[Paul Dickin]

[CoryTV] “if there weren’t so many punks so steadfastly stuck inside it writing the ubiquitous “I don’t have any problems”
Hi
Us ancient punks are cautious guys with our work systems, and we tend to do things ‘the way it worked in the past’.
So any big software advance warrants a clean install. And I’m even more cautious than Walter, because I don’t put my trust Software Update – I download the standalone or combo updaters, and manually get my system up to date, and furthermore I archive all the updaters in case they are needed later 😉

Last edit-system downtime for me was August 2006, for a couple of hours whilst I reinstalled the OS X Combo updater to cure a one-off USB mouse freeze. Its been going six days a week since then, sure a few crashes, but zero ‘issues’. For the last few weeks I’ve had 21 sata/FW800 individually-partitioned drives mounted for a huge DV archive project. Even my best old SCSI Mac never achieved that 🙂

But my opinion probably isn’t of value to most, because I’m waiting to update to FCS 2 until Leopard is out. I mean FCP 5 never worked effortlessly with OS X 10.3.9 – it needed 10.4.+ to fly.

Leopard was supposed to ship at about the time FCP 6 was released. That seems kind of significant to me.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
In the Motion tab instead of Scale, use Distort. Change the 360/-360 coordinates to give you the correct wideness – I work mainly in PAL where its 480/-480.
Since you aren’t altering the vertical line structure in any way by doing it like this the loss in resolution is minimised.
Its easier if you don’t flag the shots as anamorphic, which prevents FCP’s timeline changing the scale and aspect ratio.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Not true in the EU and UK, where input-enabled video recorders have been classed differently from players, for duty purposes.
No current UK-model Sony DV cameras seem to have iLink and Mic inputs except the VX2100E.
Quote:
DCR-HC37E
Jacks
Audio Input NO
Audio Output YES
Video Input NO
Video Output YES
S-Video Input NO
S-Video Output YES
i.LINK (DV) Input NO
i.LINK (DV) Output YES
USB Terminal NO
External Microphone Input NO
Headphone Jack NO
https://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProduct.action?product=DCR-HC37E&site=odw_en_GB&pageType=TechnicalSpecs&imageType=Main&category=SDH+MiniDV#tab

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
An NTSC camcorder in the UK is not a good choice unless your edited products will all have to be viewed in the USA.
Standards converting its video to PAL format to work properly with UK televisions gives a quality loss.

As you say a very low price PAL camcorder bought in the UK/EU may have its DV-in facility removed, which can mean those models are unsuitable for your needs.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Here’s a commercial solution:
https://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2704

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Versions of iMovie around 2 and 3 could capture the FW output of a PAL camcorder playing an
NTSC tape into an NTSC iMovie project.

However iMovie would only open an NTSC project if a genuine NTSC FW device was attached.

So I opened iMovie with a AVDC 100 converter (or a Hollywood Dazzle Bridge convertor) set to NTSC mode attached by FW, and then once iMovie was ready to capture hot-swapped the camcorder onto the FW, playing the NTSC tape.

Everything captured fine, as an NTSC DV Stream. That was with a Sony TRV-900E camcorder – I don’t know if more modern camcorders or versions of iMovie can still do it.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Well Michael Wadleigh’s “Woodstock” solved that problem in 1969, with 3 low-res 16mm movie images pip’d across the 70mm wide screen 😉

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
I’ve been using a huge variety of external FW drives since about 2002 for DV editing without any major issues on G4 and G5 Macs, so there’s no reason to think that a current WD box won’t work,
A low cost PCI FW card in your G4 (if its not an iMac) to give a second FW channel will increase multi-drive flexibility….

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Use a DVCPro HD camera – isn’t that how that codec is derived – in effect using 4 DV encoder chips simultaneously to give DV quality at HD(ish) frame size (plus some extra colour resolution as a bonus)…

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
I’m ever the old hippy at heart 🙂
I escaped the Jesuit give me the child to the age of seven and I’ll give you the man influence, and likewise my age made me miss the give the child Windows from eight to fourteen and their ours for life M$ principle.
So I’ll stick with loving my Mac’s empowering essence, whatever… 😉