Jeff Carpenter
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Any chance they could all be upgraded to FCP 5? The Dynamic Real Time playback is great because it alters the quality level as needed during editing so that frames aren’t dropped.
If that’s not possible, investigate what the playback quality is set at. Maybe knock it down to “medium.” As long as they render, mixdown audio, and print to tape when they’re done the lowered quality-level won’t actually affect the final project, just the view while editing.
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Yup, it’s firewire. It doesn’t have the ability to do insert editing.
As for your trouble with SDI, that’s something to do with the deck, I guess. I don’t really know there, but when it comes to firewire then it’s the firewire that’s the problem.
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Well, start out by finding your computer here:
https://www.apple-history.com/
I’m guessing that yours might be listed under 1999 as:
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)But you’ll have to look yourself and see if that’s it. Look at the chip speeds to be certain you have the right model. If that is it, it looks like the max RAM is 256 x 4 chips, or 1 GB total. It also looks like there’s space for 3 hard drives.
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Yeah, I have 2 firewire RAIDS (so, 4 drives). If I’ve been working off of one RAID for a few hours and I go to get a file off of the other I’ll have to wait for several seconds before it will open. I can hear it start to spin at that point.
They’ll both be fine as long as I’m using them, but if I ignore one for too long it will “sleep” again. I’ve never found anything in the OS to account for it so I’ve assumed it’s something inside the drive itself telling itself to take a break. (They’re all Maxtors, BTW.)
As I said, I think they wait at least half an hour in my case so it’s never really been a big deal. If Christine is having the problem every few minutes then I would say that it could be quite annoying!
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That may or may not help. I’ve had drives in the past that like to spin themselves down. As far as I can tell it’s the drive doing it and not the computer. In other words, it depends on who makes the drive. The ones I have now also do it, although I think they wait a good 30 or 40 minutes before they do, so I don’t usually have any problems with them.
You may want to contact LaCie in some way and see if they have any suggestions.
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They’ll always come with a warranty. Applecare is an extended warranty, which can be very nice to have if you have problems later on. That’s really up to you, though. My own policy is that I buy it for laptops but not for desktops. I can’t tell you what to do, though, you just have to decide if you want to risk your computer breaking or not. Rest assured, if you get it home and it’s broken that will be covered no matter what you do.
There are lots of places to buy new Macs:
Apple.com (and real stores)
powermax.com
Smalldog.com
bhphotovideo.com
macmall.com
compusa.com (and real stores)That’s just a few, there are many others. Whatever you do, check the price of RAM at crucial.com first. If it’s less there, buy it put it in yourself. If one of these places offers it for the same amount, let them do it.
Some places will allow more custimization than others, although if you call them on the phone they’ll probably offer even more changed than their web pages admit. Some will have deals or sales running. If you find two sites have the same price but one is offering a free printer, well, take that into consideration.
If you’re looking to put together a real high-end system with extra video capture cards there are even places that will sell you systems already built for that. I can’t suggest any as I’ve always put what I need in them myself, but others here will know.
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You should start learning what all of the different instruments are called AND make sure the camera-people you select know them too! It’s that second part that is easy to forget sometimes.
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Well they’re very different things. DV would preserve your video exactly as it is. This would be best if you’re going to put it back to tape or put it on a DVD or simply save for a future project. DV has predetermined settings. It will work out to about 13 GB an hour.
H.264m is a distribution format, usually for putting on a web site. You can scale its size and quality levels as low as you want in order to get it down to a particular size you want. (That size could be very small or very large depending on what you do.) This would be for people to view and would not be a master copy or something you could add back into a DV project later.
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Ok, so you could monitor over firewire when printing to tape, just not when editing.
I was getting worried that you would somehow be printnig the video to tape but monitoring the output from the computer directly, not the deck, which doesn’t do anyone any good! I finally get it now, though. Thanks
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I’m a little confused, Steve. Shane seemed to be saying that the reason you couldn’t monitor it without a card is because it couldn’t be played back out over firewire. So can you transfer to the camera over firewire or not? And if so, then in what way am I misunderstanding Shane?