[Dave Hardy]

Happy Diwali Neil,

Certainly lots of firecrackers going on here in the community in Vancouver during Diwali. The very colourful display of sweets in my favorite south asian restaurants is always astounding, but during Diwali the trade in sweets seems particularly brisk.

Have a good time.

Dave

Dave Hardy

[Dave Hardy]

Just press the Q Key & you can toggle between the Viewer & the Canvas.

Dave

Dave Hardy

[Dave Hardy]

Have you taken a look at this one? Not Shipping yet.

Dave

https://www.tascam.com/products/dp-004.html

Dave Hardy

[Dave Hardy]

Who knows, the recession could throw a monkey wrench into everyones plans. Intel may not have the processors shipping in Dec. Until the development community lean how to adapt their software to access more than 2 processors & until the OS becomes totally 64 bit (Snow Leopard), having more than 6 gig of
Ram is not too great a concern. Final Cut max is 4.5 gig of ram. So any iMac should be fine for you as a learner system.

Buy what you need for your work today. 2009 providing the recession doesn’t get in the way promises to be the largest leap forward in technology in the past 20 yrs. So buy what you need for the short term & plan for the major purchase when the warrantee run out.

Dave Hardy

[Dave Hardy]

Disregard what I said about the 20′ 2.4 iMac that unit only has an ATI 2400 graphics card with 128 meg of Ram. Surprisingly the Nividia card with 512 meg of ram was less powerful than the ATI 2600 Pro. Apple later updated the Nividia drivers but that only brought them up to the same speed as the 2600 Pro.

Apple overcharges for hard drives & memory, but if you don’t mind paying extra that’s fine.
For a starter iMac system I would consider either a 20′ 2.66 for $1399 CDN or a 24″ 2.4 gig for $1399 CDN. Of course you could get the 24″ 3.6 gig for $1999 CDN but why bother when the quad core iMacs are only a few months away.

Dave

Dave Hardy

[Dave Hardy]

Hi Mark,

Moving to Mac a new NLE is a big decision if cash flow is tight. I think you are on the right track initially getting an iMac to run final cut. It’s going to be awhile before you’ve adjusted to the new OS & FCP, never mind the other half dozen apps in the package. The souped up Mac Pro purchase is probably at least a year down the road. The iMac Final Cut Studio is your learner system & you’re going to be working primarily with your Avid while you get acquainted with this new gear. Therefore you want to spend as little as possible up front. Who knows it may not be the system for you.

The cheapest way I can suggest is to buy a training DVD. Go to Ripple Training’s website & pick up a copy of Steve Martin’s Final Cut Pro 6 for $99 or go to lynda.com & spend $25 for a month’s worth of online training on all the pro apps from Larry Jordan. Watching these movies should give you a fairly decent idea of whether these apps work in a manner that you would feel comfortable with.

The iMac works just fine with all the apps in the box if you are just working with HDV/DV/AVCHD. Aside from not having an express 34 slot, which the Macbook Pro has (& is nice because it gives you access to an eSata setup) . New Macbook Pros coming out tomorrow of course might be attractive. Buying a souped up machine for a learner system doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense IMO. I’d suggest going to Apple Canada’s online Store & picking up a refurbished unit not bottom but not top of the line. The mid range 20″ 2.4 will set you back $1,049 CDN with the hundreds of dollars you are going to save you can pick up a copy of Final Cut Express for $199 & still be ahead several hundred dollars. After all this is only a learning system which you will be selling at the end of the year when the warrantee expires.

Dave

Dave Hardy

[Dave Hardy]

Thanks for posting this Warren. I was considering Tascam’s Fireone whichof cource was designed by Fronteer as was the Tascam 1082. The other candidate I had in mind for for STP2 was Apogee’s Duet unit.

I’m now studying the info on the AlphaTrack unit. In theory it looks like a good candidate for replacing my aging Contour Jog control. I always found only having 15 programable buttons quite limiting even though you could program several banks of functions. I often resorted to using the keyboard as I have hundreds of commands seared in my memory.

Have you been able to program the missing F9 to F12 keys & Shift X & Shift V into the 40 programable functions? F9 to F 12 are one button on the keyboard would be 2 buttons on the AlphaTrack. Probably better to use the keyboard for those.

All the best.
Dave

[Dave Hardy]

It’s interesting they are now qualifying it for FCP & Logic. Presumably it will also work with STP.
I’m using the Tascam 1082 control surface & now that this unit officially works with FCP I’ll be picking one of these units early in the new year for double system location sound recording.

I expect that the jog button the shift button will be useless on these units as they don’t function on the 1082. Otherwise everything should work.

Dave

[Dave Hardy]

The remapping of this function to a single key appears to be broken. I’d really like to remap itto the F13 key.

Dave

[Dave Hardy]

Hi Mark’

Thumb & 2 fingers on the Left hand work for me in all the programs in the suite.

Dave