[Jeff Carpenter]

Yes, try to get the RAM as high as you can. Other than that, you should be ok. Is this just DV footage? Turn off real-time rendering and just render things when you need to and you’ll be fine to cut video together. Once you get into color correcting and other effects that need a lot of rendering you might be less than happy, but it can certainly do those tasks too if you have the time.

But for just cutting? Yeah, no problem.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Be sure to go into Safari’s preferences and UN-check “Open safe files” (or something like that). It’s not in the security area, but the first section, I think.

That will keep any “bad widgets” from opening themselves even if they manage to download themselves. It’s probably a good idea to un-check that even if you’re not worried about this. I prefer to open the files myself, thank you very much.

[Jeff Carpenter]

You don’t need Tiger, it will work with 10.3 too. (You might have to have 10.3.9, I’m not sure.)

The link Harry gave will work, though. If it’s not on the auto update this morning just do it manually.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Well, you can go to APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES > DISK UTILITY and click on the drive and hit Apple-M, I think, to mount it.

All in all I think it’s easier to just un-plug the thing unless it’s way behind a desk or something.

What you should do instead is go to the System Preferences > ENERGY SAVER and check “Put Hard Disks to Sleep when Possible”

If you do that after you’re done using your drive it should go into a kind of sleep-mode after a few minutes. Whenver you click on it again it will come back to life. This is all done without ever un-mounting it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Hardware is what you need.

With the right capture card you can capture anything to the same format (hopefully uncompressed). That’s how the Avids do it and it’s really the only solution I can think of. I mean, if you’re trying to edit formats with different numbers of pixels in them that’s going to be a problem, no matter how advanced the software gets. If you do the conversion as you capture then there’s no problem.

[Jeff Carpenter]

This really isn’t anyone’s fault. The current manufacturing process used to make chips is nearing the top of its abilities. ALL chip makers are struggling to get smaller and smaller gains now. They’re having to invent new manufacturing technologies now and it will be awhile before we see the kind of gains we’ve been seeing over the last 10 years again. If you haven’t noticed, Pentium chips have been slowly creeping ahead too. It’s not the design of the chips themselves that are the problem, it’s the ability to actually make them that’s holding everything up.

[Jeff Carpenter]

The BEST way to imagine why the line matters is a football game. If you have a camera on BOTH sides of the stadium, cutting from one to the other means that a player is running left and then suddenly running right. Keeping the camera on the same side of the field means he’ll always be running the same direction.

But outside of a football field, yes, put it wherever you like. You can even move the line at some point as long as you don’t make an odd cut to transition from one to the other.

For a wedding it’s a good idea to use the main aisle as your line for the processional. That way your bridesmaids are always walking the same direction. Once everyon’s up front you can then treat the front of the alter as your line which means it’s ok for a camera in the back of the church to cross the aisle at that point.

It’s ok to move your line, but plan ahead so that you (and whoever you’re working with) KNOW when and where you’re moving it to.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yep, gotta read that carefully before you order. Also notice how the RAM dropped to 4GB Max. That’s why I ordered the old Dual 2.0 because I’ve been doing uncompressed HD on it for at least a year and it’s totally stable for that.
====

These kind of mistakes come from labeling the machines based on their chip speeds. You have to think of them the way Apple used to label their Powermacs: Good, Better, Best. (Or something like that. Also, exclude the single-chip 1.8 for this conversation.)

If you do it that way you’ll find that max-RAM did NOT drop to 4 GB. ‘Good’ stayed at 4 GB, which it was before, and ‘Better’ and ‘Best’ stayed at 8 GB as they were before. All that happened was they all got chips upgraded. The fact that the new ‘Better’ has the same chip speed as the old ‘Good’ is really just a coincidence. It doesn’t mean the 2.0 lost anything, the machine that only takes 4 GB of RAM is simply the old 1.8 gHz with updated chips.

I know this is a minor thing, but it can help avoid these sorts of problems. For example, a lot of web pages have been telling people that they need to buy the 2.0 gHz machine because of the RAM issue. As you’ve pointed out, that information is no longer correct. If they had simply told people they needed to buy the “middle machine” in the lineup then their advice would still be good today. I know that pretty much everyone calls them by their chip speeds, and I’m not expecting that to change, but it would sure help avoid these kinds of problems if they didn’t.

[Jeff Carpenter]

You’ll have to break the audio up into seperate tracks. Export your audio in multiple 5 minute chunks and then put them on the CD in the correct order. Remember to go into iTunes’ prefrences (BURNING) and set the gap between audio tracks as “none.”

[Jeff Carpenter]

You should keep the system drive seperate for video, in my opinion. Which means no RAIDs for the G5 since you only have one drive bay left.

But SATA is certainly very nice. You can use a single drive for DV video, I know. I can’t tell you what you’d get from uncompressed but 400 GB would be your max. Even if the speed is there that’s not a whole lot of space. Someone else here can probably tell you how it would perform, but for the space alone I’d suggest sticking with external storage solutions.