[David Bogie]

There are hundreds of major production houses where FCP is the only NLE tool and Media Manager is a solid part of the workflow in all formats. I have it on very good authority that Media Manager is not slated for revision because it simply works dependably and as intended for the vast majority of FCP users.

I’m with you, though: I hate it, it’s busted, it’s stupid, the interface is lame and the results are completely unpredictable

[David Bogie]

That is known as moir

[David Bogie]

Drop by Radeon or Nvidia and search for Macintosh cards. Print the specs and the prices.
Return to the Motion marketing pages at apple.com and look at the suggested cards.
Easy to compare. You want 256 VRAM. Note carefully the type of output connectors as you may ned up needing adapters. The used market is going to be flush with Mac GPUs as the new beasts from both card companies start to ship.
You can do quite well for $500 but most of us don’t need to have full rez and realtime all the time. Half rez works fine for 90% of my rough work. Full rez is only necessary for RAM previews and precision. Precision, frankly, isn’t necessarily what Motion is all about; it’s about building stuff quickly in my world.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

So you don’t really own FCP yet?
AutoSave works when you tell it to work. If you save at 13 mins, it might or might not save at 15, depends on what you just saved. You can Save All or you can just Save.

If you’re shopping for an NLE, read the FCP product sheets and there are hundreds of in-depth reviews all over the Net. Call a VAR and arrange for a demo of Avid, Vegas, FCP, Liquid.
FCP is flawed. So are all the others.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

It’s in the specs for the product, check at apple.com, but it’s not so much the app as the machine.
If you’ve got an older G4, the most RAM you can install is 1.5G.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

You CAN have lots of different formats in the same timeline in FCP but you cannot view many of them in realtime. Apparently, Vegas is the only solution for multiple formats in real time. Strange that Apple can’t figure this out. Maybe in FCP5.5 or FCP6? Probably only run the Intel Macintosh.

it will cost us more money to do what it should be doing.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

I don’t know anything about the Black Magic products so I can’t help you there, sorry. But I know that Compressor throws up several lame error messages that are completely meaningless. The one you’re getting may not have anything to do with missing codecs.

However, since one of the files will come into Compressor, it stands to reason (from where I’m sitting, which is of little help), the other file is apparently flawed. will it open into any other applications? What happens if you bring it into FCP or QT Player or After Effects?

Wish I could help.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Use LiveType, there’s a whole library of cool shapes and fiddly stuff.
Drawing pills in FCP is a challenge.
Do yourself a big favor and buy Monahan’s bookd, “Creating Motion Graphics in FCP.” It’s a bit dated but his basic advice and techniques are timeless.

Why can’t you just use the Jumpback?

If you know Phtoshop, there are dozens of prebuilt shapes there, too. Open the FCP manual to the PS section (very long) and follow the advice for image size, pixel ratio, saving with alpha, flattening.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

“VEry valuable” implies you have up to date backups. Find them and copy them, mail them to someone you trust.

You will probably have to reload the VPC product so immediately offload any and all files associated with your PC-Windows applications.

Virtual PC has several fabulous support forums all over the Net, starting at MS. You’re going to get much better information there.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

If you are trying to recover trashed files, stop whatever you’re doing on your system immediately.
“Overwritten?” You cannot recover overwritten files from any OS. Trashed files are deleted from the directory which means the space can now be used by other files. Once the bits are overwritten, they’re gone. Unless you’re the CIA.
But there are dozens of file recovery tools for Macintosh, try versiontracker.com.

Do not expect miracles.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”