter because it allows me to take the strain off the mini-port of the cam mic input. I loop it and Velcro it down and then attach the xlr cable from the mixer to it. Some cams would be better served with a right angle plug on the cam end. But sometimes this gets in the way of other inputs ports)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/133646-REG/Comprehensive_XLRJ_MPS_18INST_EXF_Stereo_Mini_Male.html

2 of these: (whatever length you need. Good way to connect mixer to cam or wired mikes to cam)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Canare+CXLRP-XLRJ-15B-G+Star-Quad+%28L-4E6S%29+Microphone+Cable+15%27+%284.57+m%29&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

Ty does not recommend XLR adapters and he knows his stuff. But if you really can’t afford the 302 mixer (which is a great investment at a surprisingly affordable price) you can get by with one of these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/563045-REG/juicedLink_CX211_CX211_Audio_Mixer_and.html

Whatever you decide, as mentioned above, run a lot of tests before the shoot.

And no matter how much you pre-test, monitor the sound with a good set of headphones.

Even if you cannot afford to hire a pro sound guy (your best bet) try to recruit someone to work the mixer, riding the gain controls to adjust for speakers talking at different volumes. One huge advantage of the 302 mixer is (from the manual):
Attenuation is set from 0 to 16 dB in 2 dB increments, and 40 to 56 dB in 2 dB increments. The common attenuation levels of -10 dB (Aux level), -40 dB (hot Mic-level), and -56 dB (low Mic-level) are available.

This means you can fine time the signal from the mixer to the camera to be set at a level the camera likes. This is a huge variable. If you get it right and then ride the levels during the shoot you will have very nice sound, something that really differentiates a pro recording from the truly annoying.

During the shoot monitor with headphones from the camera’s headphone port not the mixers. The Sony one above is an industry standard and you can use it in post for dialog, though listen with studio monitors before deciding on a final mix.

If you want to connect headphones to the Canon HF S100, the camcorder’s AV-output doubles as a headphone jack. (You have to go into the menus to select whether the port will output to AV or to headphones). If you’re using headphones to monitor sound, you can also go into the menus to activate a test tone for audio calibration.
In the HF S100 menu you’ll find a number of other audio features including a windscreen for blocking out the rustle of heavy winds, and a microphone attenuator for limiting audio levels to a specific peak. The camcorder also has a hot accessory shoe that works with Canon’s proprietary “mini-fit” accessories.
One more thing to consider is that good audio gear will be solid investments. Camera technology seems to be changing by the minute. But audio gear, though new developments do come along, are much more constant.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Ty,

Sorry, I wasn’t asking why you would shoot with multiple cameras. I was asking why the audio mixer needed to feed more than one recording device be it a camera or a stand alone audio recorder.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Just curious. Why do you need to record to two cameras at once?

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

Did a little research. Read that this bug will not infest Macs. Empty folder would not go to trash. Weird. Copied my files off USB drive to desktop and reformatted USB drive fat32. Copied files back. When mounted in windows xp, Norton and windows defender found no bugs on USB drive or on xp system drive.

Must have picked up bug when I put USB drive in a colleague’s laptop to copy a file.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

check out: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ME8Q7T20GB64/for about $50 more.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.