[Jeff Carpenter]

What kind of format? How much media would you capture at once? And what kind of computer, exactly?

That could make a difference, but my I’m-making-some-assumptions answer is this:

Get the Powermac with the 250 GB hard drive in it. Then, buy a 500 GB SATA drive from someplace else and put it in yourself. Use that as a media drive.

Now, if you’re getting some other kind of computer…editing somekind of high-end HD or uncompressed format…or think you’ll need more than 500 GB of media space, let us know and we can ammend this answer to suit you better.

[Jeff Carpenter]

There’s not much you can do to speed up rendering besides getting a faster computer.

Scrolling text has ALWAYS been a real pain, in my experience. I haven’t done it lately, so I don’t know how long it should take a G5, but I remember way back on my G3 system that rendering scrolling text always took WAY longer than any other kind of render. Even though everything’s faster now I’d assume that it’s still proportionally slower than anything else you could be rendering..

[Jeff Carpenter]

Instead of dragging corners, go into the “Motion” tab for that file and control the size using the “Scale” slider.

That way you can make it any size you want with NO CHANCE of the ratio being distorted.

[Jeff Carpenter]

For the most part, just follow these three steps:

1) Turn on the firewall. (In system prefrences under “Sharing.”)

2) Surf smart. Don’t download/open files from the ‘net if you can’t say for sure where they came from.

3) Under ‘Advanced’ turn on “Stealth Mode.” You’ll end up enternig your password more often, I think, but that’s a good way to make you slow down and think before doing something.

That’s probably enough to keep you safe. If you’re still worried, make a second account under “Users” in system prefrences and DON’T make it an admin account. Log into your “main” account to load software and run updates, but use the second account all other times. That’s an extra layer of security that I don’t follow, but it’s an option if you feel like it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

You will be happy with iDVD.

Just take the time to learn every control and how to customize everything. It is possible to change everything in the templates, so with a little effort you can make up just about anything you want.

It’s true that DVD Studio Pro can do about a million things more than iDVD, but for what you’re doing I think you’ll find that iDVD will do everything you need.

One hint ahead of time: IF your entire DVD has less than 1 hour of video on it, set the prefrences to “Best Performance” NOT “Best Quality.” Only use “Best Quality” if putting over 1 hour of video on a disc. I think this could be made clearer in the settings, but it’s not really explained.

[Jeff Carpenter]

File > Save as Disc Image

For some reason it has to put it in a disc image, but once it’s built you can open the disc image and drage the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders out of there and do whatever you like with them.

[Jeff Carpenter]

No, it will be exactly the same. You should test it and see if you save much space, however. Usually media files don’t gain a whole lot of space from compressing. It all depends, though, so give it a try.

[Jeff Carpenter]

I had 3 thoughts about things for you to check:

1) Go to System Preferences in the Apple Menu. Select “Engergy Saver” and look through there for the processor performance pull-down menu that contins the words ‘automatic’ and ‘highest.’ Set it to ‘highest.’ (I think this is still on the quad machines…I might be wrong.)

2) Make sure you’re not capturing any video to the system drive that Final Cut is on.

3) Repair Permissions. Restart the computer with the OS X CD in it and hold down the “C” key the whole time. It will bring up the re-install OS X screen. Just look in the menu for disc utility and repair permissions. Once done, quit the installer and start the computer again.

Those are 3 things I thought of that might be causing extra rainbow wheeling.

[Jeff Carpenter]

The color wheel is the same as Window’s hourglass. It pretty much means “wait, I’m thinking.”

It’s normal to see it a little bit. Do you think you’re seeing it a lot or is it lasting several seconds when you do see it? If so, there might be something wrong. But if it’s something that pops up for 1-2 seconds every now and then I wouldn’t worry about it.

[Jeff Carpenter]

In the system Preferences, go to Accounts. You proabably need to click the lock at the bottom and enter your password, then you can click on the little house that says “Login Options.”

You should find what you need in there.