[Jeff Carpenter]

>>What press releases?
—-

I meant, watch the press releases to see if anything new comes up. I was telling him that it was the best way to keep on top of any Apple announcements without having to ask other people.

[Jeff Carpenter]

If it’s in a browser window it’s set to a certain size by the site it’s on. So, no, you can’t change it. But there is something you can do to help.

Go into System Preferences and click on ‘Universal Access’

Turn ‘Zoom’ on. Go into the option and put the Max at 0 and the Min at about 1 on the slider.

Now, control this one of two ways:

1) Hold the command key and roll your mouse button up and down.

2) Press Command Option + to zoom in and – to zoom out.

It won’t change the videos, but it will blow everything up, which should help. I use this feature a lot.

[Jeff Carpenter]

If you’re most comfortable using iDVD, just export as a normal Quicktime movie (NOT the conversion method) and use the setting that leaves everything the same as the timeline.

Add that to iMovie after you’ve checked the iDVD preferences to make sure the encoding is set at the best quality.

If you’re interested in learning DVD Studio Pro, do this instead:

Export from Final Cut using ‘Export using Compressor.’ In compressor, duplicate any of the DVD pre-sets. Alter the duplicate to give you a CBR file at a 7.1 rate. Also use a dolby audio compression filter. You combine the audio and video files you get in DVD Studio Pro.

[Jeff Carpenter]

It’s not just a matter of being 64-bit. My (small) understanding of it is that FCP is based on an old programming language called Carbon. While Compressor, Motion, etc. all use the newer one called Cocoa.
===========

That’s it, but it’s only recently that 64-bit support for Carbon was dropped. That’s why I mentioned it…it was the catalyst for change. Currently Photoshop, Final Cut, Finder, and iTunes all use Carbon. There wasn’t a huge reason for any of these to be re-done in Cocoa. It’s a lot of work and the benefit would be small.

Now that there will be no 64-bit Carbon apps, Adobe’s hand was forced on Photoshop. Though we have no news of it, I suspect the same thing is happening to Final Cut.

So that will be the official “reason” for the re-write. But sure, while they’re at it I’m sure we’ll get other improvements and changes. If you have to start from scratch, might as well make it better than it was before.

[Jeff Carpenter]

You’re mixing up two different concepts.

A Stero Pair is two audio tracks that are joined as one. Changing the level on one (or adding a filter) will affect them both.

Linked tracks are more like linking layers in Photoshop. They’ll move around together and stay synced, but doing something (levels, filters) to one of them won’t affect the other.

So 1/2 are paired and 3/4 are paird, but 1/2 is only linked to 3/4, not paired.

So that’s what’s going on. I’m not much of an audio guru, so I can’t help actually fix your problem. But hopefully you understand the situation a little better now and maybe someone else can actually answer the question.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Once you get it in Final Cut, there’s a Time-Code filter you can drop on it. Then either export to a web file, a DVD, or run it off on tape.

Be careful to note: There is a time code filter that starts with a number you put in and goes up from there, and there’s another filter that reads the embedded time code and shows that number. That’s the one you want, so make sure you’re using the right one.

They’re both in a folder called “Video” in the effects bin.

[Jeff Carpenter]

>>I know nothing about programming, but it sounds like moving past some core weaknesses is going to be a real feat.
—————

Yes, the short version is that Final Cut is going to have to be re-written from scratch before there’s a 64-bit version.

Adobe is in the same boat with Photoshop. They started this re-write project of Photoshop LAST June (2008) and they’ve already said it won’t be ready for CS4. They’ve said it MIGHT be ready for Photoshop CS5.

So you can see the scale involved here. Final Cut will probably be just as much work.

It’s possible they’ve been working on a 32-bit Final Cut 7 for awhile and we’ll get that soon with version 8 being 64 bit a few years after that.

Or maybe version 7 will be the new version, in which case I doubt we’ll get it this year. (The event that forced this re-write occured in June of ’08, so the Final Cut team wouldn’t have been able to start too much earlier than Adobe did.)

Anyway, that’s the ‘short version’ if you can believe it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Well, they’re not actually at the show, so just watch the press releases on their web site.

I, too, was expecting some news from Apple this week. Even though they weren’t at the show, it seeemed like a good time to put out some updates with new features.

Nothing yet, though, besides the bug fixes last week.

[Jeff Carpenter]

>>Ok I am sorry but that way is like going from LA to New York for a gallon of milk.

—

It took me 15 seconds to set up. I’m sure that spending $13 to save that time is worth the price to some people, but that’s not for everyone.

I like cool programs as much as the next guy, but it’s still worth learning all the different ways to do things. Even if he does buy that program, some day he’ll be on a friend’s Mac and he’ll be asked how to find “the biggest Word files on my computer.” Even without downloading anything, Marcel will be able to help that friend out.

And I think that’s pretty neat.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Well, Shift-Delete if you’re on a laptop.

If you’re on a normal Apple keyboard, you can use the other delete key. The one that’s over next to the ‘end’ key. It does the same thing as shift plus the regular delete does. Using one key is easier than two.

The laptops don’t have that key, though, so in that case knowing shift-delete is still useful.