[Fred Turner]

…how the night moves?? Wasn’t that 1962 tho? ????

You need a Thunderbolt-to-FW800 adapter, then you need a FW800 (9-pin) to FW400 (4-pin) cable. The first is here:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD464LL/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapter

The second I got from here:

https://www.amazon.com/SIIG-Firewire-Cable-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000VEOIDK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484364364&sr=8-1&keywords=SIIG+9PIN+To+4PIN+Firewire+800+Cable

And FCPX will indeed capture from DV devices over FireWire and control the deck, too.

HTH,
FT

[Fred Turner]

[Martin Szucs] ” i was thinking about buying a mac mini while keeping my macbook for general usage and making notes at the university .”

Not sure if you were entertaining buying a *new* Mac mini, but I wouldn’t do that. The latest revision (the oh-so-new Late 2014 model), in addition to being 2 years old now, makes many compromises in performance and expandability, and most notably is only available as a dual-core CPU configuration. The preceding Late 2012, however, sports a quad-core i7 CPU at the high end, so I’d recommend that. In my opinion, if you are only talking about a current Late 2014 Mac mini w/ dual-core CPU, I think you’d be better served to just beef up your current MacBook w/ RAM + SSD and save the rest of your money. And if you went Mac mini, only do so w/ a quad-core 2012, then still plan to add an SSD and sufficient RAM.

Hope this helps,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

Thanks for the input, guys! I found a non-4K Intensity Pro at the right price on the ‘Bay, so I went w/ that. It was less than half the going rate for the 4K versions, so I opted to save now, rather than gamble that I’d be able to make use of 4K w/ it later. If I have that need, I’ll just worry about a card upgrade then w/o hurting myself too bad now.

So, I’ll plan on ProRes 422 as an intermediate for capture and cleanup, but revisiting a question above, what should I target for archival after the cleanup is done? Is H.264 at a decent bitrate going to suffice for mostly archival to almost never be touched again, while retaining the possibility to re-import and edit some footage later? Any recommendations on specs/bitrate for this, given relatively crummy SD VHS?

Speaking of cleanup, I’m a complete newbie there. Any good tips or how-tos? As far as audio, is FCPX’s sound processing upon import recommended?

One other technical question: the signal on tape is split Y/C, right? So I’d do best to spit out S-Video from the deck (JVC SR-VS20) to the card, right? This seems obvious, but just want to make sure I’m not overlooking something equally obvious!

Thx again,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

Thanks, Mark, good to have options! However, for this, I’ll be trying to avoid adding more compression/decompression cycles until the end, when I go to archive. The DVD route wouldn’t afford me the ability to clean up the footage w/o decompressing and recompressing at an intermediate step. Plus, I’m aiming for final compression more advanced than the fairly low bitrate, older MPEG-2 used on a DVD recorder— probably H.264 @ higher bitrate. We have one of those recorders in the basement, though, so I’ll definitely keep it in mind as a possibility for future projects.

Thx,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

You can make and use new FCP libraries specifically for these SD card archives. There’s not a whole lot of difference between FCPX’s media archive and clips in an event inside a library. Just go to the library or archive in the Finder, right-click, and choose to view the package contents. I was going to try using archives, but for the very reason you are asking your question, I started manually archiving event folders from libraries myself. Here’s what I’ve been doing:

1. Connect up the source (usually in my case, a Sony AVCHD camcorder)
2. Select a range of clips from a particular activity/project (lots of kid/family stuff for me)
3. Import into a new event, named something like “2016.10.28 Jason Football vs. Grayson”
4. View the clips as a list, going through each one and deleting the ones I didn’t want to archive
5. After culling, go to the Library in the Finder, then “view package contents”
6. Grab the folder “2016.10.28 Jason Football…” and copy it to where I wanted to archive
7. Later, if I want to import this stuff and actually edit it, I point FCPX to the folder on my archive drive and import again

HTH,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

[Cherin Bower] “The native mxf files are too large for import to FCP and I don’t necessarily want to create proxy media for every clip. I prefer to “copy files to library” on import into FCP so I will end up creating large FCP libraries.”

Couldn’t you use a sort-of 2-pass approach, where you first “leave media in place” as you add clips to FCP, but create proxy media for each clip as you import; then once you’ve narrowed down what you want to use, tidy up your library and consolidate the media in it, copying only what you’re going to use? I know you say you don’t want to create proxy media for every clip, but as long as you’re keeping the originals in place, the proxy-only library would only add a fraction of add’l usage relative to the disk space already in use by the originals. Then you can toss the proxies (and links to originals) you don’t want once you’ve had a chance to scrub through everything, hopefully scrubbing w/ much better performance and stability as ProRes Proxy.

[Fred Turner]

Hey Martin—

While a newer system w/ a newer-generation, faster CPU and more memory capacity would be good, I’ll bet you can squeeze some more life out of your 2010 machine yet. But you’ll want to do BOTH RAM and SSD to get it up to acceptable performance levels, I believe. The max amount of RAM is 8GB (2 x 4GB), so do that for sure. I’d say more, but that’s as high as that one will go. Should be able to get a couple of 4GB sticks for $100 or less.

The SSD will probably give you the largest perceived performance boost, and should make loading clips for editing much, much better than that old, original 250GB spinner. If you can swing another $100 for a 250GB SSD, then you ought to be able to keep enough of a smaller project on the SSD to work at maximum speed. Only problem is, if you need to have add’l external storage online for more media, the best you can do is FireWire 800, which will max out at about 70-80MB/s, if that. So, if you can spend $200 for a 500GB SSD, that’d be better. But I think you could get by w/ the 250, if you don’t mind making some compromises.

Good luck,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

[Noah Kadner] “Without expecting miracles due to garbage-in/garbage-out, yes that workflow sounds fine.
“

Ok, thanks, Noah! Yeah, definitely not expecting any miracles. Just want to do the best job I can w/ what’s there. So, do you have any experience with or preference between those 2 cards? Or, 4 cards really (Kona LSe, LHe, Intensity Pro, Intensity Pro 4K)?

Further questions:
1. Do you agree w/ my assessment about it being preferable to circumvent DV and use card+ProRes?
2. For my anticipated small amount of work, is there any benefit to considering the Intensity Pro 4K at about double the cost? Something I’m not considering WRT future utility or expansion?
3. What sort of specs/data rate would you target for archival transcoding in my step #3, keeping in mind that I’d like to retain enough headroom so that I might “re-online” at some later point for editing?
4. Think ProRes LT will suffice for the intermediate cleanup, or should I use “full” ProRes 422?

Sorry for so many questions. I guess I’m mentally wrangling this process and formulating my plan as I gather info. Any advice, tips, things to consider, or commentary is greatly appreciated.

Thx again,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

[Nick Toth] “I leave all the audio setting unchecked because they cause more problems than they solve. I don’t know what default is but is it possible that you had some of them checked?

As I said, I left the settings as they were for most tests, but for one test, I checked the top 2 Audio boxes. “Same result.”

I just checked a few DV files that I imported into FCP and they play back fine in QT player and Quicklook.

Okay, good to know. Did you import these directly from tape? And do you know which version of FCPX you would have used (wondering if it could be a bug in the current version but not a previous one)?

Is it really a problem when you can just skim and make choices right in FCPX?”

It’s a problem to me, since if I’m archiving this stuff, I might want to browse through it and use QuickLook on other machines besides those that have FCPX installed.

[Bret Williams] “Maybe the footage was some of that 12bit 32khz 4ch stuff?”

Don’t think so…see the pics of the info windows. They both show 16-bit, 48KHz.

I’ll try to do more testing on this. Any add’l data and observations anyone might have are welcome.

Thx,
Fred

[Fred Turner]

A Fusion Drive is not a bad option, IMHO, since it’ll prioritize system, apps, and frequently used data to the SSD portion, and it will give you 1TB+ for media library storage. However, I’d STRONGLY recommend you get the 2TB or 3TB Fusion Drives, not the 1TB: in a not-so-widely-disclosed cost-cutting move, Apple changed the 1TB Fusion Drive to have only 24GB of SSD in the latest round of iMac updates. The 2TB & 3TB have 128GB of SSD— far more useful.

The 1TB Fusion Drive pairs a 1TB hard drive with 24GB of fast flash — enough to store important OS X files and applications to ensure fast startup, near instant wake from sleep and quick application launching, with room left over for your most frequently used files and apps. The 2TB and 3TB Fusion Drives pair a larger hard drive with 128GB of fast flash storage, providing even more space for your most frequently used files. For the best performance, iMac systems with 32GB of memory should be configured with a 2TB or larger Fusion Drive or all flash storage.

Whatever you get, enjoy!

Fred