[David Eaks]

I’m currently running version 3.0.0.156 on my Ki Pro, I wanted to update but was curious about one thing in the release notes under “Special Considerations” before I do-

“Some clips created by Ki Pro may cause Final Cut Pro to bring up a “not optimized” prompt when imported. These clips are valid and can be used within Final Cut Pro.”

Is this new in 3.1, but was not the case in 3.0? I use FCPX (currently 10.0.7) and haven’t seen this so far.

Thanks.

[David Eaks]

Sure. The data doubler lets you install a second internal hard drive in place of the DVD drive. It’s nice because it lets you keep both the compact portability of a laptop, and have a “standard” two-drive setup. One drive to run the OS and Apps, the other for your media files. You may or may not need it or even want it, just throwing it out there since I like mine so much.

The Data Doubler install is somewhat “hands on”, but they have excellent step-by-step walk through videos. Replacing the hard drive is very straight forward and should be a simple task for whoever you find to do it for you (at least my 2010 MBP was for me).

Bottom line is to keep that working system drive locked in time, so you can go back if necessary.

[David Eaks]

Hi Marianne,

In my opinion, the best route is to make a backup of, then remove your hard drive and replace it with a small SSD, ive been fine with 128GB. Reserve this drive for OS and Apps only. If your MBP can accept it, remove the optical drive and install the OWC Data doubler with a new HDD for your media (when is the last time you put a CD in there?).

Install everything fresh, don’t restore settings from a previous Mac. Of course it’s fine to copy over any individual files you need, by plugging the drive into an external dock. If anything goes wrong, or crucial things are incompatible, no problem, just put the old OS drive back in and continue your work as always.

Out of your listed software, I can only confirm FCP 7 as working on Mountain Lion.

If you do the Data Doubler, you’ll probably need an external DVD drive for all the installs and other uses in the future. To make clean installs a painless process, I’ve been accumulating disc images of all my install DVDs, install files, custom templates etc. and a text document with license keys to a backup drive/USB stick. Just plug it in and start installing everything.

You are wise to be hesitant about just updating everything on a production system, especially one that hasn’t been updated in a while. Many things are likely to stop working if you do so.

Oh, and download mountain lion but don’t install it, find a guide for making a USB drive installer. That way you can install Mountain Lion clean when you put the new drive in, instead of installing over a Snow Leopard install.

[David Eaks]

*Edit Somehow I didn’t see that anyone else had replied to the OP, before I posted.*

The “available media” option was removed in an earlier version, like 10.0.4 or something.

The transition is not moving with the clip because you haven’t “told” FCP that you want it to move with the clip. You just select both the transition and the clip at the same time, then move them. If you’re moving the clip and transition between two other clips that already have a transition, you’ll want to be sure to drop them on the correct side of the transition, so you don’t end up with two transitions at one edit point and no transition at another.

[David Eaks]

Not sure of the exact model number on the LaCie, but it was similar to that one. Mine was a couple years old and I’ve since given it to a colleague.

One of my LGs, is model number- LG be12lu38 I think the other one is slightly newer. They have eSATA and USB.

From my experience with those three BD Burners on a Mac Pro and a MBP, its simple plug and play, hot-plugable, no hassle. If I recall correctly, the LGs burn significantly faster than the LaCie did.

The Matrox MAX thing is a hardware device that works with Compressor to encode H.264 files much faster. It comes with presets for Compressor. There is a less expensive option, Elgato turbo, but I have no experience with it. If you won’t be doing a lot of long form h.264 stuff, probably neither are even necessary.

My suggested workflow would be to Export a Master File from FCPX, then bring that into Compressor and apply the Apple Blu-ray audio and video preset settings, in the Disc Burning folder. Add the Job action “Create Blu-ray Disc”. Be prepared to wait much longer than you might expect.

Shortly after my first Blu-ray burn with that workflow, a 2 hour project, I bought Matrox MXO2 LE w/ MAX and never looked back.

[David Eaks]

I’ve been happy with both LaCie and LG external BD burners on my Macs.

Compressor, I use Matrox MAX to encode H.264 in real time.

[David Eaks]

IIRC, you’ll have to re-set that default after every time you Trash Prefs as well.

[David Eaks]

No problem, that is good. Use log and transfer from within FCP, here’s a video tutorial from Shane Ross-

Tapeless Workflow with Final Cut Pro 7

[David Eaks]

It’s because FCP 7 and earlier do not support H.264.

Do you still have the original memory cards? Or a backup of the exact file structure from the cards (not a converted file)?

FCP wants everything to be Prores.

[David Eaks]

Here’s an article on I read at Redshark recently This may be the most important stuff you can know about digital video, with some good info you’ll probably be interested in. Particularly this section-

“Technicolour Cinestyle
It does not always make sense to use this sort of approach. The much-vaunted Technicolor Cinestyle preset for Canon DSLRs attempts to create something like a log workflow, and while this makes sense where the footage will be postproduced alongside log footage from other sources, it is not always, or even usually, a sensible way to go. DSLRs typically apply heavy compression to their recordings, and embedding that heavy compression in the low-contrast log image can cause problems that are hard to fix later. Recovering viewable pictures from a log recording involves adding a lot of contrast, which will exacerbate greatly any compression artefacts which are present. Log encoding is usually sensible only for uncompressed or lightly-compressed workflows, where lightly-compressed might mean something like a high-bitrate ProRes recording.

Conventional video signals solve the problem of packing many stops of dynamic range into a limited-precision signal differently, by applying what is in effect a general-purpose grade. This typically rolls highlights off using something not unlike the S-curve of film exposure, which is where the knee setting of many video cameras comes into play – it defines the point at above which brightness will gradually be compressed to make more room for the more useful and visible midtone information. Standards for the resulting image are defined in well-known documents such as the ITU-R’s Recommendation BT.709, which controls how most real-world cameras do this. While this makes for viewable pictures straight out of the camera, it can limit the gradeability of the picture, and an innovation of the last ten years or so is the option to perform this contrast-range compression more gently. Options referred to as “cine” or “film” in the colorimetry controls of a camera are often an attempt to split the difference between the two approaches, offering some of the superior highlight handling of an unprocessed signal with the easy handling of a gamma-corrected one. This is particularly important to 8-bit cameras such as the Sony FS700 and Canon C300 which would otherwise struggle to adequately record the wide dynamic range signals they’re capable of producing, but are frequently used as part of a workflow that doesn’t easily accommodate log images.”