[Jason Porthouse]

Michael,

Somewhere in your settings in the 1400 there will be a setting for something like ‘Auto EE’ – this should be set to off. If it’s on when you eject a tape this is exactly what happens as the deck has an ‘open circuit’ for the audio path.

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]

OK Mark, I’ve never had to add adverts to a deliverable master – usually the adverts play in off a separate server. If they want you to deliver the programme complete with ads you need to know from them exactly what they expect to get from you. It may be that a WYSIWIG playout will be fine…

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]

Mark,

I think you may be confusing commercials delivery with the commercial break needed for your programme.

Usually I deliver 2 halves of a programme separated by a minute or two – say on a half-hour it runs to 28 mins, so 2 halves of 14′. I’d start pt 1 at 10:00:00:00 and run to the duration, then part 2 would start on the next solid minute provided the gap is to spec. I usually run a 10′ clock for the second part. Your broadcaster should have a maximum and minimum time for a given programme slot, along with a target ‘half-time’ – for instance, no shorter than 24′, no longer than 27′, and part break should be between 10′ and 16′.

The 10-second freeze and 20 second gap usually refers to delivery of commercial compilations (the ads themselves) and for that I do the same – so in the case of a 30″ ad the total duration will be 40″ (30+10) and they can start on the minute. A 40″ ad would not give the required gap and therefore would be started on the next minute… but this shouldn’t be anything to do with you as you aren’t giving them the adverts – are you??

As to the tone I usually put a 3 frame gap every 3 seconds on the left channel for the duration of the bars & tone (1 min usually)

Of course this is only a guide and for UK delivery – you need to be clear as to the particular specs of your broadcaster.

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]

Bob,

Adam mightn’t remember me, but I can assure you he is anything other than lazy!!

Adam – we met a long while ago when you did some work for Victoria Real in the Brighton days! Can’t remember what it was you were working on at the time. Funnily enough, I was only talking about you the other day – I’ve been dubbing a feature with Paul Roberts down in Devon and your name came up.

Anyway, I’m fully FCP now and you can gladly pick my brains if you wish. Drop me a mail or give us a bell if you need to…

All the best

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]

OK, thread drift here -but to address the original post –

I’ve gone for the internal solution for now – I wanted to maximise my £ and that seemed the way to go. I’ve a 3-way stripe (raid0) and performance wise, it’s fine. BUT – I did budget for getting a couple of FW800 drives for backup, and I do, every night. I’m fortunate in that I don’t need ‘ultimate’ reliability (no client driven sessions at the moment) but when I do, then an external raid 5 will be on the cards.

So i think your plan is fine, but I’d budget for a 1 or 2tb drive to back up on to. You’d only be adding a few hundred bucks.

Now – on to Ben!

I went through your exact dilemma a few months back, and plumped for the MBPro. I’m very happy with the kit (and the reseller that I bought it from) and so far am glad that I saved the ££ over a Kona. Yes, AJA seems better built (but not by much) and the interface of the AJA stuff is slicker, but for the price of an LHe I got an MBPro, an AJA Gen10 and upgraded the graphics card to a 1900. Functionally the MBPro is great, excellent connectivity and so far solid and very responsive. For me it was a bit of a no-brainer.

PM me if you want any further details.

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]

Margus, I said unbranded not unbalanced!!

Meaning that whilst the built quality of the MBPro is fine, BlackMagic have built to a price rather than using (what I consider) the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of connectors. No harm there – and I’m very happy with my choice. Less $$ spent to get equal performance means more $$ in my pocket, and so far the cost/benefit equation is on my side. I hope it stays that way!

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]

Hi Bob,

Again not an Eclipse, just the MBPro mk 2 (so the same but for a few extra audio outs)

It was a toss up between this an a Kona, this won because of the price/performance ratio.

It’s a little less sexy and a little more utilitarian than the Konas – the preferences are more workmanlike in their setup, being part of the system prefs. But so far, so good. It does exactly what it said on the tin, so to speak. I’ve installed it in my MacPro (2.66 older rev) with a 3-way internal stripe for media and it is quite happily cutting (well onlining and grading) a 90 min feature doc. Plays nicely with Color and Motion. Cutting is very ‘snappy’ with no latency that I can detect. Touch wood no issues so far.

Build quality is fine – again not as ‘finessed’ as AJAs offerings – I noticed that the XLRs on my clients LHe breakout were Neutriks, on the BM they’re unbranded – but I would have paid 70% more for the AJA, which didn’t upconvert like the MBP. Upconvert quality from the limited tests I’ve done seems to be fine. HDMI is nice for client monitoring.

As some have suggested the fan is a little noisy but nothing too bad and overall much less than my previous gargantuan SCSI array!!

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]

Michael,

iStabilise is very simple, very intuitive and very powerful. You’ll be up and running in a very short time.

Workflow to FCP is easy – I usually export a shot as self contained, bring it into iStabilise, save it out with ‘smooth’ in the title and re-import.

There’s a demo version available – give it a try!

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]

Rich,

Jumping horses in mid edit is never a great idea, but heres what I would do –

Buy 6.02

Buy a 250 gig drive (FW preferrably) – maybe $100?

Download Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper

Clone your system drive

Install 6.02 safe in the knowledge that you’ll be back to 5 in a matter of minutes should you get problems – and know that the hundred bucks you’ve spent extra on the drive and CCC or SuperDuper will be one of the best investments you’ll ever make.

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]

Rich,

I’ve just done an export of OMFs to a ProTools system from FCP6. Other than a few snags (it didn’t transfer a few ‘non standard’ files over – mixed sample rates) it was painless.

You may decide to upgrade FCP than pay all that money for Automatic Duck, excellent though it is.

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*