[Otis F]

Be as skeptical as you wanna be digital8boy, I thought my tone was quite restrained, but anyway I’ll outline my personal experiences and those of colleagues/friends a little more clearly.

When I lost my personal drive it was less than a year old, it was sent back to the dealer who sent it to Lacie for repair, it came back and was seemingly ok, with all the data intact. When I asked my dealer what Lacie had done they told me they had no idea. A few weeks later it went again. I still have that drive, and mount it now and again, it generally works for a while but then a clunking sound starts and it dismounts.

A colleague who works mainly with After Effects lost his, but being more technically tuned in than myself ripped the drive out and successfully mounted it in his G4. His problem was obviously the firewire bridge, whereas mine must have been a drive failure.

A mate of mine had a Lacie drive which he used to store his MP3 music collecton, I can’t remember the exact details but I know he lost it all, and the drive was just out of warranty.

This latest failure will be returned to the place of purchase as soon as I’ve managed to back it up-hopefully. You and Walter Biscardi amongst others have nothing but good things to say about their drives, which is great and I respect your opinion. I wish my experiences had been similar, their drives are nice on the eye and very competitively priced, however I haven’t been as fortunate.

I was also told by my new dealer that he refuses to sell Lacie drives anymore due to such a high failure rate, and Mark Raudonis has stated in this thread that he has had a 40% failure rate.

This evidence may be anecdotal but I don’t think it can be ignored, and I don’t see what it has to do with Lacie customer service. Especially when the drive hasn’t been bought directly from them, here in the UK you return it to the place of purchase if it is wiithin it’s warranty. Lacie may well have the best customer service in the world, but if their products don’t stand up to the task in hand then what good is that? If one of their drives falls over I don’t care if a Lacie rep helicopters in and hand delivers me a drive personally, it will still mean I’ve probably lost some work and certainly time. I notice that Mat@LaCie was quick to respond to any suggestion that their drives were not suitable for video, but wasn’t quick to respond to my message, in fact he didn’t. So what does that say about their CS?

My original message wasn’t meant as a rant, I was hoping for some enlightenment.

Anyway enuff said, I’ve gotta go as my dealer is installing my new FCPHD Kona 2 system with the G-Raid, I’ll post here if that goes down-in which case I think it will definitely be something to do with the metal plate in my head!

All the best

Otis F

[Otis F]

Tomas,

It’s very difficult getting unbiased advice especially when you post on the FCP forum. That said I have used FCP, Media 100 and Avid Composer/Symphony systems over the years. Though I do like the Avid interface, I prefer working with FCP for various reasons. I do a lot of After Effects which suits FCP a lot more. It all depends on the type of work you do.

Bang for buck you get a lot more with a FCP system, however if price isn’t an issue then buy yourself a FCP HD/Kona 2 system with lots of hard drive space. With enough space you can adapt your workflow to avoid any offline/online hassles, i.e. just work at online resolution until Apple sort out their media management tools. As far as I am aware this is the ONLY major downside to FCP, and something I’m sure will be addressed properly in their next release, I’m not sure if version 5 has it or not.

I’m sure Avid are a little disturbed by FCP’s meteoric rise, especially in the U.S. However, here in the UK there is still a feeling, especially amongst facilities and the broadcast industry, that FCP isn’t even close to surpassing Avid. It will take a brave facilities manager to make the decision to switch platforms over here.

What I’d like to see, would be facilities offering a choice, rather than being fiercely loyal to one NLE or another. Hopefully when FCP operates more like an Avid when it comes to an offline/online workflow, then more people will be willing to give it a go.

I used to work at a facility that had 2 aging Avid MC’s, they needed updating badly. As the majority of their work was corporate, I suggested going down the FCP route, most of their clients neither knew nor cared what NLE they used, as long as the job got done to a high standard. After a visit from the Avid sales rep I asked the MD about the upgrade decision. I was told that Avid was the only way to go, and that she wouldn’t touch FCP as Apple was: “Dead in the water…dead in the water”. It seems as well as the usual sales techniques, Avid is also giving it’s sales reps tuition in hypnotism, she had been in the meeting room alone with him for quite some time, and when I walked in on them I did here him say: “…3-2-1 you’re back in the room”.

Cheers from blighty

Otis F

[Otis F]

Cheers Walter for your swifty response, though I’ve come to expect nothing less from you.

What benefits will we see with the Dual Core processing machines, and what exactly is dual core? As for the ATI x800, how much is this card, it doesn’t appear to be an option on the UK Apple Store.

Thanks again and good luck with your film.

Otis F

[Otis F]

I was about to pose the same question as John having just seen such a set up yesterday at another company. They had a J30 hooked up to Avid Xpress Pro HD, but didn’t know what happened when you took footage in via firewire i.e. if it compressed it or worked in a similar way to the AJA IO. In capture mode it still gave you the 1:1 option?

I’m in the awkward position of trying to make a decision as to upgrading our third edit suite, I was sold on FCP but hafter having had a little play with the MOJO set up I’m beginning to have a rethink. We have an old Media Compser which we need to upgrade, and the company already upgraded another suite with FCP HD on a Cinewave card. But there are going to be a lot of programmes that are going to have to sit around as offlines before we will be able to online, and I worry that FCP HD is not really up to this workflow, especially as I’ve heard that if you add slow mo effects for example, then when you online FCP doesn’t apply the correct speed setting.

All that said you can get Apples production suite and one of the many SDI cards a lot cheaper than the Xpress/MOJO route. If that thing had SDI it would be a no brainer, as a digital workflow is important to us.

Thanks for any advice.

Otis F

[Otis F]

Cheers Ray,

It’s all beginning to make sense, HD is still very much in it’s infancy over here in the UK. I appreciate your time.

Otis F