[Richard Dee]

Quite a few features, including the new ProRes codecs and beter support for timeline into Color are quite good. I think everyone was looking for one “kiiler” feature to really round out the upgrade. If they had just given us background rendering, I think this would have sealed the deal in almost everyones mind. Perhaps Snow Leopard will allow this feature to added with a free point upgrade?

[Richard Dee]

Wow – great thread.

I am just about to order the HD Element today, and the slot advice is what I needed.

Is Bob a VAR? If so, I’d buy it from him, just to get yelled at!

I’m trying to decide if I should get the 6 TB unit (four 1.5 TB drives) or the 4 TB unit, and 4 extra smaller drives for around the same cost.

I too am stuck with a FW card, though. I can’t seem to get my Tascam FW1884’s flying faders to work smoothly on the mac’s built in FW bus if any other FW device is plugged into it.

I hate loosing a slot for FW400!!! It reminds me of my first Promax FW card ($500!!!) in a beige G3.

[Richard Dee]

I would think selective focus (a feature I’d love to see added to Color) is a pain to implement on moving shots. Static shots, sure – you can just mask a layer on top of itself, and for simple things Joes’ S Blurs can do the trick.

But there is no substitute for shooting with a lens setup that allows for shallow DOF.

[Richard Dee]

Hi Mitch,

I had the Mackie in house for a short time. It seems the Tascam does more actually.

The control surface features that work are the main ones, levels, solo, mute, pan (including leds for pan level), jog wheel, play atop, rew FF, and next edit.

Thats all, but not any of the other buttons work.

The DA and AD converters of the 1884 work however, and the Kona 3 does see them. The VOice over tool used to not work with Kona 2, but now it does.

SOmetimes the faders get sticky when doing a flying faders mix, but seems better when I touch another peice of gear for better grounding.

I am curious to know what other function the Mackie provides, or what else didn’t work on the Tascam for you. The Tascam provides so many features that when working well, is quite useful. I have to try surround sound going from Kona 3 AES/EBU to my IO’s input then out of the IO via ADAT to the 1884’s ADAT in which supports 8 channels.

I have done this with 2 channels on the Kona 2 and it works.

I did like the Mackie’s TC display, which the Tascam doesnt have, but now MCS 3000 has TC display.

I love control surfaces and I think it helps sell clients, when they see a fully outfitted FCP suite.

[Richard Dee]

Okay – I was keeping the Audio Mixer window open while trying to opne the Control Surface window. That would cause the crash.

With the Mixer window closed – I can enable the control surface dialog and add back in the TAscam and JL Copper gear.

With firewire drives in use (which I try to avoid) I need to use the Tascam (via FW) on a seperate FW PCIe card.

[Richard Dee]

That is a good one to report to Apple. Sounds like an FCP 6 bug to me.

[Richard Dee]

I am wondering this as well.

I have the Kona and Tascam 1884.

I also own the Aja IO. I have debalted selling the IO so many times but it keeps having more uses. You can take the AES/EBU from the Kona into the IO and ADAT out of the IO into the FW1884. I used to do this with stereo all the time.

I now have to try this with 5.1 mixing.

I dont think I would do 5.1 in FCP however, but in Soundtrack pro 2.

So much to try. Not sure when I will have the time since I am not required
to deliver any surround mixes. Also I believe you need a Dolby E encoder to
lay 5.1 onto tape.

I would just rather have a sound house deal with all this.

How many jobs can I be expected to do?

[Richard Dee]

I dont know if Tangent works with FCP 6, but My JL Cooper Spectrum does. You need to contact JL Cooper to get the beta drivers.

The rings work really well for low mids and high, but the balls can be a little sticky, but they do work. As a matter of fact, I recently was playing with FCP’s CC with the SPectrum, and got a better look than I would have gotten with the mouse alone. I’m not not sure exactly why – I’m very experienced with the 3 way CC, and use the scroll wheel to adjust gamma, etc, but somehow the Spectrum let me dial in a nice correction.

ANother plus, I’m not sure if intended, but in the motion of clip- the middle trackball
controlls position – great for panning stills. I just wish I could figure out how to map the percentage of zoom size to a one the Spectrums rotaty encoders.

Saturation comes up in the rotary encoders of the Spectrum, which is nice.

The Spectrum is really killer with Color, and the MCS3000/3800 works well with FCP, so all in all, if you have the money, tactile controllers are the way to go. The Tangent is just too expensive in my book, so I’m glad I never tried one and don’t know what I’m missing. For the $20,000 + is costs, I mean hell, you could get a really nice Turntable, Tonearm and cartridge. I’ll stick with the Spectrum.

And By the way, the new JL Cooper Eclipse, while it looks really cool is just a Spectrum and MCS 3000 in a fancy housing, for quite a bit more than the cost of both the plainer controllers.

[Richard Dee]

Yes. FCP 6 wont clip the saturation either.

I dont want to reduce the saturation overall – just soft clip the reds that are illegal.

I guess I’ll be running everything that needs to go to broadcast through Color.

I just dont know how Apple can continually neglect to offer a working broadcast safe filter.

[Richard Dee]

This is a great thread –

Can anyone suggest someone in NYC that can come over and calibrate my 20L5 and 14L5?

Tony are you in NY?