[Michael Peele]

What kind of drive for what type of machine?

Try hooking up the drive using it’s native interface – i.e. not FireWire or USB, but SATA or ATA if possible. You will get better results. Then use the data recovery software of your choice – I like Data Rescue if the drive is really having trouble and other utilities like Disk Warrior or Techtool Pro have failed. Remember you will need a working drive attached to the system to dump recovered media onto. Try a variety of software if you can.

If the drive is making odd or new noises, you chances of data recovery on your own are slim. Sending off the drive to Drive Savers or the like may be your best bet – but it will cost you.

If the cost of a professional recovery is too high and your drive is making noises, and you are willing to start taking risks with the data, I would try chilling the drive – literally, in the freezer – and then seeing if the recovery software works. try to avoid letting condesation form on the drive when you pull it from the freezer, and work fast, they heat up quickly. I had good luck using plastic bags with packets of dessicant inside. In one case I would get about a minute of runtime before the drive had to go back in the freezer. Eventually I had a G4 set up next to the fridge with an ATA cable snaking into the freezer. Goofy but it worked. Remember, go this far only if you have decided that the data is not worth the cost of professional recovery.

If you start to see data available for recovery, go straight for the good stuff – FCP projects, emails, docs, pics and music – the stuff you can’t replace or reinstall. Don’t mess around with trying to recover Photoshop or other apps. You never know when the drive will REALLY call it quits.

Good luck,
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

hmmm…so you’ve got the .wav extension…you may want to avoid odd characters in the filename, stick to letters and numbers – no slashes, extra dots, etc.

is the file in some unusual/very high bitrate (higher than 48kHz, 16bit)?

have you tried doing the conversion to .wav using QT instead of FCP? For a long shot, try doing the conversion in iTunes.

also, as a quick fix, most PC’s will handle a .aif file just fine.

i know that converting from aiff to mp3 works fine and almost everyone can handle an mp3. A high-bitrate mp3 (192kb/sec or higher) shouldn’t degrade quality seriously – though I wouldn’t go this way if the file is going to the pc for further editing.

mike peele

[Michael Peele]

If the number of frames off was consistant, you could set a timecode offset, but otherwise, I think exact tc values for edit to tape are impossible when using FW. I may be wrong but a lot of people have had issues with this. Maybe a longer pre-roll? You may want to search the archives for this issue – I know it has come up before.
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

Didja remember to add .wav to the end of the file? Otherwise, I thought it should work as well. Maybe try quicktime for the conversion from aiff to wav?
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

Yeah – I have never had an issue with “edit to tape” just remember you need 6 seconds of pre-roll (if I remember FCP defaults correctly). Plus you get all those cool black/bars options.
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

If the utility works for you, why not just turn off the screen saver/sleep settings? This is fairly typical for an editing system. Nothing sucks more than trying to dump a 3 hour project to tape only to have it cut out after 1 hour, also sleep/screen savers can interfere with long captures, renders, etc.
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

Is he dropping frames on capture – or is this a playback issue only?

Erase preferences, double check all capture, playback and timeline setting to make sure that the settings are consistent. Start a new project. Now try.

Still dropping frames?

If it is playback only, make sure that the video playback size in the canvas window is not larger than the canvas window – i.e. no scroll bars in the canvas window – set the video playback size at the top of Canvas window (try “Fit to window”).

If it is a capture issue, then try capturing to the internal drive. If this works, you can be fairly certain that it is a conflict between the camera (or deck) and the Maxtor. First, make sure the Maxtor is formatted HFS+ (get info on the drive, Format should read “Mac OS Extended”). Reformat drive (BACK-UP FIRST!) as Mac OS Extended. If this was already correct, then you may have a firewire bus conflict between the camera (or deck) and the drive. Try connecting the Maxtor to the PB using the FireWire800 port and the camera (or deck) connected to the FireWire400 (i.e. no daisy chaining). You may need a FW400 to FW800 cable to achieve this, depending on your Maxtor HD. The final option is a FireWire PC Card. This slips into the PC Card Slot and provides an additional FireWire bus, separate from the internal FireWire bus. Attach the drive to the card and the camera to the PowerBook FW400 port.

Hope this helps,
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

Check out barefeats.com – a good place for Mac related storage/benchmarking info.
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

Exporting 8bit UC should result in the same size file using either export option because there is no compression being applied. As long as the resolution stays constant, the size and quality should be close to identical.
Exporting MPEG or any other compressed files will likely result in different file sizes and qualities because of the number of options available during compression. Different VBR settings, 2-pass encoding, different scaling options, etc.
Mike Peele

[Michael Peele]

apparently, the ad agency was able to create the eminem spot by carefully copying the Lugz arrow spot from a year or two ago…
😛
mike peele