[Philip Howe]

Avoid the complicated pathway. Copy the Hi-8 to P2 or (if your HVX-200 has the tape option as well) DV.
THEN plug just the Panasonic into MacBook and Log & Capture or Transfer. The conversion from the Sony to the Panasonic will improve picture quality and give you more stable T/C – remember to give yourself 16bit audio at 48 Khz. Have fun and success.
Philip

philip

[Philip Howe]

Does Finder manage to create a preview icon of the file when it is in Column mode? If it does, does it create a preview when in Icon mode? If it does but still won’t play then I would say the file has suffered internal damage; something like a power spike such that part of the file has artefacts that trip the system – if the file doesn’t present a preview icon in the Finder window then it is most definitely corrupted but do try making a duplicate (if you can) and playing that on another system or just from another external drive.
If you get it to play make another duplicate and save it elsewhere before erasing the drive you have it and the others stored on it, keep everything on a fresh formatted drive since the original damage could have happened during “capture” to this drive or while resident on this drive.
I had files that behaved like this and assumed these files were corrupted but found that on another drive they were fine!
Pip

philip

[Philip Howe]

All audio should be uncompressed, sample rate 48 KHz, AIFF or WAV. Then your audio won’t need endless render and you won’t get these odd occurences.
Pashdej

philip

[Philip Howe]

I think you’ll have problems with the graphics card – we have a MacMini that we use for accounts and internet work, it happens to have an old version of FCP on it, theoretically so that I can open old Project files and convert/work on them but the last time I tried I was greeted with a message that the App could not work on this computer because “AGP” was missing – that’s a reference to the graphics card.
I’m pretty sure that you can’t change the card but you do have an option – swap to a MacBookPro – same processors but Graphics card Optimised to run FCS (my non expert language – please forgive).
Then use the rest of your budget to get a small Reference monitor for accurate colour grading and effects, and the adaptor needed for the MacBook to plug into the monitor.

philip

[Philip Howe]

I have used DIVX Pro for Mac, now up to version 7, and it gives terrific results with loads, yes LOADS of options once you click on the Advanced Settings tab.
Philip

philip

[Philip Howe]

[Mare Costello] “FCP will not let me reconnect my media”
Pertinent to this issue is which version of FCP are you using?
Version 3-7 (I can’t remember in 1 and 2) will and would but FCPX has some strange requirements regarding placement and access to media – reconnecting media is not fully supported.
Also, with versions 3-7 it will behave differently with regard to your set-up in User Prefs (look at how you’ve chosen to use and access the audio in Dynamic Edits and also in Render Selector) and whether you are reconnecting via the Timeline or the Browser. If you Select All in the Browser and choose Reconnect you will get FCP to fully update ALL links – this resolves a myriad of problems

philip

[Philip Howe]

It seems that I didn’t reply to this – i was sure I had. Anyway the card has been terrific. I have 5 Gbs of RAM.

[Philip Howe]

OK, I’ll do just that. What has happened in the interim is that I trashed FCP Prefs and this allowed it to launch – without losing all my Filter settings. I had been reluctant because I’ve been experimenting with many various settings and was afraid I’d lose them. But FCP ran awkwardly and the sound was at least a second ahead of picture.
I also spoke with AJA Tech Support in California, I tend to work at night so ringing around the world was alright. I spoke with Rudy who was really friendly and when I explained the crashing FCP but the successful Motion and After Effects, and the FCP Prefs part solution, he told me about the Utility in the System Library, inside a folder called Core Services that is called Expansion Utility, here he got me to explain where the various radio buttons were set and the messages visible there.
The card was set to Defaults and this resulted in the card being “strangled”, operating at much less than real capability – the Intel requires the second set down if it is going to function at full speed and when I had selected that and rebooted (Quitting the Utility requires a restart) all was fine, FCP started happily, the Audio is in sync and the images move smoothly (they had been jerky, stuttery).
The reputation of AJA Tech Support gets yet another boost, Rudy was really good, and Support phone operators really nice too. Happy as Larry!

[Philip Howe]

I’ve trashed FCP prefs – why didn’t I do that sooner? because I’m trying to hang on to a bunch of filter settings that I’ve been creating for a future job. I didn’t lose the filter/settings and it gave me FCP on the ext Ref monitor via AJA. I didn’t need to re-install FCP or AJA.
One thing remains though, the sound is way ahead of the picture on the monitor, in the region of a second or more. I can see no way of adjusting that in the AJA control panel and the FCP Pref Set Playback frame offset adjuster doesn’t seem to change this at all. Any suggestions?
Philip

[Philip Howe]

One of the safest methods to avoid T/C breaks is to black or “stripe” your tapes before you use them – record with preset code with the lens cap on. It beds the tape for your camera’s tensioning and it gives an absolutely continuous T/C track that it will not replace but use to synchronise to and with. It may sound time consuming but if you do it the night before, and yes it will add to head wear but the most gentle wear possible. I think this would be my choice here, if there really is risk of losing contact with “Last frame”

philip