[Debe]

Well, the tape transport in the DSR-11 is beefier. It won’t wear out on you as fast as the one in a miniDV camcorder. That being said, there are several folks on this forum and other who have been using a camcorder as their feeder deck for years with out fail. However, what we don’t know is if those cameras get daily, weekly, or monthly use. How much capturing and outputting to tape do you anticipate doing?

The control you have over the deck would be far superior to the camcorder, and that’s probably the second biggest reason to go with a deck. The camcorder won’t be nearly as responsive to your commands via FCP as a deck will be. You’ll have faster cueing, faster capturing, and less headaches just trying to navigate around your footage using a deck. Also, it’s pretty tough to do a timecoded Edit to Tape with a camcorder. It can be done, but when I need to make a miniDV copy for one client, I’ve given up trying to get (relatively) matching timecode to my DVCam master and I run it in wild via Print to Tape. As you may or may not know, FireWire isn’t 100% accurate when it comes to timecode. The only way to get that accuracy is to use the RS-422 protocol, which you can’t get out of a camcorder. However, neither can the DSR-11 handle that protocol. I think you have to go up to the DSR-45 to get real machine control, and that’s a whole lot more money, so that’s probably not an issue for you under the circumstances.

The first biggest reason to go with a deck is the ability to use DVCam over miniDV. While technically they are the same format, it’s just that the tape runs faster in DVCam mode giving you a better signal, it’s a beefier tapestock that gives you higher quality masters. If a client comes to you with a DVCam tape, you’ll want to be able to capture it. If this is more for a hobby or personal use, and there are no clients, that probably doesn’t matter so much. If this is a business, there is the perception issue. If a client walks into your edit suite and sees a camcorder, it’s going to scream “amateur”. A real deck is going to give you much more credibility. It’s all in how it looks sometimes. You could lose out on a clients’ bigger projects because he/she has the perception that you’re not “that kind of editor”, or that you’re not ready for prime time, just based on the hardware on your desk. It’s not fair, but it happens.

Hope this helps you decide!

debe

[Debe]

That’s not true, ben.

The license reads “Installed on one computer at a time”. Not installed on one computer on a network at a time. Not run on one computer at a time. Installed, it means if he uses it on his laptop, he would have had to nuke it off the other computer before he installed it on his laptop, and nuke it off the laptop before he re-installs it on the other computer.

He can’t legally install a version of FCP that is installed anywhere else. It has nothing to do with the network it’s on.

debe

[Debe]

Thanks, Graeme!!

I’ll email that link to him, hopefully it will alleviate this year’s issues!

You ROCK!!

debe

[Debe]

Try importing the image sequence into QuickTime Pro. You should have QuickTime Pro as a part of Final Cut Pro.

Open up your image sequence and export it out using the same settings as your sequence in Final Cut Pro is and then you won’t have to render.

Hope this helps!

debe

[Debe]

Mine went as smooth as silk! It took me longer to use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my drive than it took to install Tiger and apply all the updates! Just be diligent in repairing permissions after every few updates, if you need them.

Good luck to ya!!

debe

[Debe]

https://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/list.php?f=1&collapse=0

This should get you to the LAFCPUG forum page. Scroll to the bottom and click on the Studio Upgrade icon. That’ll take you to Amazon.com. You’ll get a better price than if you go through Amazon.com proper

debe

[Debe]

It’s never recommended to put media on your boot drive. There’s a whole lot more going on on a drive than you know about. Hard drive heads can’t be in two places at once. You need the drive available to swap information to the RAM. No matter what, you’re still asking the drive to access the project file, the OS and the media all at once. Media is such a bandwidth hog, even minimal amounts of data competing with it for access to the bandwidth is not recommended. If you watch your Activity Log, the RAM allocation for FCP fluctuates. Where do you think the extra data is living when the RAM allocation dips? Not in the RAM!!

I hear my internal drive spin up every now and again when I

[Debe]

At the end of the month, I’m going to be working in FCP on a video on-site at a meeting. Last year, I handed off my DVCam master recorded on a DSR-45. Everything was shot DVCam and brought in via FW.

The playback in the ballroom was BetaSP. The video engineer made a dub from my DVCam master to BetaSP for playback. The engineer mentioned that my blacks were too black, but since we didn’t have time to troubleshoot, they used the tape as is.

Even back in my Digital Beta mastering days, when I made the dub from DBeta to BetaSP or any analog format, the setup change was done at the dub. I never made my digital masters @ 7.5 IRE.

What should be the proper progression of DVCam to BetaSP for playback? I don’t think I should be making the change in FCP, but do they have control over the setup out that DSR-45 when they make the component dub? Should they consider bringing along a proc amp and put it inline between the DSR-45 and the BetaSP deck. (I think it was a 2800, but I’m not sure). I should probably have this nailed down before we get there this year!

I really appreciate the input!

debe

[Debe]

Maria-

It might be smarter to take one of those 500 GB drives out and put that in a SATA or FW enclosure and buy a new 250 GB drive from a place like zipzoomfly.com to install as your new system drive. They have the Hitachi 7200 RPM drives for about $106 each. I wouldn’t go under 250. A 160 GB would get too full too fast. I have just the basics and FCP Studio on my edit system, and it’s at 140 GB. 20 GB for headroom is cutting it awful close.

You run all sorts of weird risks running your system externally, from the cat (or anyone) pulling the cable on accident…to…to…well, it just doesn’t make for a sable system. FW drives are notoriously unreliable. If you must go that way, avoid LaCie. I have 5 of them, and none have let me down yet, but I certainly wouldn’t trust any of them with my system data.

I would lean towards SATA over FW. Enclosures are cheap, internal SATA cards are relatively cheap, you already have a SATA drive. Putting the drive in a FW enclosure probably would over all be cheaper, but FW gets flaky, which is why Apple has never officially approved their use with FCP. Enclosures and internal SATA cards can be found at places like wiebetech.com

debe

[Debe]

My husband is the DVD-meister in our little corner of the world. He certainly isn’t interested in buying the whole Studio to keep up with DVDSP! I can’t always share my edit station with him. I really hope Apple reconsiders this! Or at least let him install DVDSP from one of my Studios on his Mac! I don’t mean a multiple install, although that would be nice. I was going to give him my DVDSP install for my laptop since I use iDVD if I’m on the road and making a one-off DVD, but Apple says you can’t spread the install across multiple machines, so he bought his own copy before the holidays. It’s going to put a huge crimp in our scheduling if DVDSP isn’t kept as it’s own separate entity.

My 2