[Pat Defilippo]

Hello,

Just do a web search for “macbook pro 2.33 17″ price” and see what comes up. I saw a couple of places had it listed for $2299 this morning, but that might have been for a refurbished one.

Good luck with that!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
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for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
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[Pat Defilippo]

Hello,

I just went through this same dilema and ended up going for the MBP 17″ for the same, exact reasons – the extra 40gb hard drive and the extra 1.5 inches of screen for that much more height and width on tracksheets.

Another thing that you’ll want to consider, too, is Matte or Glossy. After reading the Cow, Matte was the way to go. Someone even quoted that Glossy “is like looking in a mirror” and certainly nothing that you’d want to fight with while editing.

Yet another thing to consider is that the 160gb MBP 17″ hard drive is 5400 speed – not 7200. You wouldn’t really want your capture and render files edited off of the internal drive anyway. So, even if you travel a lot, you probably won’t end up editing WHILE traveling (on the plane, train, etc.) unless you want a second box on your lap as well. What I mean is that, realistically, you’ll need to invest in at least an external FW800 drive and add a 34 card ($100 or less) to the MBP because the FW hookup that the external drive uses will make FCP hickup when the other MBP FW400 port is used during capture from something like a video camera or capture box, etc. Using both the FW800 and FW400 (on the same bus) at the same time makes FCP unhappy! So, the price keeps going up a bit to accomodate this.

I ended up buying a 1TB external SATA II drive and will buy the 34 card upon getting my first remote job! In the mean time, I’m using the PCI-E card that comes in the SATA II package on my PCI-E Quad and increasing my desktop storage from 1.6TB to 2.6TB.

I’ll just switch it for use with the MBP as needed but, again, the SATA II drive would also need an external battery powered supply if I were to edit while on the plane or train anyway! So, realistically, I’m only going to edit AT the site anyway. I make this point because I don’t think that the argument to go smaller (MBP 15″) matters that much anyway just because that model is less in size and weight to schlepp. Realistically, your still going to have at least a FW800 or SATA drive to schlepp as well – not just the MBP.

My only concern at this point, a few days before Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote, is that Apple doesn’t come out with a new MBP! I bought all of this on December 29 & 30 so that I could deduct the expense for 2006. I’d hate to see the MBP 2.33 model be second fiddle before I even receive it (all of the my purchases should be arriving by Monday)! At this point, you might want to wait until Monday afternoon before you buy – after you see what Steve says.

Also, MBP prices appear to be going down as we speak.

Good luck – and if you know anyone who can use a seasoned editor with my similar remote MBP setup, my phone number is below!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Steve, Tony and Gary,

Thanks again for you help with this! I’ll be buying the Mac Book Pro 17″ 2.33 probably at some point on Friday or Saturday, just before the 1/1 deadline.

I’ve checked out all of the web sites that Steve mentioned and have learned that the OWC SATA solution for $495 comes with only a PCI card, and my Quad is PCIe. However, I found that they do sell the 1TB do-it-yourself kit without the card for $450.

Similarly, I found a Lacie Big Disk Extreme FW800 1TB for $450. You might initially think that the SATA then would be faster if the price for both it and the FW800 are the same anyway, but both the SATA and the Big Disk Extreme have a 100mbs maximum transfer rate. Is there another benefit to the SATA over the FW800 that I’m not thinking about (perhaps reliability) or, if this was the case, would I be more versatile at more facilities going wth FW800?

The cost of the 34 cards for the MBP via OWC is pretty much the same – $120 for the SATA and $100 for the FW800. However, it just occured to me that I’ve had my Lacie Big Disk hooked up to my Quad via the FW800 port and the AJA Io LA hooked up through the FW400 port and both have been powered on with FCP running without any problem. From what Gary pointed out, though, it sounds like the hardware might burp once I try to capture footage (if I didn’t get the 34 MBP card).

Steve’s recent link to the LaCie Two Big 1TB Hard Drive with PCIe SATA card (perfect for my Quad) at $538 is about $90 higher than the other solutions, however that’s about the price of the PCIe card anyway. I don’t really need the card for my Quad, I only need it for the Mac Book Pro. However, having the extra 1TB for the Quad is worth the $90. Its average read speed of the LaCie Two is 95 mbs and write speed is 143 mbs, so it looks like a faster alternative than the others mentioned above for about the same money. The SATA 34 card for the Mac Book Pro at OWC supports up to 150 mbs.

So, thanks again for your help! If you see anything else that I should consider (especially where to buy this stuff at the best price), please let me know! If not, I’ve found where to buy the MBP, LaCie Two Big 1TB SATA and SATA 34 card for the MBP thanks entirely to you!

Thanks again!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Gary and Steve,

Thanks for your help with this!

So, it sounds like either way I go (the SATA drive that Steve suggested or the FW800 drive that Steve said will work), I’ll need to get a card for the MacBook? A 34 card then, either for SATA or Firewire? I’d need the FW800/34 card in order to get the FW400 AJA Io LA to work simultaneously because it’s on the same bus?

I guess that, if this is the case, I might as well go for the 1TB SATA for $620 or so instead of the 500GB FW800 for $370 (both prices including MacBook Pro cards). By going with the SATA/34 card, too, I’d have the additional flexability of adding that capacity at potential client’s facilities instead of just a second FW800.

Thanks again for your help!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

David,

I wish Steve would have shared! That would have saved me a lot of $$$!

Really, though, I’d much rather buy the software. It’s worth it because, over the years, I’ve had to call tech support a couple of times and they have never had to wonder who I was and ask me for my serial number! All of them have always had my registered info right in front of them.

The only thing Steve shared was good advise. He helped me out with equipment and software advise when I made the move to FCS from the Accom StrataSphere.

I am most likely going to buy some (if not all) of the Styles, Themes & Templates that I mentioned in the original post thanks to Steve’s recommendations. Turns out he demo’d the DVDSP Theme Paks for the Chicago FCP Users Group a couple of years ago, so he had some good things to say about it.

Even more than to give me more free advise, though, Steve wanted me to call mostly because he needed to duplicate about two hours of footage from deck to deck! The free advise he gave to me was worth the free dub time I gave to him this afternoon!

Happy Holidays,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Shane,

Organization is a good topic for a training DVD. I just finished the DMTS Final Cut Studio training DVD in February, and have re-visited it recently, and it does a good job with this topic but your DVD expands on it.

After 23 years of editing linearly and non-linearly, the only things I could add to your existing list (which looks great) is the differences in how to organize for both scripted and non-scripted edit sessions. Scripted clips would more often be batch captured and non-scripted would more often be full tape loads & subclips. Interaction between an actual script and how it translates to an organized final product would be good to see in a training DVD. Include possible questions to have answered by the client or producer BEFORE an editor starts up a project.

Also, I like to give scripts scene numbers (unless, of course, they already have them) and use that as my filename. It’s a lot faster and effient this way and helps any editor down the road when I write “03” for the file name (the leading “0” so that it sorts nicely later) instead of “Narrator VO for shot Number 3” or something like that, which can’t easily be sorted nor completely understood by all because it’s too wordy and long. Keep it short, simple and foolproof. After all of the clips are batched, with 2 seconds of heads and tails (or whatever), they can easily be sorted, copied and pasted onto a timeline in order, and then tweaked in one-by-one from there.

If a session is unscripted and full tapes are loaded, going over color correction (and other “global” type filters) on the master clips BEFORE editing would seem to be part of organization. A lot of time finding and tweaking individual clips from the same tape down the road can be saved this way.

Here’s an idea for the next training DVD and something I haven’t seen: tips and tricks specifically for Final Cut (not only Pro, but the entire studio). This is a rare, kind-of an advanced training. I’ll bet posting a similar question like you did with this topic would net you many great tips from a wide variety of editors.

Thanks for doing that,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

I just got done doing my first multi-clip edit last month. It was only three cameras and it dropped frames all over the place, and you can see (below) the system that I have.

What I did was, when I was done editing in Dynamic mode and simply stopping and starting the timeline, was save the final tracksheet. Then, I duplicated the tracksheet and did a full render on it.

This completely got rid of all of the dropped frames and looks great. Unfortunately, it made the multi-cam mode inactive. That’s what the un-rendered copy of the timeline is for. One is un-rendered and multi-cam-able and one is rendered and dropped-frames-less.

Although this is late, I hope this helps.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

I’m not familiar with the Timecode filter, but is there a way to open up one of your clips with the filter applied and then reduce the opacity of the Timecode itself all the way to zero or Reposition the timecode all the way off of the screen? Or anything like this that would keep the Filter applied to the clip but make it un-viewable?

Then, just paste attributes the Filters to all of the other clips?

This would keep the filter on each of the clips but, in effect, make it invisible.
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

Thanks, Jim!

That’s wild – I feel like I know you personally since I watched you teach Motion 2 for the last couple of days (and in January as well)! You are very good and knowledgable, it’s just too much information for me at this point to retain long enough to be able to remember when I actually need to use it.

Ideally, I’d like to be able to see how to steady a shaky shot (I know AE can do this but I don’t know if Motion can), do a silouette effect similar to the iPod commercial, do strobes, trails, and all of the stuff that I don’t even know about that Motion can already do quickly and easily in order to spice up even just a full-screen piece of video. You know, the kind of stuff that when a client says “can you jazz that shot (or sequence of shots) up a bit”, I’d be able to quickly and easily “Send To” Motion and do. In general, though, my clients don’t want to pay me for stuff that takes too much time.

The things you mentioned that are more editor (as opposed to graphic artist) geared, like creating flying picture-in-picture boxes (which I have done somewhat in FCP but can probably do better in Motion), animating lower-third background bars (which I have done in LiveType, as well as full-screen bullet-list type pages, but I’m sure that I can probably do better in Motion) and getting a sense of how to use different filters with real-life examples specifically for editing situations, would be outstanding to know as well.

Perhaps this is an idea (“Basic Motion Examples for Editors” or something like that) for another training DVD!?!

Thanks in advance and, again, I do plan on re-viewing your DVD in six months or so when I’m ready to get deeper into FCS! Thanks to you, though, I feel comfortable enough with the Motion GUI now and with the theory of where to go to do different things. Now I just have to use it before I forget it!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Pat Defilippo]

I ended up buying the Berringer 1204 because it was smaller, less expensive and it gave me another stereo output over the Mackie 1202 and 1402. I have a AJA Io LA and a Sony BVW-1800 Beta-SP that are both able to input and output with the Berringer 1204; with the Mackie, I would have had to either buy a matchbox and convert from an extra RCA output to XLR in order to send the signal back to both sources or I would have had to switch the cables (from the mixer) to either the AJA or the Beta-SP every time, depending on where I wanted to send the signal. With the Berringer 1204, I’m hooked up to both 100% of the time plus I didn’t have to buy the matchbox (although I did have to buy two phono to XLR cables). It works well, plus it gives you two extra phono inputs and a left and right RCA input.

The only knock I have on it is that the signals seem to come in pretty hot, even with the individual input adjustments turned all the way down. You can’t use the full range of the mixers and only halfway gives you full levels. On the upside, though, you can crank up a low signal much higher! Mackie might have the same problem, though, so it might not be a fair knock on Behringer.

If you only have two sources, like I do, check it out at https://www.behringer.com/UB1204/index.cfm?lang=ENG and then check it out on eBay for the best price. I think it cost me all of $50 including delivery on eBay plus it fits the space I have for it perfectly (the similar Mackie is a bit larger).

If you want something with more pizzaz and interoperability with FCP and Soundtrack, I did see a mixer at NAB this year that let you “ride” your non-linear levels. If I remember from the demo correctly, in FCP, it also lets you tweak your color levels with the three-way color corrector via the mixer levels. It looked great and I think it was only $500 or something like that. It is the Tascam 1082 (https://www.tascam.com/Products/fw1082.html), and your clients will be impressed because the mixer controls move all by themselves as they emulate the Audio Mixer in FCP as you play along the timeline!

Good luck!

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs, Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671