Debe
Forum Replies Created
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My FW bus card cost me $89.95 at weibetech.com. I don’t know where you’re shopping! (and I got free shipping, too!)
Yes, it’s true that some folks use one FW bus and have no problems, but for every one of you, I’d wager there are at least five folks who DO have the problems I’ve outlined.
This is why the use of FW drives is not approved by Apple. They can’t be made stable for all. FW drives are inherently unreliable. It works for some, but not for all, and there’s no real way to explain why it works for some but not all that I’ve ever heard.
I don’t disbelieve that you, personally, do not have problems with your setup. As a professional, I can’t recommend to any other professional that he/she work that way, because it’s not a system that can be made reliable.
I certainly don’t want the original poster to come back and say, “hey, I’m dropping frames like crazy, and I can’t output to tape in sync, what’s wrong?!?!”, because then my answer would have to be, “oh, are you using FW drives on a single bus? That isn’t reliable”, after I told him/her that it should work just fine! That’s just mean!
debe
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The FW bus card gives you another complete FW bus.
The FW “recipe for headaches” is derived from trying to cram a whole lot of data both ways across the one FW bus that comes on all Macs.
The card gives you another whole pathway to send data down so that you can avoid such problems as sync loss and dropped frames, among other FW headaches, that happen when one tries to push data in two different directions across a single FW bus.
Yes, Macs come with several FW ports, but they all go through the same internal hardware. It’s like putting two linebackers on a city bus and having them try to pass one another in the aisle. Put ’em on separate busses, and there are far fewer problems.
Towers don’t have as many of these issues because they can have a separate internal SATA drive, or if you go the higher end route, dedicated I/O cards for passing media. If you wanted to use FW on a tower, you should also invest in a FW card for the tower, as well.
debe
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Well, Tim, the inability to add another FW bus to an iMac is the biggest drawback. Since you have to use external drives, and you have no way of adding a card for that either, you are stuck using FW drives and a deck or camera on the same FW bus. That’s a recipe for all sorts of headaches.
I’m not the technologist many here are, so I can’t “discuss” the merits of the iMac being faster any more than saying this, the PB is expandable. The iMac is not. That’s all I need to know. Being able to avoid problems is by far more important to me than speed. Setting oneself up for headaches seems to me to be a waste of the money.
There are some folks who use FCP on an iMac G5. It works. I don’t know how well it works. I do know that it works well on a PB with a PCMCIA FW bus card.
If you’re going a professional route, the only two options for FCP are G5 tower or G4 PowerBook, in my humble opinion. Going with an iMac is really for those who want to futz around with FCP but don’t want to shell out for a proper system because it’s not the crux of why their buying the computer.
Like I said, in my opinion. I’m sure other professionals will disagree.
debe
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Sorry….got bit by the double-post bug again!
debe
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With the PowerBook you do sacrifice speed for that mobility.
As an exercise, I took a multilayered project and rendered it out on both my machines. I have a dual 2 GHz G5 with 3 gigs of RAM and a 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook with 1 gig of RAM. The exact same timeline that took 8 minutes to render on the G5 took 32 minutes to render on the G4 PowerBook.
If you intend on doing straight cutting, then it’s probably a no brainer. If you do any kind of graphics, compositing, or color correction, seriously consider the speed difference.
Also, get a Firewire bus card if you go the PB route. It’ll save you many headaches. It’ll give you another FW bus, and with that, capture and output problems will dramatically decrease. They likely won’t go away, but they will decrease. There are SATA bus cards now, so you can use SATA drives instead of FW. I’ve not had the opportunity to use one, but I am seriously considering it for my next big traveling project at the end of January.
One piece of unsolicited advice, if you’re coming from another NLE, I’d recommend either taking a certified FCP course, or going through the FCP Pro Training Series for FCP published by PeachPit Press. I have an Avid background, and after 4 years of beating my head against the wall trying to force FCP to be what I thought an NLE was supposed to be based on my Avid background, I took the level one certification at an authorized FCP training center. It’s night and day difference on how much better I understand FCP and how much faster I am on FCP now. Understanding the architecture of FCP has made me a much more efficient editor. It’s been a boon for me, my business, and most importantly, my clients!
Of course, part of my problem was that I work on both systems. I have Avid clients and FCP clients. It’s much harder to “unlearn” things you still need to know!
Welcome to the wacky world of FCP! Once you get familiar with some of the quirks, you’ll be glad you’re here!
debe
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With the PowerBook you do sacrifice speed for that mobility.
As an exercise, I took a multilayered project and rendered it out on both my machines. I have a dual 2 GHz G5 with 3 gigs of RAM and a 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook with 1 gig of RAM. The exact same timeline that took 8 minutes to render on the G5 took 32 minutes to render on the G4 PowerBook.
If you intend on doing straight cutting, then it’s probably a no brainer. If you do any kind of graphics, compositing, or color correction, seriously consider the speed difference.
Also, get a Firewire bus card if you go the PB route. It’ll save you many headaches. It’ll give you another FW bus, and with that, capture and output problems will dramatically decrease. They likely won’t go away, but they will decrease. There are SATA bus cards now, so you can use SATA drives instead of FW. I’ve not had the opportunity to use one, but I am seriously considering it for my next big traveling project at the end of January.
One piece of unsolicited advice, if you’re coming from another NLE, I’d recommend either taking a certified FCP course, or going through the FCP Pro Training Series for FCP published by PeachPit Press. I have an Avid background, and after 4 years of beating my head against the wall trying to force FCP to be what I thought an NLE was supposed to be based on my Avid background, I took the level one certification at an authorized FCP training center. It’s night and day difference on how much better I understand FCP and how much faster I am on FCP now. Understanding the architecture of FCP has made me a much more efficient editor. It’s been a boon for me, my business, and most importantly, my clients!
Of course, part of my problem was that I work on both systems. I have Avid clients and FCP clients. It’s much harder to “unlearn” things you still need to know!
Welcome to the wacky world of FCP! Once you get familiar with some of the quirks, you’ll be glad you’re here!
debe
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Right-click or Control+click on the bin you want to be your logging bin. You’ll get a menu that pops up. Select “Set Logging Bin”. Now everything you log will end up in that bin instead of at the first level of the project. It’s in the File menu, too!
But there’s nothing wrong with logging to the first level and sorting later. If you find you like it, there’s no technical reason not to. Some like to organize as they go, others like to do things in steps.
I find keeping things tidy as I go works better for my style, so I’m apt to select “Set logging bin” first & put all my captured clips in there. Sometimes I sort it more later, like separate out talking heads from B-roll material or whatever.
Welcome to FCP!
debe
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If you have the original copy of FCP3 loaded anywhere else and you use the serial number from it to install the upgrade FCP3 to FCP 4.5, then, yes, you are illegally installing FCP.
If you remove FCP3 from whatever machine it lived on first and then install the FCP 4.5 upgrade using the FCP3 serial number to unlock the upgrade, then no, you are NOT using it illegally.
You can only have it installed on one computer and use it one computer. If you want to use it on another computer, you have to erase it from the first computer. You can do this as many times as you please, but you can only have it installed and running on one computer at a time. From what you describe, as long as you remove it from your tower/desktop, you certainly can legally install it on your laptop.
I still don’t get your error. You should’ve been able to install the FCP 4.5 upgrade if you had a valid FCP3 serial number. Unless the FCP3 was an upgrade, too, then you need the serial number from the original full install, whether that be FCP 1.2 or whatever it was you started with. You need to have a full install purchased at some point. Since it sounds like you have one, I don’t understand why you can’t install. You’ll have to put the serial numbers in in the correct order. I believe you start with the serial number from the newest, and FCP will ask for the original. When you put in serial number for the upgrade, it’s coded in such a way that the install utility knows to ask for the original serial number. I’m not sure if you even need the serial number from FCP3 if that also was an upgrade. You do not need all upgrade levels to make this work. You only have to prove to FCP that originally you did buy the full version. Perhaps there’s an error in the procedure here. If you start with the original serial number, that’s backwards. Counterintuitive, yes. I’m fairly certain that you have to start with the upgrade serial number so FCP knows it’s an upgrade first. Then it’ll ask for the original. I think I had the same problem as you are having when I tried to install my 4.5 via an upgrade from FCP2, and when I reversed the order of how I entered the serial numbers, all was well. I don’t remember exactly, because eventually I got it to work with no problems. Which is why this is so vexing for you!
I don’t think it’s an OS issue. You certainly don’t need Tiger to run FCP 4.5. I started with OS 10.3.somethin’ on my tower, and I’m currently running 10.3.9 on both my tower and my laptop. I run FCP 4.5 fine on both.
This almost sounds like you could use a trip to the Apple Store, if you have one near you. There’s no reason I can see that you shouldn’t be able to install.
Which leads me to my apology. Install issues, while not limited to, usually are a result of piracy and hacking. Since your issues sound like a textbook case of that, I jumped to the conclusion. I apologize.
The only thing I can think to do is to wipe the drive and start over with installing the OS and the FCP, if there’s no Apple Store near you. You also may be able to get technical help by calling Apple’s 800 number, but they do tend to be pretty strict about only supporting for exactly the number of days that you’ve owned the merchandise as laid out in the purchase agreement. If this upgrade purchase was less than 90 days ago, you shouldn’t have a problem getting them to support you over the phone. If it’s been longer than that, when you get a tech person on the line and explain that you’re migrating to a new computer, they may relax the rules a bit, since you did just recently make Apple purchases. I do find it’s touch and go with getting someone who really wants to help you on the line. I’ve asked for supervisors before, and gotten really great service. Other times, the flunky who answered the phone only really was interested in getting the credit for taking the call and “answering correctly”, not helping. Answering correctly can mean “Sorry, we don’t support purchases after 90 days”. They still get the credit for the call, but they don’t have to do any real work. That’s when I started asking for supervisors as soon as the original techie started sounding like I knew more than he/she did, or that he/she really didn’t give a rats pitoutie about my issue.
I apologize for going off. I am a one-editor shop, and I pay for all my own software. I know how much better and cheaper it would be for all of us if the pirates all paid their fair share. When I look at my expenditures for a year and see how much I spend on software, it makes me a little wiggy to think of all the illegal copies out there. When someone comes to the boards with a problem that sounds like piracy, I get tweaked. In your case, it sounds like what it sounded like wasn’t actually the case. I apologize.
debe
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I don’t quite understand the questions, davidtoo.
FCP 3, if it’s the OS9 version, won’t run or load on an OSX machine. Final Cut Pro has never run in Classic mode. It takes up too much of the OS’s resources. Running in Classic just doesn’t work. FCP is too robust of a program. We all had to buy new software. It’s the price you pay for progress. If you don’t want or need the improvements a new operating system and new programs bring you, you don’t have to buy anything. If you want to reap the benefits of Apple’s R&D and all their hard work to improve FCP and the OS, then you should pay for it. Just like you pay for cars, food, movies, clothes. If you don’t need a fancy car, don’t buy one. If you don’t need designer clothes, no one is requiring you to buy them. We all need food to live, but one can certainly live a fruitful life without fancy restaurants and $100 dinners. If you don’t need the improvements of FCP 4.5, then you can use iMovie, which is much cheaper than FCP. If you need the horsepower of FCP, then you should buy the upgrade. Or stick with an older machine that runs in OS9. No one is requiring you to buy new hardware, either. You chose to upgrade your hardware.
That aside, if you have a legal copy that runs under the old operating system, and you have a legal serial number, just the serial number is all you need to install your upgrade on the new operating system. For FCP at least, an “upgrade” is merely a full version that is less expensive. To unlock it, you only need to enter your legal serial number from the earlier version. YOU DO NOT NEED TO EVER EVER EVER PUT THE FCP3 DISKS IN YOUR COMPUTER TO DO THIS!!! You don’t need to actually install the original version. REPEAT AFTER ME…”The upgrade IS a full version”. All you need is to type in the serial number of the original version when installing the upgrade as it asks for it. I know because I’ve installed FCP4.5 via an upgrade from FCP 2 on my G4 laptop.
As far as I know, FCP 4.5 will run on Tiger. You just have to revert QuickTime back to 6.5.2, because FCP 4.5 doesn’t play well with QT7.
There’s no legal issue here. If you want the software companies to continue to improve their wares, the consumers have to support them by buying the software and using it legally. Think of all the improvements we would have if all the pirated copies out there were legally purchased copies.
If you don’t like Apple’s licensing, you don’t have to buy their software. Try another software manufacturer. You legally cannot have one copy of FCP installed on more than computer at a time. If you have it installed on a tower, and you want to install it on a lpatop, you have to first remove (erase) it from the tower. Apple is allowed to set their licensing any way they choose. If you don’t like it, choose a different software manufacturer.
The kids are hacking because somewhere along the line integrity and honesty has been laid waste. They really don’t think they’re stealing. They are. Apple deserves to get paid for all the time, energy and money they put in to making hardware and software. I blame margarine for the serious lapse in judgment of today’s youth.
debe
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I don’t do HD, but I work with a group of guys who do.
In our market, at least, it seems like everyone bumped their rates a wee bit, for SD and HD in the past 18 months or so. I want to say almost all rates went up 25%.
There’s no difference in output format to my guys. SD, HD, DVD, QRSTUV, it’s all the same. If everything costs the same, fewer haggles and hassles.
So it would seem. That was the philosophy, anyway. I’ve not asked how it’s working in practice.
They focus on selling the talent, not the gear. Best marketing I’ve seen so far. The gear will change. Good talent is (hopefully) forever.
two cents
debe