[Montica Pes]

Hi–Just got the dp4 with evf and the whole bundle. I really like the monitor and evf, though I have never tried the Zacuto beyond the Zfinder. The dp4 also has 1:1 mapping, which I don’t think Zacuto is offering. There are some really great head to head reviews on the web on these two products.

My problem is with the positioning of the evf using an articulating arm or the ball flash mount–I can’t keep the damn thing locked down on the 360 degree axis on the ball heads. Really, really annoying. Anyone got any ideas on this? Is this just the way these things work, or when I lock it down, should they all lock down?

Thanks. I hope you go with Small HD–just think these guys are lovely, small company with a great product. Great customer service. Dave, the guy who always answers my inane questions, has been really great.

[Montica Pes]

Okay. After a big meltdown this weekend, I am at my wit’s end.

I was looking a Drobo–$300 and the cost of 1-2tb sata 3.5 hard drive to go into it. Then I read all this stuff about it not working for editing.

I can’t afford the CalDigit option. I’m using an iMac and will be buying a MacBook Pro in a couple of months using FCP7 and the CalDigit option just seems like buying a Ferrari when I don’t have a house kind of analogy.

So, do I just get a G Tech Drive and forget mirroring in an RAID 1 configuration and just save work to a couple of different drives? Or get the Drobo? I have $400 max to spend right now. I’m a photographer and a filmmaker using the 7D for both. I want to make 2 copies of my raw data and also back up my live work using Time Machine. Someone please just compare the options I’ve given and point me in a direction before I just have to check into Cedars psychiatric ward muttering stiped and raid and the computer ate my homework.

Thanks everyone, Monty

[Montica Pes]

Hi,
Thanks for responding! I have an iMac with a terabyte of storage on my hard drive and I am using a 7D and the resulting files as my media.

What kind of drive do you suggest? I hear RAID from a couple of sources and don’t really understand what that is and I actually would like a name I could go into Best Buy or someplace on line and buy by name.

So I back my media up on two different EXTERNAL hard drives? One for archiving and one to work? Then I do my edits always pointing FCP at the external drive? Do I have this correct? When I do log and transfer from my CF cards, isn’t that putting the original files on my desktop hard drive?

And now that I’ve been working this way, what’s the easiest way to solve it so as not to disrupt my work too much.

I was watching a tutorial on here about transferring and backing up media, but he doesn’t go into detail about beginning a work flow and how to sustain it. I wish I had this info.

Thanks again for any help!
Monty 🙂

[Montica Pes]

Bret,

Okay, I’m feeling pretty hopeless, but I gotta ask: You mean open Quicktime Pro? I just have Quicktime Player on my system. I’d rather do it the way you suggest (by clicking on FCS color compatability) but I can’t find where the checkbox is. I’m beginning to think I didn’t deserve to go to Vassar.

Before I got your latest response, I went back to compress to h264 and I added a bit of saturation (from 100 to 110) before I compressed again. Any problem with that? Other than the credits (which I did in Motion and now they are aliasing), everything looks pretty good. But I’m only looking on one monitor.

Thank you again. Your help is priceless.
Monty 🙂

[Montica Pes]

Now I have another problem…when I compress to h264, the video now looks washed out. Maybe this is unavoidable. I moved the slider to ‘best” and the sound is AAC, then fast start, and auto keyframes. I did NOT change the filters.

I did one compression, which was really just a resizing to the size it will be on the website (580×325) and it’s a mov file at 1.71 gb, and it looks exactly like I want it to. The h264 gets compressed down to 89mb, so that may be the reason it’s washing out. Any happy medium to be had? Any ideas?

BTW thank you all to those who responded earlier! So helpful. I’m hoping someone’s got an answer to this as well.

Monty 🙂

[Montica Pes]

Bret, How do I change the h.264 from mov to flv? Or can he just plug in the flv file and do nothing else (which is what I think you are saying). He seems to think that he will have to recompress it–which if I do all of this and flash will read h.264 then that shouldn’t be.

I just don’t know web design, so I don’t know what to say to him so that it gets done right on his end.

Thank you so much! Truly.

[Montica Pes]

Hey Stephen–
That helps so much, you wouldn’t believe.

Monty 🙂

[Montica Pes]

Marc–
Thanks so much for taking the time to explain the differences–it really helped!
Monty

[Montica Pes]

Hi, Thanks that totally worked. Now, should the voice always come out of both speakers? I read somewhere that my left and right speakers should be reserved for effects and music. Is there a template or recognized way of doing sound for this?

Thanks again, Monty

[Montica Pes]

Sean–
Just watched your tutorial and it is extremely helpful. I was using mpeg streamclip and not using a logging bin–so I never went through the logging process in the way you describe. Very helpful. Thank you.