[Dave Gage]

Dennis,

For merely previewing the AVCHD .mts files, I’ve had excellent luck with the free Movist app. I used to use the Toast Video Player, but found it to be a bit buggie and slow. Movist will also play over formats quite nicely like .flv, .avi, etc. It will also convert files, but I use it primarily to play back the .mts files (I still use QT 7 Pro or Compressor for conversion).

Dave

[Dave Gage]

Simon,

Very cool. I’m getting my new 17″ MBP this Friday and once it arrives, I can download and finally start messing with FCP-X. This is a great tip. I hope Kevin or someone can turn it into a quick tutorial tip.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

I’ve been working with FCP since 4.5, but have never used AE. This sounds really cool based on comments, but I don’t know why. Would you mind dumbing this down a bit for me so I can understand the advantage of using the Adjustment Layers in the workflow. Sorry for being a bit dense on this one.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

I’ve been using this Flash player for video and audio for a few years and have had great luck with it using H.264 files:

https://components.earthscienceagency.com/

The support is excellent and there is a on-site “Wizard” that allows you to re-design the player to your specs without having to buy Adobe Flash (CS4 or 5).

Good luck,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Jeremy,

“In the disk utility, it should tell you. Also, you could pull a drive out and see. ;)”

Disk Utility, excellent. After 25 years with computers, this is my first time using a raid setup, so it hasn’t come up before. I’ll also yank the drives out later and throw them in the docking station, as I’m curious now.

Thanks for the suggestions,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Stu,

Thanks for the link. I already own a similar dock-
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/FWU2ES2HDK/

It does work quite nicely, but I’ve come to work on my laptop more and more in the master bedroom (coolest room in the house) on da bed and I was afraid of the HD dock falling over when I move, so I decided on a more traditional enclosure. I am already now a big fan of the raw drive and dock setup, it comes in handy for a bunch of situations.

Thanks again,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Jeremy,

It will do RAID 1, 0, and SPAN. I just downloaded the OWC RAID utility, ran it for RAID 1; opened Disk Utility, erased/reformatted to Mac OS Extended, and ran a few tests.

QuickBench 4.0 via eSata connection:

Write- 140 MB/s
Read- 137 MB/s

(When I previously tested a single 500 GB drive via eSata I got: Write- 103 MB/s, Read- 132 MB/s…so it seems to be doing good. But, the increase in speed might be connected to the greater cache size of the 1 TB drives also.)
—

I guess it’s set up as RAID now. It shows up as a single icon on the desktop, but I don’t know for sure if it’s writing to both disks at once. Do you know if there is a way to check?

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Jeremy,

Since I’ve already got all the equipment, I’ve give it a shot tonight and set up the RAID 1 and run the benchmarking software. I had figured if I was to get into a RAID setup, I would pick up the highly recommended CalDigit VR (I didn’t buy the current enclosure with RAID in mind), but as you said, the speed I should get with one drive and eSata will hopefully be sufficient for my low-end editing.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

John,

Thank you for your thoughts. I’m a big fan of the Frame Controls in Compressor and have had excellent results with them on Best and even Better settings.

I like your thought on the quick comparison, I will give that a try.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dave Gage]

Jerry,

I appreciate your reply. This will simplify my workflow quite a bit. If a move an originally non-ProRes clip in the sequence, it does not need to be re-rendered (only the transitions, which is fine).

If I take the the same clip and copy it over to a new sequence within the same project, I do need to re-render it, but I’m fine with this as I don’t see this coming up much for me (no outside clients, just my work and family projects).

Thanks again,
Dave