[John Maguire]

Understood David.

Thanks Nick.

[John Maguire]

Original source was a two-hour MKV from a blu-ray: codec: Windows Media Video VC1 (WVC1), Frame rate: 23.976215. (I am editing one of my favorite 1980’s PG movies with rough language and scenes for my young niece. Surround audio was separated into multiple mono 48khz WAV’s, so I can edit center channel dialogue.) Time length of audio and video files are the same before and after transcoding video to ProRes. FCP settings are confirmed before import into new projects. It is the import of the ProRes video clip into FCP7 that shortens/accelerates the video clip by nearly one minute. I’ve tried transcoding to ProRes in various ways: LT, HQ, video only, with Quicktime Pro and Mpegstreamclip, and all resultant video clips are shortened/accelerated upon import into the browser.

[John Maguire]

After a bit of research I found the following:
1. The Matrox MX02 Mini is about $430 new
2. The Matrox MX02 Mini specs do not include 24p support
3. The next step up Matrox product that does support 24p cross-conversion is the MX02 LE which is about $900 new, which I cannot afford

Any other suggestions in response to my original post in this thread?

[John Maguire]

Thanks Shane. That’s good news as I am working in FCP 7. Standard definition DV would be fine with me at this point, but all I get is a still image from where the playback is stopped. I even followed your troubleshooting checklist found in other threads, trashed preferences, etc. Do I need to change playback preferences or do something else so that FCP will properly downconvert playback from 1080 to SD and 24fps to 30fps, so the external CRT monitor can display video instead of stills?

[John Maguire]

Shane, you state “If you are working with HDV footage, FCP 6 allows you to view this via firewire, but ONLY as downconverted DV. It won’t look the best, but you can see it. To do this,” That’s where that paragraph ends. Is there a different troubleshooting or setup process for external monitoring of HDV as SD via firewire than your usually recommended steps above?

[John Maguire]

Shane Ross, who often offers a list of remedies for this problem on this forum (that I’ve already tried), says HDV can be monitored from FCP as SD on an external monitor. See thread below.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/200/884008

Any other suggestions?

[John Maguire]

Thanks for the tips. I’ll check on boot camp and whether it makes any sense to partition some of the main drive now, or only at the time of utilizing boot camp. I thought that boot camp forces you to partition so you can boot from the alternate OS. I just thought it would be easier or safer to partition now before I am forced to by boot camp later. I obviously need to learn more, but I’ve read that a partition is also appropriate for those who want to keep an older Mac OS version in case of problems with a new OS- I believe it was an article on this very site (Hoffman’s guidelines for a rock solid Mac?) Again, my thinking was that making a partition “just in case” might be a good idea.

Regarding partitions for the other drives, thanks for the feedback not to do it. After reading various articles which may be a few years old (one on Ken Stone’s site I believe), I assumed that there were reasons for partitioning a large drive like 1tb in particular because it is so large, or that you would partition so that you isolate and use the “faster” part of the drive. But I guess that advice is out of date now? Thanks again.