Don Greening
Forum Replies Created
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[eyecamiam] “Will I see an increase in speed over ULTRA ATA if I install a SATA card so I can install SATA drives internally in my dual 1 gig quicksilver PM G4?”
Anytime you go from parallel ATA to serial ATA you’ll observe an increase in transfer rates.
[eyecamiam] “Will the drives run cooler?”
Probably the same temp as any other internal hard drive.
[eyecamiam] “If so, what card do you suggest that will allow me to install two internal drives?”
Any of the brand name SATA cards will do. Make sure you get a straight PCI card and not a PCI-X or PCI-e for your G4.
[eyecamiam] “Do you know if i can install the drive in drive position 1 and 2?”
Can’t help you there.
[eyecamiam] “If I use an external firewire enclosure, will SATA drives in the external case be compatible with my G4 without an external SATA card?”
Don’t know if you can install serial ATA in a FW enclosure. Parallel ATA is fine. Regardless, there is a FW bridge board inside the enclosure that allows ATA drives to connect to the FW BUS and then to your Mac via the firewire cable. You don’t need an internal SATA controller card for this.
[eyecamiam] “Will an external SATA enclosure produce faster speeds than a firewire 800 enclosure?”
Yep.
[eyecamiam] “Will that speed matter when editing with standard def DV?”
Depends on how many streams of SD DV you want to edit with, along with each stream’s companion audio tracks. I notice a substantial speed bump with SATA over FW when editing a 3 multicam project with 6-10 audio tracks. If you’re only cutting one or two video tracks firewire will probably be sufficient.
– Don
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[Gunleik Groven] “But is it possible to change. There should only be some flag somewhere that flags one SD file as anamorphic. Right?”
You should be able to change your encoded movie to the 16:9 format. The first way I know how to do this is to open your MPEG2 in QT and then do an export with a custom aspect ratio change. The length of your movie file will determine on how long it takes to make a new exported movie. Probably a while.
Export using the same codec as your movie. In the dialogue window click on options, then select the size button. There you will be able to select a preset aspect ratio or you can use the custom setting. For example, if your MPEG2 file is DV NTSC 720×480 change it to 854×480 to get your 16:9 picture.
If you want to try it another way, open your movie in QT then open the “show movie properties” dialogue in the Window menu. Hightlight the video track then click on “Visual Settings” Change the numbers in the “Scaled Size” boxes, uncheck “Preserve Aspect Ratio” then click outside the numbers boxes. Save your changes. That should do it.
– Don
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[eyecamiam] “Are the meters the only way to judge the proper gain adjustments needed.”
As far as I know, meters are all that’s available. There are better ones out there, such as ones found on high end mixers. I generally rely on the same things you do: looking at the meters while monitoring with headphones. I find it pretty easy to hear audio clipping unless it’s really loud (such as a wedding reception) and then it’s tough to distinguish between the headphone audio and the general pounding of the room audio. Then I must rely exclusively on the camera’s VU meters.
You can buy headhpone amps to boost the signal, but some of the cheaper ones will introduce their own noise into the mix. Not that the amp noise will be recorded, rather it just make things more confusing. I guess also, listening to to audio using headphones is subjective in that different people will hear more of what’s going on at various listening levels, so headphone volume is more of a personal preference.
But you’re right in that it’s not easy to judge what’s being recorded. Mini DV camera headphone amps are notoriously inadequate and the VU meters on those same cameras are probably not sensitve enough for really professional results. You get used to it and just leave yourself enough audio headroom for the spikes that will invariably happen. This usually results in audio levels that are a bit too low, but I guess that’s why they invented programs like Soundtrack Pro for fixing stuff like that.
– Don
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[tigerbody] “I am all the way in the middle of the Pacific Ocean”
Hopefully you have some sort of water craft beneath your feet, otherwise I can always alert a local S.A.R. team.
– Don
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[Pierre-Luc] “Out of subject, but what does mean “FWIW” ?”
FWIW = for what it’s worth 🙂
– Don
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Okay. The next thing would be to make sure your DV decks haven’t been changed somehow so that they’re outputting in PAL instead of NTSC. Just a guess. This is uncharted territory for me, since I don’t use a DV deck, but just a FW camera. The fact that you’re at least getting the audio tells me that FCP and your decks are communicating (re: the QT fix above) but that they’re just not doing it properly. Sorry I can’t be of furthur help.
– Don
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Have you tried trashing the FCP pref. files?
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ross,
It might be a Quicktime thing. Try the fix at the link below:
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301852
– Don
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[David Roth Weiss] “I also noticed this issue in the latest Compressor update.”
I thought that the broken VBR thing was supposed to be fixed in v.2.1. I know that Compressor 2.0 has problems with the VBR setting, resulting in pixelated cross dissolves and fades. That’s why I bought Bitvice when I need to encode with VBR. FWIW, the CBR results in both Compressor and Bitvice look pretty much the same, with Compressor working quite a bit faster.
– Don
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Google: MPEG Streamclip. It will demux the audio/video and allow you to bring the separate files into FCP for editing. And the program’s probably still a freebie.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”