[Craig Alan]

I am starting to wonder if the 2 TB drives have gotten acceptably reliable. I notice that all the major enclosure companies including Caldigit, OWC, Gtech, WiebeTech, etc are not just supporting them but using them in units they package under their own labels.

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]

Why not use a screen capture app for the cut-a-ways?

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]

Clean audio is by far the hardest and most important aspect of capturing a scene involving dialog. You really need someone to monitor the audio as you shoot and adjust levels. In other words, someone with experience. If you are shooting without a budget or a very small one, your best bet is to find a student with his/her own gear. Lots of music students have a lot. Run tech rehearsals specifically for the sound. It’s a great idea to have many rehearsals double as tech rehearsals. Get the actors and crew used to the gear and the actual shooting conditions. Make it clear to everyone there is one director. Make the rehearsals an event. Feed your crew and cast. Have a schedule and a set of rules. Get rid of haters early. Get everyone to sign a contract. If you find you need an extra piece of gear — rent. But rent for a period that allows for reshoots and rehearsal.

If you are really determined to buy a good kit, start with any sound devices mixer — choose the one that has the number of inputs you need. If three will do, then the 302 is very good bang for the buck. Cordless will increase the cost by several fold. If you stay wired, order the length of xlr you need, canare/comprehensive makes nice ones from BHphoto. Get a number of lengths if you can afford it. Remember, one wire to mixer, the other to the recording device.

Monitor from your recording device, not from your mixer. If your mixer and device are separated use one of these: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=BACX25+Cable+for+Portable+Mixers+-+25%27&N=0&InitialSearch=yes. Though you can buy each wire separately.

Sony MDR-7506 Circumaural Closed-Back Professional Monitor Headphones are a must.

As for boom poles, they are a lot like tripods. As they get lighter and stronger the cost goes up. It’s always best to have an experienced boom pole operator on each mike. If the talent is close together, you can get by with one. You can allow the operators to have their own headphone and a way to monitor by splitting the feed. This way they can hear if the mike is aimed properly. Whether you go pro or student or volunteer, give yourself time to experiment until you’re happy. Other wise, you will end up with a sub-par video no matter how great the visuals and acting.

If you afford one pro, make it a sound tech. If you can afford two, make it a sound tech and a lighting designer.

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]

An easier solution might be to use a subtitle to fill in the one or two second gaps. You could also add them where it helps the audience ‘hear’ what she is saying. It’s pretty rare to record a live event and not have some missed moments. I think the audience and client can accept this. You could edit the titles over b-roll shots if it helps. Another possibility is to film some cut-a-ways to fill the missed lines. The cut-a-ways could show us what was missed in different settings and therefore would make a different sounding voice acceptable. Since the speaker is available for the re-shoot, why not make it a better production all together by adding shots that the live event didn’t present.

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]

maybe use aja ki-pro to create an apple prores 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]

I think a G5 is not a good investment. I would think a second monitor and/or a good external HD/or raid set up would be money better spent. New mac pros are due soon. That should drop the price on older gen intel mac pros. That would be a step up. Though $200 is a very small budget for any pro set up.

What kind of ports does your macbook pro have?

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]

system>library>extensions. trash>reboot>empty trash.

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]

system os x 10.5.8

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]

Easy solution use:

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/fcs_remover.htm

Here’s a recommendation from a reliable source:

https://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_fcs_maintennance_stone.html

But if you are not backed up and start clean when trouble hits you are asking for more trouble:

Get yourself an external drive and download CCC. Make a clone of your system. Now everything is backed up. Boot from the back up just to make sure everything went well. Repair permissions. Reformat your system drive and there you have it.

Since you only want to downgrade for one client, why not do a clean install of the OS on another external drive, install 5.x and run update? Then for this project only, boot from the external drive. You’ll have a clean system to work from. On the other hand, you might have trouble reinstalling 6.x on your system drive and will get the same advice to start clean.

The pro apps installs like to start clean. Sooner of later system drives develop problems and the best way to deal with it is with a clean install. Which means you need to have a complete back up and all your install disks of your apps. Almost all else are documents, which can be easily dragged over to your new documents folder from a back up.

Using disk utility, you can make disc images of all your install discs and save them on the root level of your cloned back-up. Mount them on the desk top of your clean new system drive and launch them from there. This is time saving because you are now installing from a hard drive not a cd. Plus no more loading and unloading cds. If you mount them on your desktop and get the first install disc going, it will automatically launch the others. Huge time saver.

Yes this will take a day. And you might need to tweak some things as you launch them such as preferences within an app. But you will also have clean and better functioning system. And when something bad happens like your system drive dies or gets corrupted, you won’t miss a beat. If your computer dies or is in for repair, you can now boot from your clone with a loaner and you won’t miss a beat.

If your stuff is not backed up now, you are asking for disaster.

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/7200+sata+drives

https://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Page.cfm? parent=3035&title=Voyager%20by%20NewerTech%2D%20Hard%20Drive%20Dock%20for%203%2E5%22%20and%202%2E5%22%20SATA%20Devices%20provides%20high%2Dperformance%20and%20flexibility&ti=4520

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]

You could get an external hardware raid or you can just do what Zane said and buy a couple of 7200 rpm 1 TB drives and put them in your Mac pro and use disk utility to raid them.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/sata/mac-pro
has some good choices and prices.

If you need to save all your captured/rendered media, you can back them up and reformat between projects or even just remove them, store them, and buy new ones as needed.

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.