[Jason Porthouse]

Intuos 3 in mouse mode – can’t get my head around pen mode.

Dunno what the 4’s surface is like but I hope it’s not like the Bamboo – had a go on one the other day and was sooo glad I had the Intuos – a scratchy feel to it I just couldn’t get on with.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

I’d seriously consider going with B&H for that one (or even look to getting an FSI from them direct…) For the difference you could (if you needed to) ship to the states 2 or 3 times and still be in the money…

We do get royally shafted over here when it comes to pricing…

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

I had the self same, to the point of being unable to work for any longer than about 10 minutes without a lot of pain.

My solution (after doing the doc route – who’s only suggestions were ‘Don’t do whatever hurts’ and ‘We can give you a steroid injection’ – something I would be EXTREMELY wary of) was to buy a Wacom Intuos tablet. I now exclusively use that, and it’s completely cured the RSI. I tired a trackball but not for me; the pen style used by Wacom suited me fine.

Don’t hesitate, whatever you do do it now!

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

I can only chime in here with my experience. I, along with many others, have had terrible problems with crashing working natively with XDCam. We had a meeting at the production company yesterday with a local FCP guru who has had issues too; his workflow now is to trascode all XDCam to ProRes (not HQ) and work in that. It’s something we’re going to adopt across the board in order to try and stabilise things.

Now, this is in PAL land and there are many who don’t seem to get the issues we’re finding. If that’s the case for you then working natively may be the way to go; unfortunately you won’t know ’till you try. If you do go that way and experience random crashes, then turning off thumbnails in the TL and not using Icon view in the bins seems to lessen the problem. I think it’s an issue in writing the icons (they change whenever in/outs are altered) but as I say many haven’t encountered this issue.

In your shoes, given my experience, I’d transcode to ProRes 1080 before starting. But YMMV, and you may use option 1 with no issues at all…

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

[Philip Owens] “I made a decision today after the failures – I can’t deal with this any longer, so I’m going to buy a Matrox MXO2 Mini and a DVD recorder to make outputs easier. Hopefully that’ll be less painful. It can hardly be worse….
“

Oh, you just reminded me. We have terrible issues with export too. Exactly the same – try exporting a long TL and at some random point it just hangs with the Out Of Memory error. If you open Activity Monitor and have that on display whilst working, you may see what I see – that is the available RAM reduces gradually till it’s working with maybe 50-100mb free. I think when it gets to this stage it’s only a matter of time before it crashes. My work around has been to export in chunks of no more that say 10 mins. A real PITA but at least viable. Your idea of an MXO2 is a good one, but something like one of the BM cards would be cheaper. I’d go for the O2 if the cash was there tho’.

In all honesty I think something is fundamentally wrong here. Whilst many report no issues, and write it off as corrupt media or incorrectly set up systems, we’re talking about a whole gamut of system types – from VAR supplied setups correctly configured to those like my own – a DIY build but with all the knowledge of 20 years in the industry, FCP since the 90s and the entire wisdom of the Cow built in to it’s construction!

Whether it’s the codec (which I suspect) or FCP (less likely given that all other working modes for me have been rock solid) or some voodoo interference twixt the two I don’t know, but it’s bloody frustrating.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

[walter biscardi] “You would think Sony would want to make XDCAM as easy to work with to sell more cameras to FCP users….. “

Absolutely. I can’t see any of the post houses or independent production companies ditching FCP because XDCam doesn’t play nicely, moving to Vegas or Edius- but I can see them moving to a different acquisition format to make life easier. If Sony harbours any notions that they’ll somehow corner market share they’re going about it in entirely the wrong way. But Sony have always had a funny relationship with NLEs – it’s almost as if, following the demise of the linear suites and the ubiquity of 910s and 9100s they’ve never really gotten the changing world of editing. Their turnkey NLE was a case in point – basically a FAST 601/Silver with many of the functions hobbled, as far as I remember.

Ahh well, maybe one day they’ll learn!

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Just to add my ‘2 pennorth’ in this debate.

I too have experienced random crashes with XDCam, both in 35 & 50, CBR & VBR. The main culprits are:

Opening bins with Icon view – redraw gets so far through and ‘poof!’ no more FCP.

Scrolling aorund the timeline – again, no warning, no rhyme or reason – it’ll be fine for a while then gone.

As others have stated, turning all icons/thumbnails off has helped, but not cured the problem. This has happened in my suite (fairly beefy and utterly stable in all other formats from DV to ProRes HD) and in 4 other suites located at a production company I edit for. Their editors have had the same too.

So yes, I’m inclined toward something broken in the way FCP handles the codec. This may be the fault of FCP, or it may be something more to do with XDCam. The cynic in me wonders whether Sony owning Vegas has something to do with it!

I’m trying to move away from the codec ASAP, but for the company I freelance for I think that would be a process too far. For the moment, coping strategies are the only way forward. Taking the steps we have done have reduced crashes from 10 or 20 a day to 1 or 2, but it’s still a PITA. It’s a real shame because I think some of the images gleaned from relatively humble cameras like the EX1 and 3 are excellent.

It’s also odd that many have had no probles at all. Is there a correlation between PAL (or more accurately 50i/p) users and increased errors?

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

Peter,

I’va responded to your post on Shooting People but will add my 2 pence here!!

I’ve got the A6 Intuos 3, and I find it fine for editing across a number of different suites, all dual screen. I sometimes wish it were a tad bigger, mostly when I just run out of room taking something from timeline to bin (the biggest move you’re likely to do) but I run mine in relative mode rather than absolute – this means you can (like a mouse) lift the pen, move it and put it down on another part of the tablet without the pointer moving to that point – enabling you to ‘stroke’ the pointer across the screen, as you do with a mouse. I couldn’t get on with absolute mode (where point A on the tablet is point A on the screen) but YMMV, and working absolute you definitely need a bigger tablet.

So the A6 wide is a good compromise for me in terms of portability and usability; if I were getting another I’d go for the A5 wide and keep the little one for other gigs.

Whatever size you go for, like everyone says – you won’t regret it. It cured my RSI in a month, and it was pretty bad.

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

use both. Seriously!!

You have Vegas? You like? Keep it, for the amount you’ll get for it it’s worth saving.

Run FCP alongside it. That way, you learn both, you broaden your saleability for the client and everyone’s happy. Use the best tool for the job. Some things you’ll love in FCP, some you’ll hate. Don’t see it as the enemy, just another tool in your arsenal.

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jason Porthouse]

I’m going to probably wait ’till Snow Leopard – one new drive, new OS, new FCP all in one hit.

JP

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*