[Larry Lancit]

The only thing I added to my apps was something called MacKeeper which was supposed to speed up the system which was working slower and slower. I deleted it when I saw that it was not free. BTW am using Mac OSXLion7.3
I uninstalled the FCStudio with something called FCS Remover. it was touted as removing everything including the preferences. Did not update it other than ordinary Apple updates that I automatically get for OS7.3 I will try it again and manually remove the preferences. Where do I find Preferences

[Larry Lancit]

Good point of course! Yes I backed it up immediately…I always do. I tried to L&T from the hard drive, then from the original card. Problem is the same. I am using FCP7. I have never had this happen before in the two years I have been using this recording format.

[Larry Lancit]

Aces, Gaz! Thanks–did the trick!

[Larry Lancit]

Thanks for the query! I am editing on FCP7 on my IMac, and all the source material is sitting on the Drobo–all raw footage, capture scratch and project files.

[Larry Lancit]

Thanks Cameron–Actually I probably need a primer on good storage techniques. Right now I have an array of 4-6 external drives (total of 7TB) hooked up in daisy chain fashion. Each disk has different things on it. Two of the 1TB disks are for raw footage storage, and the other disks are for capture scratch, projects, etc. I had been Time Machine backing everything up on a 4TB WD drive that has informed me that it has run out of space, which is why I need some help in rethinking my storage strategy.

All my work is done on an Apple IMAC 2.93 Ghz Intel Core i7 with 8gb of RAM. (No E-SATA connection on the back). I am shooting the material at 1080i on AVCHD chips. After shooting, I transfer all the raw footage to my raw footage storage disks in AVCHD format, and ingest into FCP7 from there using Log and Transfer. I am also archiving all the finished pieces in a variety of formats on these two raw footage disks.

What is the best configuration for going forward, understanding that the objective would be to have backups of all the raw footage, and FCP projects. Should I be backing up all the capture scratch as .mov files too?

I see that Apple offers an 4TB RAID array system called Promise, and you have mentioned the Caldigit and Maxx Digital products. What configuration and what size should I be using to manage all this material as I increase the size of my raw footage library. Clearly I would like better speed for rendering that would come from a RAID array, as well as the ability to scan quickly through the log and transfer process, which if I am not careful, results in the beach ball from hell when I try to scrub through it.

[Larry Lancit]

Hi Chris–The sequence settings are DV NTSC 48Khz
The format of the pix are jpg., and are too small, so I enlarge them in the canvas. When I export, I export as a self-contained quicktime movie (.mov)

[Larry Lancit]

Thanks for your advice Jason. I am relatively new to FCP so maybe you can help me understand why I am doing this. Here is the application:
I am creating a program that includes segments with a variety of formats that I then burn to a DVD. The DVD is then duplicated and exhibited on a DVD player whose signal is inserted into a hotel’s in room cable system using a modulator.

When I was instructed how to setup FCP, I was told to use the DV NTSC setting because a large % of the televisions in hotels are still SD format. I thought it was kind of funky to do this since I am shooting in HD and I would expect that the DVD production would letterbox it for SD televisions. Perhaps you could find me offline and give me some advice that would help me do what I need to do to exhibit the best way on my hotel network. My email is larry@paradisecoasttv.net

[Larry Lancit]

Thanks Tom–I set the properties to HDTV 1080i and it certainly looks better and fits the screen!