[Frank Pledge]

if you go with FW editing you want to keep your FW deck and your drive on a seperate bus. i’m not sure if the FW 400 port and the FW 800 port areon the same bus or not. if not – buy an additional fw800 pci card. (do these even exist for pci-express?) the new g5s have pci-express. this is new to mac.

btw – this includes more than one FW drive. meaning – if you have a huge huge project on more than 1 FW drive, it’s best to keep them on seperate bus as well.

speaking of drives – remember if you get 2 500 internals you should really only use the 2nd 500 for media. so if you think you’ll need a 500g system drive, go ahead – but you will not get more media space with it.

4g ram is more than enough.

in general – to edit dvcam you really only need to plug in the mac.if you go over dv to sd then everything changes.

search this forum or LAFCPUG for any other questions.

fp

[Frank Pledge]

i would guess this may be a foreshadow of things to come with the intel machines and ‘legacy’ issues. i totally ‘get’ the switch to pci-exress, but a legacy slot would have been useful. the thing is – the quads are made for us. for the editors, compositors, graphics people, etc – not the web surfers. we have the fibre cards, the capture cards etc – what we need is the speed. what a strange relationship Apple maintains with pro users: if you make money off the machine, you should always spend money at every turn for the machine.

i bought a decklink card that i use pretty much for monitoring only as i do ‘offline’ in SD. when i bought it i figured…hey i could use this thing forever…
fp

[Frank Pledge]

250GB PORSCHE EXT FIREWIRE HD

had problems with this for dv scratch. no fan in that as this model favors design over function. fine for basic data storage. heard many issues with the lacies (although i use them). g-raid i think are great
fp

[Frank Pledge]

clicking usually = so long drive. not a ‘full drive” thing – but a mechanical breakdown.

my experience.
fp

[Frank Pledge]

what you do is slow down a bit the head or tail (whichever end we’re talking about). your goal is to get as much of the slow stuff in the dissolve itself. how slow? experiment.
fp

[Frank Pledge]

dropped frame warning – yes

skip/jump – no. it’s like a digital skip or maybe like a frame or 2 jump. very agonizing on long (20-30min) layoff. a friend of mine had created a checklist of ‘workarounds’ that essentially prepped the computer to do a layoff. it was involved and taxing.

in terms of drive performance, i agree, but i have experienced this with drives that have been de-fragged, directory repaired etc. what else can one do short of a raid array? it was dv…

i’m just thankful that i haven’t had to do it in a while and sata and FW800 raids have become cheap and available in the event that i do.

fp

[Frank Pledge]

here here!!!

now that everyone FINALLY got their multi-cam editing it’s time to get serious about the media manager. i personally think it’s the number one thing keeping FCP from moving foward in a big way. Every ‘Avid person’ i speak to who is hesitant ALWAYS talks about the uprezing/’consolidating’ things they’ve heard or experienced.

that coupled with really reliable layoffs. a complaint i’ve heard across the board as well (and experienced) is the uncertainty of layoffs (drop frames, skips and jumps WITHOUT error report). this btw – occurs with regular old DV FCP self contained movies on roomy drives.

so we can do hd of all kinds now let’s step back and re-do the MM…. for real

fp

[Frank Pledge]

no i didn’t. nice

however, if the markers don’t move with the cut….what’s the use/point? the minute you say – cut out a shot that was noted in the marker – jumping to the next marker is now out of sync. so it says ‘trim tail’…which tail?

The reason i commented on it is that i work remotely all the time whether it be a producer across town or across country. I spent all day yesterday conforming a cut to producers notes. to do this i had to have the cut with his notes in one tab and the cut i was changing in the other – switching between the 2. no huge deal, but i would love to not do this, and knock off the markers as i go.

i would LOVE to print his notes as well and literally cross them off. i guess my issue is really a super-early/late feature request. or maybe i get lucky and like FCPHD i’ll get a midway update called FCPMARKER…heh
fp

[Frank Pledge]

i’ll raise ya one…or two!

they should work like avid locators 100%. meaning:

– they should open as a ‘list’ in a seperate ‘marker window’ – you should be able to double click the marker (in this window) and have the playhead in the timeline jump to that marker on the timeline

-you should be able to PRINT this marker window with all the text AND of course the corresponding seq TC

i know nothing about what it takes to change something like this in a program, but, avid has had this feature for a LONG time.

i just don’t know if FCP/apple knows that markers are used as edit notes…
fp

[Frank Pledge]

i would say the the BIGGEST difference between avid & FCP on a basic just ‘sitting and editing’ point of view is the timeline. it really threw me when i switched over. the FCP timeline is EXTREMELY ‘sensitive’ for lack of a better word. forget better or worse, that’s the main differenece. i remember banging around the avid timline like a drunk pirate when i cut on avid, but in FCP you need to be more aware of what you’re clicking and touching and what HAS been clicked/activated in the timeline. Avid – if i recall – makes you switch ‘modes’ constantly while editing. this allows you to handle the timeline in a specific way at a specific time. meaning – you can’t ‘accidentally’ grab a clip on the timeline if you’re not in that mode.

FCP you are in all modes all the time. ‘switching’ modes is dependant on HOW you touch/click/interact with the timeline and or clip. it can be very tricky at first

IMO it’s simply a matter of getting used to and once you do it’s as fast or faster.

one thing i KNOW is a problem that plagues me still, is ‘forgeting’ that you have a clip selected and accidentally deleting it because the clip is somewhere else on the timeline out of view. it STILL happens to me every once in a rare while, and i need to go to the autosavevault and pull the clip(s) back from an old cut.

i would say that this may be where you should be most careful – generally speaking. it drove me nuts in the beginning.

in terms of render – your settings are absolutley ‘wrong’ as in not matching the media’s setting. that should be a super-simple fix as stated above.

goodluck!
fp