[Ken Jones]

Blackmagic updates their drivers frequently. Check the BM website.

[Ken Jones]

Those plug ins are excellent. Very quick and easy.

[Ken Jones]

There’s a fantastic tutorial right here on the COW:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/harrington_richard/final_cut_fixing_exposure/video-tutorial.php

[Ken Jones]

There is an excellent tutorial here: https://www.slccut.com/Apple-Compressor-Tutorials/enable-multiple-core-processing-in-apple-compressor.html

[Ken Jones]

Are the tapes Betacam or Beta SP? I know that the 1800 will only record on Beta SP tapes and not on regular Betacam. I am not sure about playback of Betacam.

[Ken Jones]

I have to say I completely agree with you Jeremy. The only difference between DV & DVCAM is tape speed. The picture quality is EXACTLY the same. There is a really good explanation at: https://www.adamwilt.com/DV.html

Here is a quick cut and paste from Adam Wilt’s site:

What’s the difference between DV, DVCAM, and DVCPRO?

Not a lot! The basic video encoding algorithm is the same between all three formats. The VTR sections of the US$16,500 DSR450 (DVCAM) or AJ-SDX900 (in DVCPRO25 mode) cameras will record no better an image than the VTR section of the cheapest DV consumer camcorder (please note: I am not saying that the camera section and lens of chead DV camcorder are the equals of the high-end pro and broadcast cameras: there are significant quality differences! But the video data recorded in all three formats is essentially identical, though there may be minor differences in the actual codec implementations). A summary of differences (and similarities) is tabled in Technical Details.
The consumer-oriented DV uses 10 micron tracks in SP recording mode. Sony’s DVCAM professional format increases the track pitch to 15 microns (at the loss of recording time) to improve tape interchange and increase the robustness and reliability of insert editing. Panasonic’s DVCPRO increases track pitch and width to 18 microns, and uses a metal particle tape for better durability. DVCPRO also adds a longitudinal analog audio cue track and a control track to improve editing performance and user-friendliness in linear editing operations.

Newer DV camcorders offer an LP mode to increase recording times, but the 6.7 micron tracks make tape interchange problematic on DV machines, and prevents LP tapes from being played in most DVCAM or DVCPRO VTRs.

[Ken Jones]

[Tom Matthies] “scan through the tape and make sure that your client hasn’t put graphics elements AND the alpha channel elements somewhere on the tape as well”

Definitely worth investigating. When I used to master to 1″ I would put a lot of “layers” at the end of the master tape. Of course, there were a lot of layers on other tapes as well…

[Ken Jones]

I have never been able to get FCP to animate anything as smoothly as I would like. I have a client that has me edit a LOT of videos that are animated photos. I do all of my photo animation in After Effects, render the QT movies, and then import them into FCP.

[Ken Jones]

A few months ago I had a similar thing happen to me where Compressor refused to work. I looked around the web and found this: https://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/2008/01/11/compressor-hatred-resolved/

It fixed the problem.

[Ken Jones]

[Richard Walton] “Apple’s internal RAID solution is a $700.00 card.”
You don’t need to buy a $700 card. The Mac Pro already has all the connections you need to slide in 3 more hard drives.

[Richard Walton] “What are the secondary market alternatives that will do “tie” the drives together to create the RAID 2. “
You would use the application “Disk Utility” to create a RAID. This software is already in your Utility folder.