[Matt Larson]

[Sam Zimman] “do you switch the former spare from slot 7 to slot 2”

No, once the drive rebuilds in slot 7, it will look for the data there. Don’t move it!

Just a thought: Is your XRAID formatted as a RAID 50? If so, you might not need to dedicate a slot to a hot spare. I used to have a hot spare in the set ready to go, but I decided it made more sense to use all 14 drives and just keep an extra drive in a drawer in the studio. When a drive goes down the XRAID emails me and I just pop in the spare I have sitting in the drawer. It then rebuilds automatically (takes about 30 hours) and I can keep working in the meantime.

The only difference is having a hot spare in the chasis will let the XRAID begin rebuilding the array immediately.

[Matt Larson]

Yeah, it seems completely fine. I have not tried multiprocessor rendering under Rosetta though, it might work, I just haven’t tried it.

The only gotcha is if you have Color Finese (and maybe some other plugins too) it doesn’t want to work in Rosetta. Usually I would do what I needed to with a plug in, precomp it and render it as a proxy using the best settings. Then I Save and Close the project and the Rosetta AE version. Then open the project file back in the regular CS3 and continue to work. You will get an error message about not having the right plug in installed, but it doesn’t matter since it’s pre-rendered.

[Matt Larson]

A better idea is to buy an Express Card 34 Firewire adapter. That will give you 3 firewire connections on your computer. Hook camera into computer Firewire, hook Hard drive into adapter firewire. They cost about $70.

A hard drive with 2 firewire connections MAY work for you, but not a good idea.

[Matt Larson]

I have been waiting for plug ins to be updated before I move the Mac Pro into the main edit sute, but here’s something I’ve used to make due in the meantime:

I duplicated the AE CS3 application and renamed it “AE CS3 Rosetta”. Then I went into the Get INfo box and Checked “Open with Rosetta”. When you do that, all of your PPC plugins should work like normal.

I haven’t used this on a daily basis but it works well enough for me to get by until the new updates are out. Using AE CS3 in Rosetta is still faster than using AE 7 on my dual G5!

[Matt Larson]

My experience with DVCProHD and After Effects CS3 has not been very good. Importing clips results in very noticible gamma shifts and the only way around it is to apply a levels filter to lower the gamma.

Perhaps this has changed in the last month, but I have posted here many times in different forums and basically been told everytime, “Yep, that’s what happens. Render to Animation instead.”

If I am wrong, please let me know-

[Matt Larson]

When you render these proxies out of AE, edit the “Output Module” in the Render Queue and click the box next to “Stretch”. In these boxes, you can set the “Stretch To” size to match your FCP sequence size. It will still render half res, but it will blow the redered footage up for you.

So you’ll either need to go back and re-render, or import your proxies into AE and stretch them; or, just use Quicktime and Export the proxies to the correct size and in the future use the “Stretch” command in AE.

[Matt Larson]

I may have missed it on that link, but what is the sustained throughput on those drives? Personally I wouldn’t want to rely on gigabit for an interface either, not sure how stable that is going to be if you need this everyday. Take a look at CalDigit, https://www.caldigit.com I think that’s what I will be going with once my SCSI array finally bites the dust.

[Matt Larson]

That depends, what’s not working? Does the camera work if hooked directly into the computer? Does the drive work if hooked directly in to the computer? Are you dropping frames when you capture? Need more info please!

I would guess the problem is going to be the hub. What kind of computer are you using? I’m guessing laptop since you mention you only have 1 FW input. If it’s a MacBook Pro, the best bet is to hook either the camera or deck into the firewire, and buy an adapter to turn the Card slot into 2 Firewire ports (Google: ‘express card 34 firewire’ for options).

Post back with some more details…

[Matt Larson]

Change your capture setting to DV50. If that’s not an option, Duplicate the basic DV capture setting and change the Compressor to DVCPRO50.

You edit these by going to “Final Cut Pro”>”Audio Video Settings…”> Capture Presets tab. If you need to do this again, make yourself an Easy Setup-

[Matt Larson]

Always make sure you have a clean, stable video signal running into your converter box when you capture in FCP, even if you don’t digitize it. So if your audio is coming from a DAT, you’ll need to find another video source to put in to the converter. A lot of decks will output black if you set it to standby, so that might be your best option if you don’t have a BB

OTherwise, Soundtrack Pro might be able to digitize without a video source