[Rj Miles]

Because I am still working mostly in DVC Pro 50, I have only been building (2) drive RAIDs, which are more than fast enough to stay ahead of any bottle necks.

My limited use of the e4p and F500 bays may not expose problems others might having when they push the edge.

RJ
…

[Rj Miles]

How about digitizing with the p-jpeg codec, maybe even at a 320×240 size?

If there is no file size limit, run the p-jpeg at 90% quality.

[Rj Miles]

I was recently called by Apple to answer a survey on the FCP Studio 2 upgrade.

There was one interesting question regarding interest in future online FCP support for clients being able to do rough cuts and other project review capabilities.

I gotta wonder if the iPhone might have some sort of FCP funtion in it’s future.

Thanks for the report.

[Rj Miles]

Have you tried…

reducing frame rate to 15fps
altering the data rate settings for audio & video

I have been able to get pretty good results at about 3MB/:30 of finished video. Good enough for client review atleast. 🙂

[Rj Miles]

I too have have the e4p card on a Mac Pro.

Every once in awhile I have trouble cloning to one of the OWC eSATA single drive enclosures, where everything just freezes up and I have to do a hard boot. I have since connected the OWC drive via FW800 without incident.

The F500 bays have been fine.

We did buy (2) bays that started making a high pitch whine as more drives were loaded. Neal at Sonnet Tech said there were some bays with problem power supplies and they advance replaced both F500 bays.

So, I have had great success dealing with Neal at Sonnet Tech Support.

[Rj Miles]

I have been running the 500GB SATA Maxtor Maxline Enterprise server drives for a number of years without incident.

I have used them on the internal drive in the G5 and now Mac Pro. I also use them the Sonnet Fusion eSATA drive bays as solo drives as well as (2) drive striped RAIDs.

OWC has great prices on the drives, better than I had seen from a less trust worthy Ebay sellers.

I did have a problem with one drive a year ago, in that it would not format/initialize. Maxtor replaced it over night, using a credit card for security until they received back the problem drive.

It’s always good practice to clone back system volumes and storage of important project data. With these drive costing just over $100, it’s easy to have double drives of important stuff.

happy shopping

[Rj Miles]

I have used a broad range of options.

Lately I have used the balanced/unbalanced inputs on the video digitizing cards.

I recently added a Digidesign 002 rack for multitracking.

A simpler small step you might consider to over come the inherent noise issues with the Mac inputs… if you have a Mac with Optical I/O, consider picking up a decent analog <-> SPdif Optical converter. That just might fill all of your needs without tying up a PCI slot or FW channel.

[Rj Miles]

I have been using DVDxDV Pro with great success. You can follow the link below to their website.

https://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookSite/Products/DVDxDV.overview.htm

[Rj Miles]

WE just added an 8-core with 16GB of ram and it’s been running great. We went with the 250GB int HD and X1900 video card. We are using the Sonnet eSATA Fusion 500 bay for all media storage.

AE7 has been running well with the standard/production plug-ins, but would not render older projects built with BCC & FEC plugs. We are getting ready to test drive CS3 with the problem projects.

FCP studio 2 has been great. We just edited a dozen 3-5 minute shows without a hitch. We are digitizing DVCPro50 via FW.

So far, FCP renders and DVD SPro are much faster than the G5 2.0ghz/DP the 8-core replaced. AE is also faster, but we don’t expect to see a real speed boost until we switch over to CS3.

We bought ram from OWC, around $1300 for 16GB. We figure the 8-core was about $1300 more than a Quad if you include the extra 8GB of ram.

Last, we installed the smcFANCONTROL software to dial up the LOW speed of the 8-core fans. It works big time at keeping temps in the 8-core on a low boil. 🙂

I’ll be looking to upgrade my home office G5 soon, maybe near the end of the summer. I don’t know what to get.

Happy shopping

[Rj Miles]

The only potential Mac Pro news was regarding some future Intel stuff.

Here is a link.

https://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/06/06/intel_unveils_3_series_chipsets_for_duo_and_quad_processors.html

However, nothing seemed likely to pop up in the short term.