[Jeff Mueller]

I’ve had similar problems with my Canon XL-H1 and FCP and there seem to be many variables, but a couple things to check are: 1) in the camera menu, Playback Mode needs to be set to HDV NOT Auto, if it’s on Auto, turn it off. 2) while you’re in the menu make sure that HDV downconverting is also OFF. 3) use the HDV Firewire BASIC video setting. 4) unplug any unnecessary Firewire devices.

Let us know what works.

[Jeff Mueller]

Thanks, Gabriel, you angel. Good ideas. Let me play around, AND THEN,. IF YOU DON’T MIND, ASK SOME MORE. Sorry about caps.. I do feel that low light when shooting and in post, must be something a lot of us face. Once upon a time I got to go into an incredible color correcting studio with a guy named Sparkle who would fix everything I had fucked up with a little telecine magic. But those days are gone for most of us.

I MIGHT have been able to get the restaurant to turn up the lights at my last event, but at what price to the mood? A small increase in light level would not have effected my recording much.

[Jeff Mueller]

Thanks, i’ll play around with this and post my conclusions. You think 3 way color corrector is the appropriate tool?

[Jeff Mueller]

I may not be the right guy to answer this as I am working with FCP 5.1.4 and a slightly older iMac Core 2 Duo, AND I am having problems (but they’re not iMac related). However, as a guy on a budget I feel your pain and want to throw in my two cents, which is that I think it depends on what you’re trying to do. No question an iMac can run FCP7, they were editing with FCP and (compressed) HD back in the G4 days. But there will be sacrifices.

My feeling (at the low level of this game) is the computing power of the iMac is fine, but as Zane said, the current models have just one FW800 connector, so everything FireWire will have to be Daisy chained, otherwise it’s got to be USB 2.0, no option (as far as I know) of adding an eSata drive. My iMac has two FW400 ports and I am running a Lacie 1TB drive as my scratch disk through FW400 (drive can handle FW800 but computer doesn’t support), behind that I have a 320GB Lacie D2 back up disk attached (ironically, but because it’s the available port) to the 1TB Lacie via FW800. No problems with this setup that I can detect, speed seems fine importing/rendering. BUT I’m mostly working with SD material because I have problems between HDV and FCP 5.1.4. I connect my camera through the second FW400 port, don’t think it’s a good idea to daisy chain that. I have thrown the iPod on the back of the HD Daisy Chain and that seems fine. Hard to get a good raid array out of this, which if you ever want to do uncompressed HD you will need. Flexibility is also limited with video capture cards, audio cards, etc.It’s just plain a much less flexible platform. But that doesn’t mean it can’t do what you want. and it’s really half the price.

Other iMac deficiencies: my internal DVD/CD burner gave out about the same time as the warranty ended. I bought a high spec LaCie external drive to replace that, but again my connection is limited to FW400 or USB 2.0. On a new iMac you’d have FW800 but only one port so you’d have to go USB or Daisy Chain. Monitor out is limited/non-expandable.

On the other hand, it is easier to move around with out the big tower. And jeez, a 24″ iMac starts at $1500 with the display, a reasonable processor, memory hard drive and all those things you’d expect like a keyboard and mouse. On the Mac Pro front the display alone is $900 and then you need another $2500 for the base computer sporting the same hard drive, less ram (3GB vs, 4GB) and the same speed processor, but it’s a quad rather than core 2 duo. So, given a Mac Pro package for $3400 or an iMac for nearly $2,000 less, just how much flexibility/expansion capability are you willing to pay for?

On the other hand, my father, who doesn’t need it, has a beautiful Mac Pro tower carved of aluminum and feeling like three times the machine any iMac is. I don’t know what all it’s got inside, but I do know it’s a G5 (couple of them I think)and OS X 10.5 Leopard is the last OS update it will ever be able to get. A lightly used $3-4000 machine that is almost obsolete.

Except for the real power users and pros with giggs lined up back to back I think a good iMac, properly specced is the cost effective option, but it won;t expand very well and at this time don’t think about working in uncompressed HD with it. My 2 cents.

[Jeff Mueller]

Follow up: Taking Michael’s suggestion I checked out my Down Convert setting. Down convert was set to “OFF”, I tried changing it back and forth and reconnecting the FireWire (Tidbit: You can’t change this setting with a FireWire plugged into the camera), still no luck. I then tried turning Down Converting “ON” and reconnecting, and the connection works fine, I am downloading using an NTSC 48 Hz Anamorphic setting and it looks right so far. I do realize I am not working in HDV which is not what I intended. Don’t really know how much this matters? I don’t have any short term plans for taking this to blue ray mostly it will be viewed on standard DVD and secondarily on the web, presumably QT H.264. I alway think it’s best to stay as high resolution as possible as long as possible, but maybe I’m wrong.

But if FCP 5.1.4 is intended to work with HDV there must be a way to get this material to work.

[Jeff Mueller]

I’d love to upgrade FCS but that’s not feasible at this time…do I need to go back to Leopard? Some other work I do wants the upgrade.

[Jeff Mueller]

Thanks…just to be clear (I’m more a creative than a techie), when I installed Snow Leopard I did the normal install per the Apple instructions but did not wipe my hard drive, if I understand you, Zane, your suggesting that I should do a Time Machine back up (I have a Firewire backup drive), and then reinstall Snow Leopard asking it to format the internal drive during installatiion. Do I then have to re-install all my other applications? I haven’t been having any problems with other apps (Photoshop and Rapidweaver are two I use a lot). And as stated, I can install any software except FCS.

Thanks again, I don’t want to leap into anything stupid like I did uninstalling FCS in the first place.

Jeff