Debe
Forum Replies Created
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I use my laptop when I need to be mobile, but it’s not my main editing system. Therefore I can’t answer your I/O or array questions.
I will tell you one thing, though. I did a test not too long ago. A 5 minute multilayered project that took 8 minutes to render on my dual 2 GHz G5 took 32 minutes to render on my 1.5 GHz Powerbook. I have 3 GB RAM in the G5 and 1 GB RAM in the PB. Both are currently running FCP 4.5 and OS 10.3.9.
A Powerbook is great for run and gun stuff, but if you do any kind of layering, including titles, and lots of them, you’ll likely find the render speeds on the G4 Powerbook lacking.
If you must stick with the PB, I highly recommend a FireWire Bus card to get yourself an additional FW bus. It makes all the difference in the world for pesky dropped frame issues. (However, it doesn’t solve all of them. There are some inherent issues with using FW for storage, which is why FW isn’t sanctioned for media drive use by Apple)
As for your titling issues, it’s not so much a FCP issue as it is the nature of DV compression issue. If you work in DV compression, you’ll always take a hit on text quality. If you work in higher resolutions, you don’t have the same problems. I’d almost put money on one not being able to tell the difference on titles on the output of an uncompressed FCP system versus an Avid or M100. It’s the nature of DV, not FCP that is the limitation.
With a PB, you are limited to DV, unless you can output some other way, I think. Anyone correct me if I’m wrong, but I know there’s no way to add an internal card, but is there an external BOB solution for a PB to get higher than DV resolution in and out of a PB? If you can export an uncompressed QT and run to tape form another machine, that could be a way, but I’m fairly certain you can’t get to tape other than by going out FW, which limits you to DV quality.
But I’m always ready to be corrected! Anyone?
debe
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Might be a good question for Graeme Nattress or Klaus Eperlie, or any of the other filter-making men!
You’re absolutely right, danrw, you’d think with a date looming such as it is, someone would’ve jumped on this bandwagon!
Perhaps when I get a break, I’ll see if Neil is in and has any thoughts! I just don’t know if I’ll get a break today….
debe
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The producers I know always get a new DigiBeta master. They provide their own stock and don’t pay markup.
I don’t know how you’d take their file and put it on line 21 yourself. You’d need at the very least a waveform monitor to check to make sure you’re on line 21…When I was on staff, I “emergency captioned” a program for Max when one of his machines was down using a Grass Valley 1200 switcher and a Sony DME-3000 DVE mastering to DigiBeta. I don’t recall how we got the signal…it was over 10 years ago! But I’m sure with the right gear, it can be done.
It might be worth a phone call. I know several of the people in the local office here who’d be happy to answer all sorts of questions. I’m not familiar with anyone in the LA office, other than Max when he’s there!
They really are open to doing whatever they can do to help you get what you need. At least all the people I know are very helpful, very knowledgeable, and understanding of the fact that lots of folks don’t quite understand the process. (I’m not insinuating you, specifically, don’t. Even though I’ve been familiar with the concept since 1992, there were plenty of things I didn’t grasp until I talked with one of their sales reps last year to get specific info for a client. Neil spent the better part of an hour walking me though the process and explaining how things would work best for the specific need my client had.)
I know they supply the digital file for DVD captioning. If that’s something that can be used in FCP, I’m sure they’d be happy to supply it to you for making your own masters. They don’t make their money on the dubbing/mastering. They make their money being the best of caption-ers, paying very close attention to all the audio in the program, not just the spoken words. That’s the part that’s art! The descriptive nature of captioning.
Just go ahead and call the office nearest you! There are some needs that are just different enough that are either too new to have been addressed yet, or are too unique to be singled out on the website. Or it could be a whole new angle to the business that they haven’t fully explored yet. If there’s one thing I know about Max, he loves learning new things and new ways to provide his clients with the things they need!
debe
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Captioning is an art and a science. If you’re not experienced in it, it’s also a huge time-suck.
Check out Captionmax. They have offices all over the country.
debe
(for the record, Max used to be my boss when he was VP of Post Production at a large facility while he was getting CaptionMax off the ground. I do not work for CaptionMax, nor do I receive any consideration. He’s just a really nice guy! I mention them because they are very good at what they do and their service is impeccable!)
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Thanks, Don!!
debe
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Shane,
Someone just told me FAT32 now has a 4GB limit. I wasn’t aware of that, since I try my darnedest to stay away from PCs…
Any idea on how to find out for sure?
debe
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I don’t get where anyone is suggesting that Mr. Shea lie to his client.
If it is in reference to my post, let me assure you, I wasn’t suggesting that at all! If it read that way, I whole-heartedly apologize to Mr. Shea and the rest of you for my poor choice of words.
My point more general, and perhaps not completely valid for this issue. The lying is usually done by the weasels. I assumed that Mr. Shea is NOT a weasel, because he’s concerned enough about what happened to ask for advice here. The crux of my post was to emphasize that he outwardly accept responsibility for his part in ANY failure, because that’s the professional thing to do. Don’t badmouth the gear, don’t point the finger at someone else, don’t do anything that makes you look LIKE the weasel. If you could have done something better, own up to that. But certainly I wasn’t suggesting that he own up to things that were not his responsibility. Unless someone directly asks, “Well, who did what and why are they responsible for what happened?”, don’t go stomping around muttering, “If so-and-so hadn’t done such-and-such….”. (And I’m not suggesting that’s what he did, either. It is a common response, though.) This is a good idea under almost any circumstance. He could just say that he would have like to have tested it one more time, and too bad it happened. To save face and possibly the relationship, he could offer to cover the cost of the rental gear, if he thought that was appropriate.
Being right is good, but being right at the expense of the relationship means you lose the client. You have to decide which is more important, and how big of a deal it really was, in 20/20 hindsight. After a few weeks, those huge “screw ups”, if they are screw ups or just equipment failure, aren’t so painful and don’t seem like that big of a deal. But pointing the finger lingers, and that sometimes is harder to overcome than a failure.
Sorry again if I at all seemed like I was suggesting he lie to his client! That was certainly NOT my intention!
debe
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If you’re capturing via firewire, as you probably know, it’s not “really” audio. It’s a data stream. There’s nothing you can do to alter them coming in, so there’s no real reason for FCP to divert valuable resources to driving the monitors. Although it sure would be nice to have monitors so one could keep an eye on levels!
If you just want to be able to actually hear the audio, you can turn on audio during capture by changing the capture preset. However, some report dropped frame issues when they change the capture settings to have the audio on during capture.
Otherwise, if you want to keep an eye on your audio levels to make notes for areas of concern, your deck likely has audio monitors. Use those instead!
debe
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You’ll likely come across this in your search…but just in case…
I highly recommend either taking a FCP course, or at the very least, running through the Peachpit Press Pro training books.
The most frustrating thing I found about learning FCP, after having been an Avid editor for 8 years, was trying to force FCP to work like I knew Avid did. My insane “Avid workarounds” that I used for the first 3 years on FCP was a HUGE disservice to my clients and to me.
I took the Apple Certified Training to get new bearings, and after I really began to understand just how different FCP is from Avid, I really began to appreciate FCPs strengths, and to deal with it’s weaknesses. I highly suggest you do what you need to do to avoid having to force FCP to do what Avid does. Whether that is taking Apple Certified Training courses or self-guided training, the sooner you can “think in FCP” instead of “translating FCP into Avid” first, the happier you will be!
I still use both Avid and FCP. I appreciate each app’s strengths, and try to accept each app’s weaknesses. When I’m lucky, I get to choose which one I want to use for certain projects, and having that flexibility makes for all the difference in how successful my projects are.
I am unsatisfied with the Media Manager, but the integration of LiveType, Motion, SoundTrack Pro and DVD Studio Pro make for a workflow that in my experience is not paralled in Avid. The ability to easily import images larger than raster is a HUGE selling point for me.
debe
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..and it’s FREE!
what’s not to love?!?!
debe