[Jiggy Gaton]

2] Are there any problems with importing the images as animated gifs into FCP?

To answer this, no. dropping animated gifs on the FCP timeline preserves the animation. I was shocked when I first tried that:)

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

that’s a hoot! “earth’s magnetic field could affect data integrity” I guess i’d better worry about giant asteroids and tsunamis too! but seriously, if you are using docks to archive, u are at least accessing the archive drive to fill it up, and then presumably periodically cloning the archive drive to another for placement in the offsite bunker, and then rotating those backups – so something hits those disks periodically until it’s maxed out (over the course of a year or two?). but nothing is forever, and if they change the sata interface in drives (more likely then data erosion?) then that would be bad. last count we just have a couple dozen loose drives (small biz) that are all dependent on …well… everything, including the weather and solar activity. anyway, thx for the interesting read!

Oh while I’m here, we just got a gig where we have to record 550 hours of recording and then create a video library. Anyone have a “best way” tip for storage for that? I’m guessing about 15 of those orange-striped tough drives – 320’s – (not available here) and something like CATDV for metadata? Tips welcome!

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

yup, no one has ever complained here about us doing that:)

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Hi there, perhaps stepping back a bit: for youtube, we use the preset in compressor and get perfect results everytime (v7). Never messed with frame controls for youtube…why?

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

thx guys, and matt, what u say makes sense-sorta. it seems Apple should automate “send to” to do just that anyway, as I noticed that while “send to Compressor” no longer locks FCP like it used to, u can’t close the app while compressor is working on the job. that’s a really silly design eh.
jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Thx for that Jeremy…yes, clusters…that was it. But why can’t you do a “Send to Compressor” right from the timeline? In v7 it releases the job right away so you can still work, unlike before. Anyway, I guess I can google clusters now that you reminded me of the right word:)

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

I’ve never used a flip, but have used an ex3 with other cameras and FCP v7’s magic timeline works grand… throw on your iphone footage, that will work too. Heck, scan in old Polaroids why not? Seriously, should be fine…and if it dunna work, just come back here and someone will help ya:)
Jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Well, when we were faced with this decision back in the pre-unibody days, we went with iMacs and glad we did. Saved a ton of money and for some reason, the imacs with same speed processor seemed to perform a little bit better… they at least stayed cooler during long renders:)

iMacs are also much better on your eyes when looking at tiny keyframes in FCP or elsewhere. There is just more room on a 24 inch screen for that kinda work… and we have externals hooked to the imacs just for more space.

But bottom line is probably whether you need to take the box to the field or not. Lugging an imac is no fun at all:)

Cheers,
Jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Just a guess, but the problem may be Encore. If you are using CS3…heaven help u:) And I don’t think it improved much in CS5 either, although adobe media encoder did. I have no problems doing what you describe only I use DVD Studio Pro (as part of FCS3). It should not take you long to regen the menus there, if the DVDPS DVD encoder works better for ya. Good luck!
jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.

[Jiggy Gaton]

Hi there, there are many ways to do this for sure, but what we do is what u are planning, we have esata docks and stacks of old iron harddrives. for backup we use the cheapest we can find and I have seen no difference in sata drives as far as failure rates. Expensive ones blow just like the less expensive ones.

After we are done with a project, we use FCP project manager to tidy up the project and push to an archive drive, that’s it.

Now as far as finding what you need later…ha, if you need to find it quickly something like CATDV (see forum here on that) would be the way to go. We’re poor, so we just use stick on labels. Cheers!
jigs

Phoenix Studios Nepal: A small A/V Production House in Kathmandu.