Jeff Carpenter
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Nope, that’s what “Universal” means. PowerPC and Intel. You don’t have worry. At the moment it’s only Intel folks that have to make sure they’re getting Universal software. You can use Universal or non-universal.
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I just thought of another question and an answer.
First, yes, you can use one Final Cut on a laptop and desktop provided you’re only using one at a time. If you work at home or on the road, that’s fine. If you have a 2nd person working at your office while you work, that won’t work.
Which brings me to my question about the laptop: What’s it for? Capturing and logging? Just showing clients stuff? Editing on airplanes? What you need it for can determine what system is right when it comes to portables.
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“The only real Powerbook to use with FCP is a MacBook Pro 17″. It has the screen real estate and the power to work with Final Cut Pro 5.1.2.”
===========================Heh, I guess I’m in trouble ’cause my 15″ Mackbook Pro has more resolution than the CRT on my Powermac! I love a program based on tabs, though. It hasn’t bothered me too much thus far because of that.
Anyway, Lynn, tell us what type of footage you edit with, the length of your average edit job, and how you send these jobs out (DVD? Tape?)
Someone who makes 3 hour live-event DVDs has very different needs than someone who only does :30 spots and nothing longer than 1 hour. The difference between DV and uncompressed can be a big factor too.
The advice you’ve gotten so far is all good, but we can give less-generic answers if we know what you’re going to do with the system.
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Did you format the drives using the Disc Utility? It sounds like they’re still in whatever format the company shipped them as. You should re-format them as Mac drives and then try to copy the file again.
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Also, be sure to use Compressor and not Final Cut or Quick Time to do this. You can set up a dozen slightly different settings and just let it work overnight.
Much more productive than trying them one at a time all day.
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Use H.264.
Beyond that you’ll have to experiment. Pick out some good “average” settings for it and see what you get. Then adjust upwards or downwards. I’d start by setting the frame size to 480 x 360. That’s a pretty good compromise in the size vs. quality balance. If you find that comes in very small you can up it to 640×480, but see what you get first.
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Well, in the technical sense MP3 IS only audio. It’s the audio-track of MPEG-1 video. So if you have video with it it’s not really an MP3, it’s an MPEG-1 video file.
But I don’t think we need to get technical. I doubt Mortimer’s client literally wants an MPEG-1 file. It sounds to me like they just want something that will play in Powerpoint, no matter what that is. You should search the web to find what formats Powerpoint accepts and just pick the one that looks easiest for you to do.
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You should buy a firewire 800 PCI card and plug the hard drive into that. Plug the deck into the computer’s built-in firewire port. The firewire ports on the computer all come into the system the same way…by splitting the hard drive off onto the PCI bus you’ll be giving it the maximum amount of speed possible.
Read your Powermac manual to determine exactly which kind of PCI slots you have…they changed from model to model so I’m not sure what yours is.
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It’s probably a good idea to get that other camera for recording audio if you can. That way you can use the camera mic on your GL2 to record the crowd cheering. You might not mix in very much of that later, but I’m sure there will be a few points in your video where you’ll really want to have it!
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It will look fine letterboxed in a 4×3 shape.
Although pure widescreen is great, he might not have any choice. Youtube, for example, conforms all videos to a 320×240 space. I imagine lots of other web sites and mobile-devices do the same. If you’re putting video on cell-phones or web pages you yourself do not control, going letterboxed is still the safest way.