[J. Tad newberry]

got it today (after ordering at 5:15PM last night!) and it seems to be working without a hitch so far. i can fully use Motion 3, loads in full HD template projects, and they even play back at about 3 frames per second! ooh ahh!, but hey, with the old card in Motion 2, it would chug along at about a frame every 3 or 4 seconds.

Color started to open and then i got the warning screen saying that it was unable to initialize OpenGL and i need to disable Video Desktop…so as soon as i figure that one out, i might actually see the Color interface.

other than that, screen redraws and scrubbing the TL in FCP looks a bit smoother and faster, but nothing earth-shattering. all in all, it looks like $300 well spent and that will save me some time each day.

thanks again for you guys’ input and advice. it is always much appreciated…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

gittin’ there…

like everyone seems to say…when nothing else makes sense, “trash your prefs!”

i did, and now i can batch capture, capture now, etc. yahoo! BUT

(and there’s always a big butt somewhere, isn’t there?)

now i’m not capturing any audio…nor getting playback on my output monitor. time to play with settings, although everything “appears” to be correct now…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

seriously, still no capture tonight…

any idears? i’ll keep plugging away…

thanks, you guys really are great (and so patient with heads of bone as i r)

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

“think” i may have misunderstood? that is probably one of the understatements of the year! : )

a lot of this stuff is getting harder and harder to understand as the years go by. in some (actually, very few) ways, i miss the simplicity of holding film in my hands, physically cutting it (with a razor blade rather than a wireless mouse), and marking a dissolve on it with a grease pencil.

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

true, i had forgot about the XDCam SD stuff, and was only referring to the HD flavor…35mbps looks great to my eyes, and edits quite easily in FCP 6 (though now i’ve recently spent the big bucks and have upgraded to 6.0.2! : )

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

i guess i’ll be a tester. i thought i had read here that the new one is THE one to get and that it was the older version that was yielding funky artifacts, etc.?

oh well. i should be getting the card tomorrow. i’ll let ye all know how it be gwine…

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

thanks arnie.

when i did my search for my graphics card, Mac Connection was offering the best price, and they can get it to me tomorrow (even ordering at 5pm tonight!). i would assume they are quite reputable.

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

yes, Blu-Ray “type” discs. they hold 23 GB each, which will give you right at 70 minutes of HD recording with 2 channels of audio. you can do 4 audio channels as well, but i think it knocks the capacity down to around 60-63 minutes. each disc costs about $30, so you’re at about $.50 per minute, which is far cheaper than HDCam (with more capacity to boot). they’re fully erasable if need be, and you can master back to them as well. really a pretty cool format…though other stuff is looming on the horizon.

their new XDCam EX format just came out, and while it looks like another good thing, i think they’re going to run into the same roadblock as the P2 crowd: how to cheaply and quickly archive raw footage?

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

i love it!

i’ve always been a taped-based guy, but a few buddies had tried XDCam and loved it. i’ve now shot 10 episodes of an outdoor television show with it and really like it. it loads into FCP quite easily, the media is cheap, so archiving on the original discs is a no-brainer, and the image quality is quite good. you can delete bad takes in the field, though i haven’t had the guts to do that very much yet thinking that in the heat of the battle of shooting, i would hate to delete the wrong clip. but if you have the luxury of time on the set and you trust your little fingers, go for it, and then you don’t have so much to weed through when you go to download and edit. i’ve onlined my shows to HDCam and watched them on a 5 foot HD screen and they look great! at this point…and all this with no HD capture card. you can take the XDCam footage into (AND out of!) the camera via firewire. quite snappy.

my recommedation: rent it, play with it for a half-day or so, then go shoot like crazy and see what you think.

thanks again!

mh

[J. Tad newberry]

$190 on ebay? it doesn’t say, but i would assume it’s a used price?

https://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-Radeon-X800-XT-256MB-Power-Mac-G4-4x-G5-AGP_W0QQitemZ250190848907QQihZ015QQcategoryZ25449QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

who are your guys’ favorite vendors to deal with?

thanks again!

mh