[Eric Hansen]

if you’re sticking with DV, a firewire drive will be fine if you add a Firewire 800 PCI card. if you are thinking of moving up to HD with your G4, then eSATA is a great idea. i would recommend adding more RAM. FCP is fighting with OSX and all the other open applications for only 1GB. this isnt enough, especially if you are going to move beyond DV. also, if you are currently using your Boot Drive for your Capture Scratch, this will be the biggest limiting factor. at minimum you should have 2 drives, one for the system and one for Media. if the media drive is a RAID with a fast connection, all the better.

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[Eric Hansen]

i can’t really lend advice for the graphics cards because i havent been able to test different ones.

i have 3rd party RAM and Hard Drives in my G5s and i’ve never had an issue with AppleCare. they consider them user-upgradeable parts so it doesnt affect the service. a good Seagate or Maxtor server-level hard drive has a 5 year warranty, and the RAM from OWC is half the price of the Apple store for the same brand. so it seems like a no brainer to me. i understand those who want the all-in-one Apple solution for simplicity, but with a fully loaded Mac Pro, your talking hundreds to thousands of dollars difference.

also, if you buy 3rd party RAM, get the non-ECC. ECC is only needed for scientific and math intensive systems. the fact that Apple only sells ECC RAM now is probably the reason for the large spike in RAM costs. its not necessary IMHO.

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[Eric Hansen]

I have a Kona LH and Sony M2000/10 HDCAM deck. my deck will not record HD from the Kona using either the external Blackburst Reference (525i signal), or the internal reference settings. the only way is having Kona create the reference for the HD print. in Kona ControlPanel, set the reference to your external blackburst generator (it can be SD, doesnt need to be HD) that is running into the Reference IN on the Kona, then set the deck Reference to Input. this way the deck is receiving an HD reference signal from Kona (thru the video SDI) that is synced to the SD reference from the blackburst.

thats what works for me and may help your problem.

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[Eric Hansen]

Thanks Michael

that plug-in is perfect.

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[Eric Hansen]

i use Sony equipment. during logging, the cameras and decks only display 7 digits: 0:00:00;00 but in FCP 8 digits are displayed: 00:00:00;00

if a tape has the hour of 12 on the TC, the Sonys will display it as 2:00:00;00 but FCP will recognise that the true TC is 12:00:00;00

i’ve never used JVC equipment, but its entirely possible that the camera was set to record TC at 12 instead of 2 by accident, but the client may not have been able to tell if the JVC display is only 7 digits.

eric