[Luke Duncan]

Cool, Bob. Thanks for responding. Anyone else have any experience with the auto-leveling of audio coming in through the 1/8″ jack? And how about the noise like Bob describes? Any of that, and how do you deal with it?

[Luke Duncan]

yo Dave,
Glad to help. Check your inbox.
-LD

[Luke Duncan]

My parents got me the ProAm crane you referenced for Xmas this year (pretty nice present, eh? especially when all my other mid-20s friends got books and ties).

I have enjoyed it immensely. The shots I get with my GL2 are wonderfully smooth, and it really adds quite a bit of production value to any job (if not overused, of course).

You’ll want a quick-release plate for the bottom and some sort of monitor. I happen to have a portable DVD player from Best Buy (store brand) that works quite well for this. $150 + $10 in cables at Radio Shack. It doesn’t relay the color/exposure information perfectly, but it’s great to check framing.

You’ll also need a serious tripod to handle the weight. Mounted on my hefty Bogen tripod, I’ve flown it up to 18 feet, which is plenty high for most applications. If you’ve got a sturdy tripod, you can achieve steady results at such heights.

A caveat: It’s not quick-folding or anything, so you’ll need to budget 5 minutes to set it up and take it down before loading it into your vehicle.

Hope that was some useful info for you.

[Luke Duncan]

Brandon,
We work out of Oxford, been at it for about 8 months. Most of the weddings we book are in or near Jackson, so you’re in a good area, and shooting HDV will be a great selling point. In fact, we’ll be in Jackson in early October on a job. Email me if you need help getting going in Mississippi. We’ve not been at it for a long time, but I think we’ve made a good start.
-LD

lrduncan222 [-at-] yah00

[Luke Duncan]

Thanks Harold,
Under Device Manager, Display Adapters, it says “Intel 82865G Graphics Controller (PCI bus 0, device 2, function 2).”

According to one responder to someone else’s question at geekstogo.com: “Under ‘display adapters,’ see if anything is there besides the Intel Controller. If not, then you do not have an AGP video game card. If there is, then it may be PCI.”

I don’t know what that means, though. In my computer, there is nothing else under “display adapters,” only the Intel Graphics Controller mentioned above. Is it possible I have no video card at all, and that the computer is handling video processing virtually? If so, then which Maxtor card do I need?