[Rick Lang]

Thanks so much, Bob. Found them in Canada for $42.95/100:
https://www.blankmedia.ca/DVDR-16X-JVC-TAIYO-YUDEN-HARD-COAT-WHITE-INKJET-HUB-100-PCS-Prodview.html

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Matt Mullins] “Is it better to sync all the video and audio with both cameras first, or to edit first and then sync the sound later second.”

I think you are implying that you’ll sync the separate audio that corresponds directly to each take (and each camera). That’s straightforward and you can sync the audio first.

But what if the separately recorded audio from take 3 may be the best sound and the video from take 2 may be the best visual? You can actually (if the takes are very similar of course) edit the best sound to sync to the best visuals. In this scenario then, wouldn’t you decide your video edits first and align the best sound to them? Maybe I was lucky but I even did this by overlapping visual takes (I only used one camera) using the best separately recorded sound and it worked! The results may be a bit eerie as the layered video takes cross-fade but interesting visually for a music DVD.

I did my rough edits in Garageband to pick the best sound and then visually matched to the best video takes which could be different.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Bob Cole] “I’ve standardized on Taiyo Yuden waterproof white DVDs”

Thanks for the recommendation; the DVDs I previously bought aren’t giving me good results when printing the labels on my Canon 9500 Mark II but hopefully this will be better:
https://sourcerite.com/content/jvctaiyo-yuden-dvd-r47gb-16x-photo-grade-white-hub-inkjet-waterproof-25-pcs-cakebox

Please let me know if these are the ones you use and if I can print right up to the very small hub as I want as large a print-area as possible. Thanks again.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[andrew blackman] “So you’re telling me when I import the h.264 files i dont have to click the optimize media box?”

This is true. But I recall reading somewhere that your performance while editing may be improved if you are working in a ProRes format. When adding Effects, for example, FCP X will cause that portion of your video to be transcoded into ProRes anyway. So depending upon the processor power of your own configuration, you still may wish to optimize the media while working within the programme.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Mark Dobson] “So my question is how do I keep my new Lion / FCP X drive discreet from the rest of the drives on my MacPro?”

Mark, I thought from your original post, you installed Lion (and FCP X) on one partition (or “volume”) of an internal drive that has three partitions. When you want to isolate FCP X from the rest of your system(s), you can boot from the partition in which Lion is installed. You can still see all your other partitions and other drives even when you boot from the Lion partition and that can be useful if you want to refer to data on other partitions and drives such as your media files. But when you boot into the Lion drive, you effectively isolate FCP X when you load it from that partition. FCP X (and other Applications programmes on that boot partition) will appear in the Finder as part of the “home” for the account you used when you booted into the Lion Partition. No need to unmount or remove your normal ‘primary’ drive.

You are right, you can run any application from any other part ion or drive, but your results may not be perfect as Mac OS expects your programmes to run from the boot drive and all library references for example will either refer to /Library or /Library, etc.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

I assume you have the Mac Pro (early 2009 edition). Seems to speak volumes about the power of the latest Intel i-series processors compared to the older Xeon processors. Rest assured the next release of the Mac Pro will beat your portable, but not much you can do other than perhaps using an updated graphics card (and running 64-bit as Josh mentioned).

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

To reset the external drives you should also remove their power after you turn the drives off; with no power connected, turn on the drives and wait a few seconds and turn them off again. Then you could do the same thing for your Mac: shutdown, remove all external drives, unplug the power, turn on the Mac by holding down the power button for at least five seconds, plug the power cord back into the Mac, reconnect the external drives and power on the Mac normally.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Mark Dobson] “However I have a problem in that my 2 external GTech drives are not appearing on the desktop, or in the finder and are also not showing up in Disk utilities.”

May not be helpful, but have you checked the boxes to reveal external drives in Finder Preference/General and /Sidebar? Have you tried using Force Quit to restart the Finder? I once had a partition not show, but restarting Finder resolved it.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Managed to complete the music album in iMovie’11 but there were some challenges (after the credits’ text settled down) using external audio and getting good sync with the camera’s audio. It wasn’t always as simple as manually matching a waveform. And I made the mistake of originally importing my external audio file into Garageband using instrument ‘Female Basic’ thinking that meant no effects, just basic sound. That was wrong of course, I should have just used a track with ‘No Effects’ on it to keep the singing true. Next time will be easier!

I greatly appreciated the ability to use keywords in iMovie and using Garageband was very difficult when you have scores of cuts in two hours of audio and no keyword/labels to keep track of your work! Keywords are a major user-friendly advantage of iMovie (and of course FCP X).

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

You will certainly find similarities but you’ll likely run into the limitations of iMovie’11. I’m in the midst of finishing a music album in iMovie (one camera, multiple takes to make up the final song, audio edited in Garageband and shared with iTunes for easy import into iMovie, using both external audio and audio with HDV video) and the client also wants each song individually uploaded to the Web.

I wish I could have edit control over the effects I’ve applied. You can only apply one video effect and one audio effect at a time and you have to live with the presets.

Strangely, several corrections I made to the credits were ‘lost’ the next time I’d play or edit the project even though there was plenty of time for everything to render in the background. Must have corrected credits at least five times before the changes have stuck. Not a good argument to drop the Save command I suppose. Lesson learned: get the credits right the first time including any font changes etc.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB