[Jeff Carpenter]

First, before you put any data on it, go to APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES > DISC UTILITY

Select the new drive and erase it. Set the format type to “Mac OS Extended” (Not Journaled)

The drive probably comes in a format that your Mac can read, but it’s best to make sure it’s formatted properly before you start using it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Don’t do it. Firewire is based on sustained speed while USB is based on bursts of info.

Over time they average out to about the same amount of information copied, which is fine for copying data from a computer. But if you’re coming from a video tape a burst in the data rate doesn’t help you at all and drop will most certainly hurt you.

If you’re sick of firewire you should start looking at external SATA drives as your next investment.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Many universal apps (not all, but many) can be forced to open in Rosetta if you like.

For example, if you come across some plug in for Safari that you just HAVE to have but it only exists as a PowerPC version, it can’t run in the Inte-version of Safari. What you can do is click on Safari in the application folder, hit Apple-i and select “Open using Rosetta.” This will allow your PowerPC plugin to run with the PowerPC Safari, all through Rosetta.

I haven’t found a good reason to use this feature yet, but it’s cool to try it just to see the speed difference between the same app running natively vs. Rosetta.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I can’t think of a way to change that system-wide, BUT I have facts that might help:

1) I find that, more often than not, once you set a particular folder to a certain view, it will stay that way the next time you open it.

2) Hitting Apple-2 changes a finder window to list view.

So my advice is to just get in the habit of hitting Apple-2 every time you open a folder. It may take awhile, but eventually you’ll find you don’t have to do it anymore. Not the best answer, I know, but it’s something to try.

[Jeff Carpenter]

This is one of the most unique reasons I’ve seen for needing Toast, but yes, I think you need to use Toast.

There’s quite a few disc burning applications out there and they ALL manage to stay in business even though Windows and OS X both have disc burning capabilities built right in.

Can you think of many other features built into both OSes that STILL manage to support an industry of other apps? It’s because the OSes are pretty limited, you’ve just found one more reason I wasn’t even aware of.

[Jeff Carpenter]

Rosetta is OS X’s invisible man.

You will never see, hear, or smell it. There is never any proof that it’s actually there at all!

The ONLY way to tell if it’s working is to go to Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor and look at the processes that are running. There should be a column that specifies PowerPC or Universal Apps.

If you see PowerPC apps listed there, it’s working! If you don’t, it’s not.

Seriously, that’s all there is to it. This stuff makes the OS 9 “Classic” mode look like rocket science. I recently helped set up a switcher with a new Intel Mac and I didn’t even TELL him about Rosetta. There’s really no reason for him to know about it at all!

(You can also select Apps in the Application folder and hit Apple-i to see if it’s universal or not. I’ve started changing the label color on my non-universal apps to red just so I can get an idea of which ones still need to be upgraded once available.)

[Jeff Carpenter]

Double click the clip in the timeline. It will appear in the viewer. Click the “Motion” tab in the viewer. Look for the “Center” row and click the little + sign.

Then move over to the canvas and drag away!

[Jeff Carpenter]

Also, when I need sheer brute force for some of my music programs, etc., I will just reboot in BootCamp.
============

I am not 100% sure, but I THINK that the Microsoft registration program will count the Boot Camp Windows and the Parallels Windows as two different computers. In other words, you would hava to buy TWO copies of Windows to do this and remain legit with MS.

Now, this isn’t an actual decision on the part of MS, it’s just a byproduct of the fact that Windows will probably “see” the hardware differently in each case and determine that it’s on 2 different machines. I cerainly don’t see anything wrong with using Windows this way, I’m just warning you that the whole “register this software with Microscoft” feature might…I dunno, “do something?” I only have 1 Windows machine so I have no idea what happens when you put the same copy of Windows on 2 machines. Maybe it’s nothing. But if it DOES do something, I’m just warning you that you might trigger that feature with this plan.

Perhaps google can help you figure out what, if anything, Windows does in that situation. Hopefully it’s nothing, I ceratinly don’t think you’re running afoul of the software agreement, so hopefully the software won’t complain about it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I don’t have experience with the different frame-rates and resolution and whatnot…BUT if the only problem you have is that the image is squeezed (tall and narrow) then here’s how to fix that:

Double click the file once it’s in the timeline and go to the MOTION tab and then open up the “Distort” features and change “Aspect Ratio” to -33.

That will give you a letterboxed image. Assuming everything else is fine, that looks like the one step you’re missing.

[Jeff Carpenter]

It’s possible, but with this kind of thing you’re dealing with 3 things (1 computer and 2 decks) all of which could have something set wrong.

Start with this: Is there an analog video monitor hooked up to the DVCAM deck? Can you see the video from the Beta tape on THAT monitor? Make sure you have that working before you even worry about the computer at all.