[Paul Dickin]

[Sean ONeil] “…someone will figure out how to overclock these.”
Hi
Yes – Intel…
Quote:
Power when (and where) you need it.
The new Mac Pro introduces Turbo Boost: a dynamic performance technology that automatically boosts the processor clock speed based on workload. If you’re using an application that doesn’t need every core, Turbo Boost shuts off the idle cores while simultaneously increasing the speed of the active ones, up to 3.33GHz on a 2.93GHz Mac Pro.
https://www.apple.com/macpro/features/processor.html

The same 113% Turbo boost to a 2.26GHz CPU would bring it up to nearly 2.6GHz…

[Paul Dickin]

[David Roth Weiss] “creating an overall boost of about 30% with proc clock speeds the same or even a little lower.”
Hi
Whilst we’ve got to wait for real-world comparisons of the speed increase of the new Mac Pros over last year’s models, here’s a raw-speed benchmark (under Windows) that puts a new 2x Quadcore pair of 2.26GHz Xeon Nehalem EP CPUs (as in the new Mac Pro) at 15% faster than an 2x Quadcore 2.8GHz pair of last year’s Harpertown CPUs.
And apparently running under a non-optimal dual-channel RAM installation, rather than the triple channel setup that Nehalem is designed for (not 4 slots, as in the new Mac Pros).
https://www.computerbase.de/bildstrecke/24679/1/

[Paul Dickin]

[walter biscardi] “Yeah, rumor sites, they’re a great place for accurate information.”
Hi
Apple doesn’t talk, but Intel does.
And Intel is talking at the moment…

Its as if the last year’s chip was the 486DX66 (remember them?).
At the end of last year they brought out a Pentium-style upgrade (remember how much faster that was than a 486?).

On March 29th Intel will launch their new server grade chips with integrated memory management (kind of like the Pentium with MMX for go-faster multimedia handling…).

These are the Gainestown (Xeon) chips Apple will need for their new Mac Pro range – 10-40% faster due to the elimination of data-flow bottlenecks.

The last time Intel brought out a new range of chips – Intel released the Harpertown/Penryn-series CPU (used in the current Mac Pro) on Nov 11th 2007 – Apple released the Mac Pro using this CPU on January 8th 2008.

Furthermore chipmakers are wont to discontinue their production lines as and when they feel the market has moved on – so Apple is oftentimes forced into making an upgrade of its model specifications.

Fact + fact + fact + fact = new Mac Pros soon (timing subject to the plans for theSnow Leopard launch and/or WWDC).

Interestingly Intel isn’t talking only about Gainestown – they’re bigging up its successor, due sometime early next year, which maybe will give Intel production-cost advantages, hence maybe their wish to move things along…

The Mac with THAT CPU, along with FW3200, USB 3 and SATA 6, is probably the one to wait for…
The one with the maximum built-in futureproofing 😉

[Paul Dickin]

[george bonilla] “I had to let it mix down the sterio pairs?”
Hi
That’s controlled by a check button on FCP’s Audio Mixer window.
Uncheck the Stereo Downmix button, and the four audio tracks will be treated separately – you can Export a 4 Channel movie, but you won’t hear what’s on 3 & 4 if you play your timeline without a 4 channel sound system.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
You can slip an audio track around by tiny fractions of a frame – but the in-point of an audio clip always has to start at the beginning of the video frame.

So to make a point half way through a frame slip a bit to start at the beginning of the frame just open the clip in the Viewer, zoom in so you can see the whole frame’s waveform, then hold down the Shift key to allow the Playhead to be dragged to the exact waveform you need at the start of the frame.

Once the Playhead is at the correct point select an In-point, and the audio track will re-align as required.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
The guy who headed the team that designed Final Cut Pro sort of agrees with you, because he went out and created the current version of iMovie (09) because the old iMovie and Final Cut Express/Pro are too complicated for a novice user….

But a tool that can be used to edit Hollywood movies, or extended reality TV shows HAS to be powerful – and that brings the complexity.

Your approach seems fine to me – teach video ‘production’ – the way to bring a story (great or small) to the screen. If your students focus on that, then they can learn to work out how to deliver that – to produce an enjoyable/engrossing movie experience.

Some of that story-telling process is editing, but learning a complex editing application through and through isn’t part of that task….

When I first sat down to edit on a computer (16 years ago) it took me a whole month to read the (quite small) manual that came with the edit software, so that I understood how to use the program.
BUT I had been a TV film/video editor/producer for twenty-five years before that, so I KNEW what I wanted to achieve.

I still never use about half of Final Cut’s features – as bogiesan says, however much you know you keep on learning…

Your students need to learn to focus on what they need to know, and leave the rest for later training opportunities.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
All the older versions of QT that apple regard as stable are still available for download:
https://support.apple.com/downloads/
Just page back to the 2007 or earlier pages.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Way back when I had no problems migrating my PCI video capture and SCSI cards from an old G4 to a MDD Dual 1.25 G4 – 4 nice internal drive bays that will take big ATA drives, and full OS 9 compatibility.

The last FW800 MDD G4 can’t boot into OS9 – you need a FW400-only model to do that.
The version of OS 9 it needs must come off its own Jaguar OS X 10.2 CD install set – Software Restore CD1 (for the drivers for <128GB hard drives), Its a hidden disk image that has to be copied off.

You only get FW800/USB2 PCI-card compatability with OS X.
I used to dual boot mine OS X Panther/OS 9 - but some SCSI card compatibility (Adaptec mainly. but not all) ended with 10.3.2.

Finding a spare power supply for a MDD G4 is easier, as Apple offered every owner a less noisy replacement for just a small shipping charge - so I've got a spare for mine 🙂

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
All the older versions of QT that Apple regard as stable are still available on these pages:
https://support.apple.com/downloads/
Just page back to 2007 or earlier for old versions.

This link to Rafa’s QT version page is more up to date:
https://www.digitalrebellion.net/blog/posts/recommended_quicktime_and_mac_os_configurations_for_final_cut_pro.html

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Google the Video For Windows (ie AVIs) 2GB maximum file limitation – because the AVI format that Apple software is compatible with was developed in the era of 32-bit OS’s file-size limit.