[Craig Alan]

Also consider how full the media drives are. After 80%, things are going to slow down. And moving media about on a drive can create corruptions and fragmentations which is one of the reasons it is not recommended to store media on your system drive. If you could try a clean media drive, you’d find out fast if the problem is the media drives or the system drive. Very good idea to create a system in which you store old projects on bare drives on the shelf and keep your active media drive clean and with lots of headroom. I’m running into this problem myself and will probably buy a drive dock from OWC, which looks like it will make it easy to swap out drives for back ups. I’ve been unscrewing an old enclosure till now, but it’s getting to be a pain.

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 a G5 Imac with 512 ram? The problem with Imacs is there is only one firewire bus and using the same bus for a deck and a media drive can be hit or miss. Can you edit with material already captured? Try capturing a small amount to your system drive and then moving the files to your media drive.
Try backing up what’s important on your media drives. Wipe them clean and reformat. Try a different camera/deck to capture with and a different firewire cable. If still no luck, do the same to your system drive. Back it up. Wipe it clean. Fresh install all. Add more ram.

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]

Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro 7

Will save you a ton of time trying to figure each thing out for yourself.

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]

Hi David,

I use a two-drive raid 0 esata enclosure for my media drive (OWC). It is not designed to swap out additional drives. It can be done anyway of course. But I’d rather wipe it clean after each project and back up the media to another drive. And like you said put the bare drives on the shelf.

Do you recommend https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/FWU2ES2HDK/ or something else?
Any decent cases out there for the bare drives?
I order enterprise class drives for my media drives. But I figure for archiving finished projects I’d go for cheaper ones. Make sense?
Do you just keep a spreadsheet of what projects are on what drive?
How often do you fire them up? I’ve heard they can have problems if not used for too long?

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]

Very rare to see classroom footage of this quality. Nice job! Agree now that an ear mounted mike would have been the wrong choice since he is seated and interacting with the kids and not turning his head to a white board or different sides of the class.

Just my take: Could have used a higher quality lav or preamp or both. A couple of moments the hand held cam was too shaky. I think the teacher’s voice as V.O. narration rather than a picture-in-picture would have been a better choice a few times. But I do get that it was a style choice along with the whoosh exit. Not a fan of whoosh whoosh. This seemed in-between documentary and kid’s show style. The kids were adorable and well shot and I would have liked watching them more. A couple of the jump cuts were awkward. A different camera angle or cut in or kid’s reaction shot would smooth these edits. Get down to the kids’ height more and looking down at them less. Loved the moments where the kids seemed to imitate the teacher in praising each other. Would have liked some shots of the teacher from the kids’ P.O.V. and kids from teacher’s P.O.V.

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]

Thanks all.

It does provide phantom. And it does have a gain control knob for each channel with meters. It will be mounted under the camera. But no doubt a person doing nothing but riding the audio levels would be a better bet. Hopefully we will have both anyway. The exciting part is it will skip the compression of HDV and the compromise it makes on the audio end.

Just wanted to add that the folk here are incredibly helpful. I really appreciate it.

Craig

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]

Electro Voice RE50N/D-B – Omni-Directional Handheld Dynamic N/DYM Shock Mounted ENG Microphone (Black)

Electro Voice RE50/B – Omni-Directional Handheld Dynamic Shock Mounted ENG Microphone (Black)

Beyerdynamic M58

Ty,

I do like the profile of the Beyerdynamic M58.

One reviewer thought the RE50 were more rugged which does matter with kids.

Not sure the difference between the two re50s above, though I read the description, and they are within a buck of each other.

What do you think?

Also what cardioids would you recommend? It’s not just b.g. Noise, it’s inappropriate background noise that the current mikes for the most part don’t pick up. It’s a tough school and not everyone plays nice.

Craig

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]

Get it got it good.

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’ll get a DVI to VGA cable.

I assume if I use any other input on the panny that those are used for TV signals and would therefore degrade the desktop image? (component, HDMI for example)

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]

Thanks David,

So if an HDTV has a computer connection then it IS also a computer monitor and therefore can retain the quality of the macbook pro’s image? But if hooked up this way it would not act as a TV monitor.

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.