[Jeff Carpenter]

Is this the place you were getting it from?

https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/software/Macintosh/osx/default.aspx

What happens? At what point does it give you trouble?

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’d really have to know what the price difference was to make that call. Also, compare ALL the differences between the two machines you’re looking at. I don’t know which ones you’re examining, but for example, the RAM installed, empty RAM spots (either 4 or 8), video card, hard drive sizes, and optical drives could all be different between the two models. So even if one is (for example) $500 more than the other, that price difference is going to more than just the processor. Judge ALL of it.

To answer your question, yes the 2.5 would be a bit faster. I’d spend a few hundred dollars more to get it, but not $1,000, I guess. But I’m just guessing. Show us what systems you’re looking at. There is no 2.5 machine for sale by Apple anymore so I assume you’re looking at a 3rd party retailer or a used machine? Send us links and we can give you better help.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Make sure you buy the new version of the iMac with 128 MB of video RAM. (The first version had 64.) And buy two 1-GB sticks of RAM from somewhere else (like crucial.com) and put it in yourself. And get a firewire drive and only edit DV.

If you can do all of that then an iMac will serve you well. Yes, there are downsides but the bottom line is this: It will be a lot better than your current Mac and you’ve been getting by with that, right?

OR…here’s a plan “C” you haven’t thought about yet. The “cheaper Powermac” plan:
Go to Apple.com and click on the “Store” tab. Scroll down and look for the big red “SAVE” tag on the right of the page. Scroll down to find the Powermac that says “Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz SuperDrive – Apple Certified” for $1,799. Then get 2 GB of RAM from crucial.com ($287) and skip the LCD screen for a good old CRT. (Look around for a 19″ flat-screen CRT. Let’s say $250.) Then get a 300 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA drive from Maxtor ($250) and put that in at the same time you add the RAM in. (Use that drive as your media drive.)

So that all comes to $2,586. Maybe that’s in your price range…maybe not…but it’s cheaper than buying a souped-up brand-new-Powermac. It’s a bit more expensive than an iMac, but it will be a better machine. And when you get a little more money next year you can buy another 2-GB of RAM for your birthday. The price I figured here would give you 2.5 GB of RAM for now and the machine can take up to 8 GB if you’re so inclined. And feel free to get an LCD if you want, I’m just trying to show you the cheapest method to get a pretty sweet machine. You can build it up as much as you want above that. (If you do get a CRT, make sure to set your prefrences to turn it off whenever you leave…they’re power hogs, but they can save you a lot of cash if you can put up with the size.)

[Jeff Carpenter]

The basic stock card in the G5 is totally sufficient for Final Cut. Typically the ATI’s have less hiccups that the NVIDIA on the Mac platform.
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That being said, it’s only $50 to upgrade to the ATI Radeon 9650 which would double your video RAM. I’d consider that money well spent since Tiger uses the video card for more things than past OS’s have. The basic card works fine, but I don’t think $50 is enough to worry about for what you get.

[Jeff Carpenter]

The 250 is a great shoulder-mounted cam since it’s a bit lighter than others of that size. I think that should be your biggest choice here…do you WANT to use a shoulder-mounted cam or not? They can really go a long way towards better hand-held footage. I ended up getting VX-2000s because I decided the advantages of a smaller camera (less obtrusive, easier to get high and low angles, etc.) outweighed the advantages of a large one (very steady hand-held footage, easier-to-use external camera controls).

So they both have advantages, it’s up to you to decide which features are more important to you. Once you figure that out, you’ll know what camera you want. Everything else can be worked out.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I’ve done something like this, but not for weddings. I’ve used it for ballets where my other shooter is keeping a good, steady shot the whole time and slowly moving around the stage. Having a monitor allows her to avoid getting the exact same shot I’m getting.

But that only works if one of your shooters is trying to be “good” the whole time. For weddings we’d both need to move quickly at certain points so we aren’t able to make use of such a system.

The closest idea that might work is to run BOTH of your cameras out to 2 monitors in the hallway and have a “director” telling you both on headsets what to do. This would allow the director to give a lot of detailed commands…the kind of things he couldn’t say inside the ceremony as it would be distracting. That’s one step up from having direct communication between the two shooters.

Do you always work with the same shooter? I always work with my wife so we’ve managed to come up with many different hand signals that mean different things. They’re subtle things so they don’t distract anyone and we don’t have to talk out loud. For example, if I cross my arms and then do the standard “peace symbol” with my right hand on my left shoulder it’s not something anyone else is going to really notice. But my wife now knows that I’ve got “2 people” in my shot, and based on the angle of my camera she can easily deduce that I mean I have both the bride AND the groom in my shot. She can then decide to zoom in on one or the other of them knowing that it will be different from my shot. We’ve made up dozens and they’re all designed to be fairly small movements so the guests eyes aren’t drawn to the movement of our hands.

That can only work if you use the same people every time, but if you can make something up and both learn it then it can be a great help.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Imagine that you shoot in normal 4×3 mode. Then pretend you take that footage into your computer and simply put black bars on TOP of the image, covering up the top and bottom. Ok, so you have a 16×9 image, but you’ve lost pixels, right? Rather then making the image WIDER you’ve just made it SHORTER. It is 16×9 now, but you’ve lost some of your resolution. Make sense?

Now, when you switch your 2100 to widescreen mode it’s essentially doing that EXACT same thing, except it’s doing it inside the camera. That’s what people mean by “not true 16×9.” It is 16×9, but you’re losing pixels by doing it that way. You’re better off just doing what I described above…just shoot in 4×3 and crop it later. It will all come out the same and you’ll at least have the control later to move the image up and down within the letterbox (somethign you couldn’t do if you shot 16×9 in the camera.)

There are cameras that actually have 16×9 chips (the best) or you can buy an anamorphic lens that squeezes the picture BEFORE it even goes into your camera. The 2100 would use all the pixels on its chip and you’d stretch that image out later. Not as good as a 16×9 chip, but better than using the in-camera crop.

I have the 2000 (same camera, just not as light-sensitive) and it works great. The audio is the only drawback. You’ve only got one mini input. It’s a stereo input, but even IF you run two mics in there (I’ve done it, it works) you have to control BOTH audio channels with the same control. So both your mics better be the same level! But hey, if you’re just using 1 mic it might be fine. Be aware that once you plug it in you’ll be recording ONLY that mic…the camera mic is disabled when something is plugged in.

The PD-170 (or a used PD-150) is the same camera but with XLR inputs. It might be worth a look, at least. But the 2100 is a good camera, no doubt.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I don’t know what “everything” you’ve tried is, but if I were at your computer, here’s what I’d try.

First off, do you have 2 hard drives inside your Mac? Hopefully, yes. If not, come back and tell us about your media drives.

Second, poke through the system prefrences to make sure that Final Cut is set to take advantage of that RAM. There’s a setting where you can allow it only take advntage of some of the RAM. Max that out and make sure no other programs are running, too. Re-set your Mac after you do this step to make sure everything’s cleard up.

Once you’re back, make sure the video is rendered. After you render the video, then select SEQUENCES>RENDER ONLY>MIXDOWN

Then export a quicktime movie to that second hard drive inside your Mac. (FILE>EXPORT>QUICKTIME) Set it to “Current Settings” and make sure “Self Contained” is checked on.

Then close your project and open up that exported file in Final Cut. (It will just float in a window…project-less.) Now try your print-to-video and see if you have any better luck.

[Jeff Carpenter]

It sounds to me like anything you send ‘right’ goes bad. That makes me think there’s something wrong with your right speaker! Do you have another set you can hook up for a minute to see if that’s the problem?

If it’s not, you want to unlink your audio tracks from each other (select them then hit Apple-L) and then erase Track 2. At that point I think Track 1 WILL be centered, but double click it and make sure that “Pan” is set to 0, just to make sure.

But I’d still check the speakers first. That’s my guess.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Works fine for me. How are you trying to read the card? Are you using the camera or a card reader? If you’re using the camera then iPhoto might not think to look at it since it thinks it’s a video camera. If you get a reader you should be fine. They’re usually pretty cheap. Something like this:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=278581&is=REG&addedTroughType=search