[Jeff Carpenter]

First, wait and see what happens next week on Apple’s web site. Lots of new upgrades may be announced, so wait until next Monday night before deciding anything for certain.

But even if the Macbook Pros DON’T change I would still suggest one. I have been very, very happy with mine. As long as you get the newest version of Final Cut (5.1) then you will have the universal version of that. If you have an older one, search the Apple website for “crossgrade Final Cut.” It’s fairly cheap to upgrade right now. Pretty much all Apple software is Universal now.

All Microsoft and Adobe products are not yet universal. The new versions of their stuff is probably coming out in 2007 and will be new versions, in other words: paid upgrades.

But the current versions will run just fine on a Macbook Pro. Yes, they suffer a slight speed-hit because of it, but a Macbook will be MUCH faster than your old iBook is. So even if Photoshop is slower than it could be, it’s still faster than it was on your old machine. I use Photoshop on mine and it’s perfectly usable. I’m looking forward to when I can upgrade it and get a speed boost, but at the moment I have no trouble using it at all.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yes, you should get them all up to speed so they match.

You’ll have problems if you ever need to open a 5.1 project in 5.0.4. And by “prolbems” I mean, it won’t work.

If you don’t think that’s ever going to happen, then it’s not a problem. But I suspect the chances of that are quite low. Fortunately the crossgrade price is amazingly low.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Right click the ruler on the top of the sequence and change the measurement to frames. Then use the I and O keys on that ruler to set in and out points on your sequence.

The length between the in and out points will be displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the canvas window.

[Jeff Carpenter]

That’s normal. From Apple.com:

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Why is the time different between Mac OS X and Windows XP on my computer?

The Windows XP and Mac OS X operating systems handle your computer’s date and time information differently, so the date and time may be different when you switch operating systems. For best results, use a network time server and resync the date and time whenever you switch operating systems. In Mac OS X, use the

[Jeff Carpenter]

Brand new and it freezes when you start it up?

Call Apple. Take it back. Tell them to give you a new one.

Don’t waste time trying to fix something that’s brand new. It shouldn’t NEED to be fixed. Explain it to Apple and let them help you.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yes, use the EXPORT > COMPRESSOR selection in the Final Cut menu. That’s the best quality you can get.

And get rid of those compression markers. If you’re exporting right from the timeline the transition is “seen” by compressor and it acts as a compression marker all on its own.

Even if you do need to use compression markers elsewhere, don’t overdo it. By putting 3 markers so close together you’re actually CAUSING more problems for yourself.

A marker tells the program to make that frame full-quality, right? The way MPEG II works, you are getting an average bit-rate over a period of time. So if you are forcing it to give you 3 full-quality frames within a second it has no CHOICE but to lower the quality of the frames in between those markers in order to meet its target average rate.

Markers can be useful, but don’t put too many too close together. And by exporting directly you shouldn’t need any of them on transitions or cuts at all.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Is it alright to copy the media temporarily onto a bootable drive (system drive) if I don

[Jeff Carpenter]

No matter when you buy a computer a few months later there will be some thing newer and faster.
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While this is true most of the time, we are SO close to such a major change that it’s a little bit different right now.

Other than this situation I would usually agree with you, but we’re at a pretty unique point right now.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I am pretty sure that is still the case.

But keep in mind that OSX itself uses RAM. And if you have Photoshop, Motion, DVD Studio Pro, and iCal all open at the same time, they are all using up RAM too. Sure, you can shut everything down and ONLY run Final Cut while editing, but that gets a litte tiresome after awhile when trying to move stuff between programs.

So there IS a benefit to buying more RAM than Final Cut can handle. Of course, your budget can have more say about that than you do. We can’t all afford 16 GB of RAM. I’ve been very happy with 4.5 GB of RAM on my system, and I usually have Final Cut along with 3 or 4 other programs running at the same time.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Ok, so it’s been awhile since I’ve looked this stuff up.

https://www.smartdisk.com/eWeb/smartdiskus/www/staticpages/fireliteporthdd.asp

Apparently you can get a 100 GB, 5400 rpm drive for $200 that powers itself from the firewire OR USB2 connection. They have them on Apple’s online store too.

Now, I still wouldn’t say this would be a fantastic video drive, but for all your other needs it might be just what you’re looking for.

And even for video, well, I woudn’t CAPTURE to it, but if you copied video data to it from another hard drive…you might be able to get a little bit of editing done without it being too annoying. I wouldn’t suggest it as a winning solution, but I wouldn’t say it won’t work at all.