Jeff Carpenter
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Have you reset your computer and then tried to erase it? That tends to clear this sort of problem up.
If it still won’t erase after that, try chaning the name to “x.jpg” and then drag it to the trash. Doing that sometimes disrupts the hold another program has on it.
But try re-setting first.
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I keep thinking to myself: “Well, it’s possible that this project is simple enough to make using iMovie make sense.”
And no matter how much I think about it, here’s the conclusion I reach:
If it really is a simple enough project for iMovie to make sense then it is simple enough for your boss to do ENTIRELY on her own. Whatever she needs to learn should take her an hour to learn with the ‘help’ file and she should be able to do it all on her own without much help from you. (At worst, YOU can spend 20 minutes with the help file and then 15 minutes to teach her.) But after that much, it should be hands off on your end.
And if that works out…great! It shouldn’t matter to you how she gets this done. Particularly if this really is just a storyboard and it won’t be used for anything or seen by anyone else. It sounds like she wants to organize her thoughts somehow. If that’s how she wants to do it and the project never grows from there, then it shouldn’t matter one bit.
But if there is any chance at all that she can’t do it all on her own, or her work will then be passed on to you to finish, then yes, take all of debe’s advice seriously and make sure it’s all done in FCP.
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This is just my opinion, but it’s what I’m doing myself so I believe in it.
I’d suggest jumping in and just buying a Powermac now. Even the lowest Dual-2.0 model should do you just fine. (Get the 2.3 if you plan on lots of DVD projects over 1 hour in length. Compressing takes time.) Add a second SATA hard drive yoruself, upgrade the graphics card for $50 from Apple, and buy 4 GB of RAM from someplace like crucial.com and put that in yourself.
That will give you a nice solid system to use over the next 2 or 3 years. In that amount of time you can watch as the Intel machines come out and every software company updates their products bit by bit. Then, you can switch to a new Mac at a point when you feel that all the software you want has new versions that are optimized for the Intel Mac and that any small bugs have been worked out of the Intel machines.
Apple says that software written for the G5 will work on the Intel Macs but I’m sure there will be a performance hit to doing that. I’d rather wait until I can just jump to a total Intel-based system instead of moving inch by inch.
I’m going to hang onto my (now 1.5 year old) G5 for at least another year. Once the majority of the “switch” has taken place I’ll upgrade all my pieces at once. The next version of OS X will probably come out near the end of next year…I’ll probably start thinking about upgrading at that point.
Cutting-edge technology sure is fun to look at, but I usually like to buy about 6-months behind the curve when it comes to computers. I think I usually get a better value on a safer, more stable system.
Like I said, that’s just an opinion. We’re getting close enough to Intel Macs that I know quite a few people are just going to wait for them. But those are mostly people who already HAVE G5 machines. If you have no Mac at home then I think owning a G5 for the next 2 years is better than owning no Mac for 1 year and an Intel Mac for 1 year. You may have the most advanced Mac next year by going with the waiting-plan but you give yourself less play-time than if you just buy now and hold off on upgrading to Intel for a little while.
That’s totally up to you to decide, but hopefully you can see why I think the way I do.
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I don’t have a solution either, except to say that I rarely minimize anything anymore.
I use Apple-Tab to switch through programs and Apple-~ to switch through windows within a program. That’s usually all I need and I still have Apple-H to fall back on if I need to hide something entirely.
With all that I can’t even remember the last time I minimzed a window.
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Answer this question for me:
What will you be using this hypothetical Mac for? What programs do you want to run?
I mean, I know you’re a video person, but do you want to use iMovie for home projects? Final Cut Pro for big projects? Final Cut Express so you can log at home and take the file to work? Motion or Garage Band so you can make elements to take to work? Would you own your own copy of Photoshop?
Fill us in a little on what you’d do with this machine and I can offer far more detailed advice than I could at this moment.
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Most people I ask say they like Transmit best. I’ve never used it so I don’t know what you don’t like about it, but I’m just letting you know that it’s supposed to be one of the best. So just be wary of any other suggestions you get here..
That being said, I’ve always used Fetch and like it very much!
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The 10.4.3 update just came out. There were a lot of fixes in this one so I’d suggest that now is a good time to buy Tiger. If you can, do another clean wipe, put Tiger on, run all the online upgrades, and then repair permissions before loading any of your own stuff back on the system. It should work great.
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Now that they’ve got Spotlight in Tiger I don’t think there’s much of a future for Sherlock. Not to mention the fact that iTunes and iPhoto have their own little “Spotlight-lite” built into them.
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I expect that we’ll see Intel chips replace the G4’s between April and June next year. I also expect that the G5 chips will hang on for 4 to 6 months after that until they get switched over. Like you, I take the dozens of contradicting reports I’ve read and try to filter all that data into what I think is “most likely.”
I am CERTAINLY willing to admit that this timeline could be sped up and happen sooner than I think. I mean, I don’t really know what’s going to happen either. BUT I feel very sure that we’ll see the G4s replaced several months before the G5s.
So that’s what we’re watching for…if we get Intel Powerbooks in January then, yes, Powermacs next July are likely. If not…then probably not.
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Ok, for the lenght your projects are I’d try this:
CBR: 7.1
AC3 Audion 48 kHz, Stereo=====
Try exporting the MPEG video directly out of the Final Cut timeline. It will take a little longer but it might look better. You can do the AC3 audio through compressor after you’re done with that.
(If you have any problems with playback in DVD players, drop it down to 6.9, but I think you’ll be ok.)
The simple truth, however, is that MPEG compression just doesn’t LIKE dark areas. Hopefully these settings will be enough to get you through them.