David Smith
Forum Replies Created
-
Next time make sure you change the Easy Set-Up to the proper one before opening a new project. For your current one, go to Sequence>Settings and uncheck the “Anamorphic 16:9” check box. Your Canvas window will reset to 4:3 (in FCP 5 anyway).
Hope that helps.
David
-
Well, I take a slightly different attitude. I wouldn’t bother with the risk for $40, but i agree that if the price is way too low, it’s probably a scam. I bought a full Final Cut Studio box on Ebay last summer but really took time and used the rules stated already by others. I had to return the first purchase as I had emailed the seller and was told it was not an Academic or NFS (Not for Sale) version. Turned out to be NFS and the seller took it back with no problem.
My second purchase turned out just fine, it was a sealed Studio box and I registered it with no problem. I saved about $500 off of retail. Again, I wouldn’t bother if it was one or even two hundred off.
One final safety tip…. use Paypal and pay with a credit card….. ALWAYS. Your credit card company will warrant against bogus sales. Paypal will only give you $175 back and the process is a real pain. I got scammed for a tripod dolly that was misrepresented and had to get the balance of my money from the credit card company. It was a hassle, but I got back every penny, the seller lost his ebay account and his paypal account was frozen. No fun for me though.
Oh, and I also have bought AppleCare on Ebay and saved quite a bit. Again, be very careful and read the listings “with a fine tooth comb”.
Good luck with your purchase!
David
-
First law of troubleshooting…. start with the easy stuff.
You could easily test the drive throughput with a drive test utility. Next I’d pull the new RAM, just for fun, and see what happens.
Have you tried to see if you drop frames when capturing or printing to tape?
-
Both machines are being routed through a component switcher?
Is the system timed via a black burst generator?
What happens if you log and capture with the JVC instead of using Capture Now?
-
[Kevino] “Great tip on the remote. I do have one and I definitely will use it for evnts whihch am recording fully but this one is an all day affair, corporate launch, so the cameras will be coming on an off all day.”
Glad the comments were useful Kevin. The remote tip should work just fine for the all day affair. I’m not talking about rolling the tape via the remote, but starting the TC counter in Time of Day (Free Run) mode. I don’t know how Panny does it, but on the Sony you set the menu to Free Run, then hit Start (again, starting the TC generator, not the tape). We just used the remote for the “Start” phase so all three camera’s TC generators started up together. This was an all day interview shoot with time out for breaks and lunch, so there were many tape stops and starts. The free run TC stayed synced throughout the day.
Please do start a new thread discussing your experiences with the drives after the weekend. I’m very interested in the workflow, but being a bit old school, frankly it scares me! (not so much in your case with a tape back-up, but the whole new Panny P2 thing where there will be NO high def. back-up on tape, that makes me nervous.)
Enjoy the new toys,
David -
[Kevin] “Never used the drives yet but”
Kevin,
I don’t claim any experience in such a shooting system but have a few thoughts:
You ARE going to record on tape to back up your “footage” right?
I think you would be very well served to try this out on a test record since you’ve not used the drives before. That would include stopping and starting one of the cameras to induce a timecode break, and then importing the files into FCP and trying out the syncing process in Multiclip.
Do the VX-100’s have a remote control? If so you can set them to run time of day and then use a remote to start the timecode on both cameras simultaneously. I did this just yesterday with three Sony Z1’s and they were within frames of each other, if not perfect. After you get the TC running, focus one of the cameras on the TC display of the other and roll some tape (whoops, I mean spin some drive AND roll some tape) then you’ll have a visual record of the TC offset, if any.
And from the Department of Redundancy Department….. do a test shoot and edit!!!!
Good luck and have fun,
David -
Jim,
My dual 2.7 does cycle the fans sometimes when I hit play but not all the time. They also don’t stay running high, but will cycle up and then slow down again after maybe five seconds.
You might want to get some software to monitor your temperatures if you’re concerned about it. Hardware Monitor is a pretty cool shareware product and inexpensive at 7 Euros (whatever that means as the dollar jumps around). They also have a free version that only shows temperatures, while the full version will show you fan speeds and other data. I tend to Quite it when capturing or printing to video so as not to have all of that information polling going on, although I doubt that’s an issue if you’re using DV25. Better safe than dropping frames though.
https://www.bresink.com/osx/HardwareMonitor.html
Regards,
David -
[belsokar] “How much space would DVCProHD 1080 take vs. 720?”
Digital Heaven offers a cool (and free) little video file calculator widgit for the Tiger OS. I keep it on my laptop, so as not to have widgits running on the editing machine.
https://digital-heaven.co.uk/videospace/
Take a look at their Final Cut plug-in offerings while you’re there, as well as their nifty (did I say that?) logging software.
Regards,
David -
This article from the Ken Stone website has some interesting information about frame rates and such with DVCPRO HD. It was written for FCP 4.5 and I don’t know if things have changed. The experts here could speak to that.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/dvcpro_hd_workflow_balis.html
Regards,
David -
As long as you’re REALLY careful, you can get great deals on Ebay. I bought the full studio version there at a very significant discount. But again, you have to be extremely careful that you find a non academic and brand new version. I had no problems registering the full version I bought.
David