[Jeff Carpenter]

I’m not familiar with Flash. If it doesn’t correct the pixels itself then giving him DV video will result in a stretched image. I’m sure that’s what he’s thinking. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. It would seem to me that Flash WOULD correct for this and he doesn’t need a square-pixel file. But again, I don’t know Flash. I could be wrong.

To give him what he’s asking for, what you’re looking to make, Tore, is an image that’s 640×480 with square pixels. Look in the QuickTime export options to see which codecs you can manually adjust those settings on. Perhaps a motion-JPEG or animation codec video? I’m not really sure, you’ll have to experiment.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Here are my suggestions…a lot of this is opinion, so if someone else has a good reason for ignoring some of this, go ahead and listen to them!
But this is what I’d do:

* Non-ECC memory is fine

* But the Mac with the minimum RAM and then go buy four 1-GB chips from somewhere else and add those to the 512 it comes with. (Refer to the manual! Placement of RAM matters in a Powermac!) 4.5 GB is MY suggestion, although you could get away with 2.5 GB if you’re looking to save some cash. (Crucial.com is a good place, but there are others.)

* At any point in time, for best value-to-performance pick, I usually suggest the “middle” selection on Apple.com. Right now that is the dual-core 2.3 gHz powermac. I think that would be fine for you and you shouldn’t worry too much about the quad-mac.

* Think about upgrading the video card a bit if you think you’ll ever use Motion or you have a large monitor. Otherwise the GForce 6600 is probably fine for what you want to do right now. Apple’s OS X.4, Tiger, shifts a lot of work to the video card so putting a few hundred dollars in to a higher option might be worth your while. No matter what you do, keep it to something with 256 MB of video-RAM. That’s most of them, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. (You’ll eventually have to buy some other capture card in additon to this if you want to get into HD work, BTW, so keep that in mind too.)

* Shop around on hard drives. I’d suggest keeping the 250 system drive it comes with and using it for Applications and maybe small, long-term media like company logos, iTunes music, etc. (I think it helps to not have a huge, full drive as the main drive so that Final Cut can access itself easier without getting bogged down or having to look around a lot.) Shop around for a 400 to 500 GB SATA drive for the second bay and use that for things like DVD making, compression projects, a photoshop scratch disc, small DV-projects that won’t require lots of drive space, and things of that nature.

* I’d suggest getting external storage now as a main Final Cut media drive even before you start doing HD. I don’t have a wide-range of experience here, but I know that people love the HUGE systems and the external-SATA G-Tech drives too. Whether you want to get something small now and then expand it later or something large enough now to last awhile is up to you. You should get more opinions on this subject from other people, though.

[Jeff Carpenter]

The problem I have with Combo updates is that people don’t always download everything.

So they may upgrade Final Cut Pro to version 5.0.4 but they didn’t download the OS update to 10.4.3 yet for some reason. Lots of unexplainable bugs that people have can be traced back to not having everything updated at the same rate. And that often comes from people downloading the updates themselves and not being aware of everything that’s available.

Now, of course, it IS possible to download everything in combo form and keep up with it and be perfectly fine. But as for myself I’ve never felt entirely sure that I’ve actually run everything I’m supposed to when I work that way. So I prefer the automatic system for mainly that reason. The combos may be better once you get them, but I just think there’s a much greater chance of missing something important that way.

Just my opinion, there’s nothing really wrong with either way.

[Jeff Carpenter]

This is messy, but it should work:

Copy the project file itself out in the Finder. Re-name the second one something different. Open that up and change the reel name there. Capture. Then come back to your first project and capture. Then import the capture files from one of the projects into the other.

If anyone else knows a more elegant way to do this, please share, but at the very least this should get it done.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Is this prejudice universal?
====

Pretty much. It’s built into our DNA to be attracted to, well, attractiveness.

As Tony points out, our cultural ideas of what “attractive” means change from year to year, but the underlying prejudice is always there. It’s part of who we are. And boy, doesn’t Madison Ave. know it?

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yes, I mean to do the upgrades right afte the OS is installed, and then again once everything is put in place.

So yes, Safari will be there by that point, but no, you don’t need it. Go to the Apple Menu and select “Software Update.” Much easier and the downloads are smaller ’cause it just gives you what you need. Usually when you go to Apple.com and pick an update you get a larger file that contains things you might not need, since it doesn’t know what your hardware is. With the System Update it does know and it just gives you what you need.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Gunleik’s right, you should back everything up, erase your drive, and instal from scratch. Run all of the system updates online before you instal any software, then do it again after you’ve installed the software.

It takes time but you should be fine once it’s over.

Gunleik: Have you tried going into Spotlight’s Prefrences in the system prefrences and putting most of your drives on the “ignore” list? It lets you exclude things from Spotlight’s search while leaving others.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Go out of Final Cut and find the file itself. Open it up in Quicktime Pro and re-save it with settings that match your project and sequence. Then re-import that new file and just use that.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Keep in mind that even if your project is going to DVD or some other SD broadcast right NOW, it is probably worth the cost to work in HD so that you have an HD master for the future.

That way, you can take your project in 2 years and copy it onto whatever HD-discs are being sold at that time. As the cost difference between working in SD and HD continue to shrink shooting HD for that reason alone starts to make more and more sense.

[Jeff Carpenter]

It is so painstakinly slow and the losing frames. unsynced audio/videojust makes it little more than a websurferor iTunes player.
============

I bet all those Mac Mini buyers out there would not agree! You have to remember that while this machine may not be suitable for pro work anymore, it would be a great find for an iMovie editor/video hobbyist. Put it that way in an E-bay ad and you’ll probably get more attention.

A lot of the machines you see on E-bay are the original 256 MB/40 GB or something like it. If you’ve got a nice amount of RAM and hard drive space you should be able to pitch it as the perfect machine for that home-video enthusiast who is thinking about buying a Mini to edit on but would like to have faster/larger hard drives.