[Nicholas Buer]

Wealth of information in this post now. The Macbook Pro we currently own, with the lack of an Expresscard slot is horribly limiting, the money spent on a MOTU or an AJA could be better spent put towards a Tower, we do not need to be portable.

In short, a Tower in the long run will save us time and money. The expandability of the Tower makes it a no brainer really! and the difference in variety and cost of video I/O options compared to the Macbook Pro only is another reason to go for it.

Thanks for sharing all this information

Nick

[Nicholas Buer]

Thank you for your responses guys, really appreciated. Your article Jerry is very helpful, sent me on a tangent of research!

Thank you Andy for your recommendation of the MOTU V4HD, yet the the cost of that unit and a little bit more (bearing in mind the extra money made from the sale of the equipment we presently own) we could buy a Tower and have so many more options for expandability, not to mention speed!

I see that the Macbook Pro has one more stop in it, and then we can take it no further, it’s a stop gap at best. Yet the MXO is a brilliant little bit of kit for what it is, I edit with a 24″ Apple cinema display connected to the Macbook Pro, so the MXO would fit in perfectly.

I think that I will present my boss with two options; one to keep the Macbook Pro for now and get an MXO, or secondly to upgrade to a tower and reap the benefits that go with it. I will fight for the latter of course!

Thanks so much

Nick

[Nicholas Buer]

Thanks for your responses. Sorry Walter, you are right I should be in 1920×1080 Square, I think I trusted FCP a little too much when it came to picking my sequence setting!

Anyway, the 20″ IMac’s NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor only has 256MB of memory.

So if my boss were to purchase the 24″ model with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, or the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, this should solve the rendering issue?

If so, which of the two would you recommend?

Thanks guys, apologies for my ignorance 🙂

[Nicholas Buer]

Thanks for your replies 🙂

I’m mainly editing HDV material, so on that basis I should go with something like the Matrox MX02? I am looking at the Mini (as I’m spending my bosses money!!) but it doesn’t seem to have a firewire connection…. So without a Blackmagic card or something similar I wouldn’t be able to hook up this unit as a convertor to an LCD TV for example.. am I wrong or am I wrong….

If I am right, are there any firewire to HDMI convertor boxes that you can recommend? that are also price savvy…

Thanks guys

[Nicholas Buer]

Thanks for all your replies people, really good. Cool, well the Remove Filter App by Andreas does the job good and proper.. thanks so much for that!

The workflow solutions work well too, just need assess each situation on it’s merits and use one of these three suggestions accordingly…

Thanks so much guys, creative cow wins again!!

[Nicholas Buer]

Thanks Jason, Thats a good idea, I thought the solution would be a workflow one..

Although your suggestion is entirely valid and workable, it’s a shame FCP doesn’t have the option to fine tune your selection when it comes to this dilemma…another one for FCP 7 me thinks… 😉

[Nicholas Buer]

You could try exporting your project as an M2T, then using a program such as ‘Clipwrap’ to transcode the files into .MOV’s?

https://www.clipwrap.com/

Great little program but it does cos $49.95, check it out anyway…

Good luck

Nick

[Nicholas Buer]

The ADS Pyro is a great price!
I will investigate the Canopus products a little further but the ADS Pyro looks pretty sound..

Thanks peeps!

[Nicholas Buer]

I have looked and the Canopus ADVC-110, seems pretty good but is this unit just for conversion? (sorry for my ignorance 😉

Will this unit act as a bypass unit, and be able to take the firewire video stream in one end and output it in real time in composite at the other?

Basically, can this box be used as a real time firewire to composite converter? Or is it a stand alone converter box that can only take either an input, or output at one given time, and not do the whole pass through thing…?

I hope I’m making sense..! ]

Thanks for your help guys. just want to make sure I get it right..

[Nicholas Buer]

Thanks for your suggestions, but I am looking for a converter so I can use the external video option in FCP through firewire to composite to view on a TV.

If I had the money I would by Mac pro, Blackmagic deckink card and a Grade 1 Broadcast Monitor, connect everything up with BNC’s and use the Blackmagics 8 or 10bit external video option (within FCP) to view on the monitor as I edit.

But alas, it is a smaller, much more stop-gap solution that I’m seeking.

I have found this comparison page:

https://www.synthetic-ap.com/tips/firewireconverters.html

I wonder if any of these will do the trick of converting a firewire signal into composite for external video monitoring?

I have two SD cameras (Canon XM2 and MV890) that I have tried to utilize them in this way but to know avail. Any specific models that you may know of that can achieve this?

Thanks for your time