[Jeff Carpenter]

Boot Camp is the same as having a PC. The only difference is that you can’t run your Mac and your PC at the same time. If that doesn’t matter to you, Boot Camp is great. If it does matter, getting a PC might make more sense.

Another alternative is to use Boot Camp AND Parallels. You can make a Boot Camp Windows and use that when you need high-end programs. You can then load Parallels and have it load up the Boot Camp Windows when you need to run low-end programs at the same time as OSX. So you just open Windows in the way that makes the most sense at the moment. It’s the same version of Windows, just being opened in different ways.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Given that all my source material was true 16:9 (DV)…
=====

There’s no such thing. You either have anamorphic DV or letterboxed DV. Those are the only 2 choices, neither of which is “true” 16×9.

Based on what you’ve said, it sounds like you have anamorphic DV. You have 2 choices:

1) Make new 4×3 sequence in Final Cut and drop your original sequence into it. Final Cut will letterbox it. Export that and put it into iDVD. You’ll have a letterboxed DVD. Perfect on 4×3 TVs, not good for 16×9 TVs.

or…

2) Take the “squished” video you have and make a widescreen, anamorphic DVD with it. In DVD Studio Pro, just use the squished file but turn the settings for the video track to 16×9. The DVD player will see that and adjust everything on output.

If you want to make an anamorphich DVD in iDVD, you’ll probably have to ask in another forum. I don’t know that anyone here knows iDVD that well. If you decide to use DVD Studio Pro, we can keep answering questions, though.

[Jeff Carpenter]

So far, so good on an iMac doing DV editing only.

I think anyone with software plug-ins or capture cards should still be a litte cautious, but if you’ve got a really basic setup (firewire in/out, no 3rd party filters) then I think it’s ok at the moment.

[Jeff Carpenter]

There’s a thread lower down the page on this. The newest version (6.0.2) DOES correct on export now.

Unfortunately, they didn’t make it an option. They just changed the way it works.

So whereas before it made half the people unhappy (such as yourself), now they’re just making the other half of the people unhappy. Perhaps they’ll eventually add an option to do it either way you want.

At any rate, once you upgrade to 6.0.2 you should be all set.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Check these 2 places as well:

In Compressor, the presets can be made to specify that the image is 16×9. If the one you are using does not, dupliacte it and alter the duplicate. (Although the ratio is 16×9, check to make sure the frame size remains 720×480.) Re-export using the new setting.

Second, in DVD Studio Pro, make sure the track that you place the video in is specified as 16×9.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Also, be aware that Adobe’s video programs are not Leopard compatible yet. They expect to have a free update out in a few weeks, but be sure that the update exists before you switch to the Mac versions of your Adobe software.

https://www.adobe.com/support/products/pdfs/leopardsupport.pdf

[Jeff Carpenter]

Macs use a system known as HFS+, which is also often called “Mac OS Extended.” This is what the system drive is and it’s what you should format your external drives as once you’re working with Mac software exclusively.

(When you get around to formatting Mac drives yourself, know that there’s a feature called “Journaling” which you can allow or not when formatting. Use it for system drives but not for media drives.)

So, to be clear, your Macbook uses HFS+ and your Boot Camp partition uses either FAT32 or NTFS, depending on what you choose. While you are in Windows on the Mac, you will have no problems using the NTFS drive. Windows understands NTFS no matter what hardware its running on. I suggest just keeping the drive like that for now. Once you’re ready to switch to OSX full time, copy the files from the NTFS drive into OSX on the system drive, re-format the external as HFS+, and then drag the files back to the external.

At that point, if you’re giving up on Windows, you’re fine. If, however, you might keep using Windows from time to time, I suggest getting this program:

https://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

It’s Windows software that allows Windows to read HFS+ drives. So after you go fully OSX, you can still use that program to use Windows and grab things from your Mac-formatted drives.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Try MPEG Streamclip:

https://www.squared5.com/

Use it to convert the file to something you can edit, like a DV quicktime movie.

It’s free and works on both Macs and PCs. Try it on the Mac first and see if it can convert the files and fix the problem. If it doesn’t work there, try the PC version on the original files.

[Jeff Carpenter]

It should support 16 GB, and even ignoring that, it should be reporting slots as being filled.

Take everything out but 2 chip and then keep exchanging them until you’ve checked them all. If you find any bad RAM, well, that’s the answer. If all the RAM is good, it’s time to call Apple and ask them, in that case it’s a problem with the computer.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Cameras shoot DV tape as 720×480 with rectangular pixels. When displayed on a television it is correct. When put on a computer (square pixels) the ratio is not correct and the image is distorted.

Many media player know this and squeeze DV down to 640×480 when playing it back. Final Cut does this in the canvas, so everything looks correct. (As does Quicktime.) It does NOT do it when you’re printing to tape, which is why the video looks a little funky on the computer screen when printing to tape, but ends up fine on tape.

That’s all just the way it displays, however, nothing is altered in the video.

So, as for image exports, the old Final Cut would export a still at 720×480 which, when looked at on a computer, is the wrong ratio. You needed to take it into photoshop and re-size it to 640×480 in order to get the proper ratio. (Newer versions of Photoshop also let you alter the image so that it did the same thing Final Cut does. By setting ‘pixel aspect’ to “DV” you could make Photoshop display the image as 640×480 even though it was still actually 720×480.) So you could either re-size it or alter the display method to make it work.

The new Final Cut simply re-sizes the image as you export it. So you get a 640×480 image with square pixels. Perfect for computer use, and you save a step since you don’t have to re-size.

BUT, some people aren’t exporting for computer-use. Sometimes you might want to export a still and just put it right back in Final Cut on a DV timeline. In that case you WANT a 720×480 image with rectangular pixels. Since Final Cut no longer does that, you have to take the square-pixel image and stretch it back out to fit the timeline, thus losing some resolution! Hardly ideal in that case, so it would be nice if it asked you which way you want to export the still. I like that the new export method exists, but they shouldn’t have gotten rid of the old one! I’d also love to hear that it exists somewhere and we just don’t know where to look.