[Jason Porthouse]

Jim,

Don’t sweat it… i cut HDV docs on a dual 2ghz G5 for a client of mine regularly, without a hitch or glitch in maybe 4 years, since the machine was shiney and new and cutting edge…

Make sure your storage is OK (minimum ext FW on a second FW card – the one I use is a SATA drive on a G-Tech SATA card) and you should be good to go. The 2ghz can handle HDV all day long – just go for a coffee when it renders. Your money will not be wasted, and you’ll find the G5 a trusty parner in crime if my experience is anything to go by…

Jason

[Jason Porthouse]

Thanks for the replies, chaps. Kinda confirmed what I was thinking – get them on to FCS2 and drop the max on an Intel machine with a decent spec. Future proofing does make good sense, anbd we’re talking about a grands worth of difference really. I’ve been reading up on Rosetta too, and some real-world performance for typical video-based photoshop work leans towards it being usable (it’s huge print files that bog it down – as you’d expect) if not ideal.

Now I’ve just gotta give the plastic a hammering!!

Jason

[Jason Porthouse]

[maestro200377] “whan i connect camera to hard drive and than hard drive to compiuter it takes space from compiuter,not from hard drive”

Hmmm…. sounds to me like you aren’t setting your scratch disks to see the firewire drive…

Some people have problems with FW drives and cameras sharing the same port, others seem to get away with it. Make sure FCP is set to use the FW drive – go to System Settings and make sure the drive is selected for audio, video and render – and make sure your internal Mac drive is NOT selected.

See if you can get it to work like that. If you don’t get dropped frames, alll good.

If it doesn’t work look in to getting a FW card for your MacBook – an express34 card wouldn’t be too dear and will separate out the drive and camera.

Failing that – if you can capture to your Mac drive but not the FW, you could do it in stages – capture some to the drive and transfer it to the firewire drive. An ugly fudge, but any port in a storm…

Jason

[Jason Porthouse]

Hi Adrianne,

This is a tough one, but with a little thought you’ll come out on top. I think that, for many of us, 95% of what we do we could do with older versions of the software. It may not do it as quickly, and in some rare instances not as well… but ask yourself – apart from the speed issues, are you taxing your software? Will upgrading to 5 over 4 enable you to do more? Many of my projects are exactly the same as ones I cut on 3, in terms of what I am able to do. Sure there are nice fixes for bugs ad quirks that maybe don’t require a workaround – but I can’t *honestly* say that my experience working on Studio 1 is hugely different from 4 or HD – I didn’t suddenly say ‘Wow! All these toys to play with!’ – it’s more of an evolution.

So for you, I’d say do the math – get a good G5, possibly try to get one with PCI Express (a late 2.3 or 2.7Ghz Dual or a Quad 2.5) as that will have a bit more life (and unless Apple ditch PCIe means that any cards you buy are somewhat future proofed), get a decent amount of RAM from somewhere like Crucial (2 gigs at least) and edit the nuts off it. Make lots of money. Upgrade to Studio 2 IF YOU NEED TO!!- but if not, look for a copy of studio on ebay or similar – they come up from time to time. A stable, crash-free edit platform that you know inside out (limitations and all) is, to me, far and away preferrable to a whizzy-dink new bells & whistles system that maybe only gets used to 50% of its potential. Don’t worry about the latest and greatest – I still cut on NuBus Avids in some places, ’cause they’re bomb-proof and cheap (can’t give them away sometimes) but they do what they need to do.

And, consider other things that may enhance your productivity – things like a tablet (made life soooo much better for me) or dual monitors. Needn’t cost the earth, and can be taken to a new system when you really need to upgrade.

hope this helps,

Jason

[Jason Porthouse]

Thanks Paul,

I’ve managed to solve it by opening on a different machine – the project opened fine – and then transrferring files to a new project, transferring to the old machine and going from there. I think you could be right about OSX/FCP…

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…

I did do a search and used some of the suggestions I found therein – but to no avail. In case anyone was wondering, I know – ‘the search button is my friend…’

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]

[lightning ad] “Since i got mine, i hate using mice!”

Amen to that. Use mine all the time now, and is the best

[Jason Porthouse]

Sorry bout the hijack Ben, but what ‘scopes are those you’re using in the pic?

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]

Talia,

Are you saying that the device isn’t controllable? Will FCP not see it as a controllable device?

make sure you have the setup correct (DV NTSC I’m assuming) and the deck is being seen – I think you might have to turn the deck off/on to ‘reset’it in to downconvert mode.

Reboot FCP too – it wouldn’t hurt.

FCP should just see the deck as a DV deck. You might try manually setting the device control settings (under A/V settings menu) and trying different settings if you can’t make it work.

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]

Sounds like you’re getting your knickers in a twist.

If you want SD DV from a HDV deck you need to set your deck to downconvert. You’ll need to read the manual – it’s a setting on the menu somewhere, I think it is called something like iLink downconvert – but when it’s set up then use FCP Easy Setup and treat it just like a DV project – use the DV preset. FCP will then simply see it as a DV deck and treat it as DV material. FCP won’t do the converting, and if you’re trying to set FCP up using an HDV preset you’ll be confusing it as well as you!

HTH

Jason