[Roli Rivelino]

When I go to system settings, it says that my scratch is on the 2nd drive in Final Cut Documents and as I said when I go into that and look in the capture scratch folder, there aren’t any folders for the projects I’m working on at the mo, but those files are there in the render folders etc.

Is this another MAC glitch?

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

As ever Shane is the font of all knowledge on this one :-).

Just to add one little point, if rendering times are annoying you because you are editing together different format clips, then set your timeline menu to unlimited rt, that way that pesky little red line turns orange and voila! you can view your timeline uninterrupted, albeit at a lesser quality.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

Cool, that seems to have done it, cheers.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

try opening up the project and re-rendering (cmnd R)

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

OK I’m guessing that seeing as you’re logging and capturing, you’re ingesting P2 media or similar?

If you’re ingesting P2, then you can do what you need via P2 Manager, whereby you can set i/o points and basially change as much of the meta data as you like.

If it’s not P2, I’m sure there’s some kind of equivalent out there.

good luck.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

Have you used the camera before?

Are you connecting the camera before you boot up Final Cut?

If the answer is yes to both of these, try another cable.

If the answer is no to the first question, then try another camera, if the answer is no to the second question, then connect and turn on the camera before you boot up Final Cut.

good luck.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

I think you’re ok right up till the end of your post, where you say “In the future I would also like to edit 1080i and perhaps 1080p footage, again, via Pro-Res probably coming from the canon 7D or 5D.”

For 1080 footage the imac will probably start to struggle, and you’ll find the firewire sluggish as well.

Ideally you want a Mac Pro (or equivalent) with a minimum of 2 internal drives, that way you can take advantage of internal esata connections. Also you’ll be able to add an esata card (if there’s no port) and use an esata external drive as well, which will make a huge difference.

As far as conversion rates are concerned, I’m not sure but I’d imagine with the set up your talking of, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem with SD footage.

I think the main question you have to ask yourself is how much HD footage am I going to be ingesting and editing?

If the answer is a lot, hold out and splash out a bit more money on a Pro. I know it hurts, but not as much as buying an imac then realising it’s not good enough.

good luck.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

Try Rafael’s solution, before you try disk warrior go into your projects folder and double click on each and every project opening up one at a time to see if that works.

Also your scratch should be separate from your boot up disk, if you don’t have another internal disk, get an external and make that your scratch, as this will avoid potential problems in the future.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

That’s cool John,

As I said I’m no RAID expert but if you read this post https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/200/884114 it might give you a bit more insight as to where to go with your RAID set up.

I don’t have a RAID set up yet because I don’t need one and don’t have the cash, but I’m sure the time will come soon and I’ll be interested to see how you got on.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Roli Rivelino]

Hi Ian,

To answer your first question; yes, you will definitely notice the difference, stuff that your old laptop had to spend minutes rendering your Pro will not even break stride in previewing. I’m assuming that your dual 2.26 is the new Pro? If it is a second hand one, then I would go for a quad core as this again makes a massive difference in render times/effects previews, etc.

To answer your second question, when setting up make sure you get two internal drives. I’m not sure what the standard size for the boot drive is at the mo for the Pro, but it should be around 320 gig, I would then ask them to stick another 1TB drive in there (whether you upgrade to a 1TB for your boot drive is up to you).

Also you’ll need a minimum of 4gb RAM, though the more the merrier.

Then when you install FCP your boot drive (program drive) will store your project files, make a folder called final cut projects.

Then from within FCP system preferences, you’ll have to set up your 2nd drive as your scratch, this is to ensure maximum performance. The media files stored on your scratch will be fairly large, hence going for the 1TB 2nd drive.

Keep your external monitor and make sure you have an NVidia graphics card installed.

There are of course a million other things you can do to your system to make it faster, better, sexier, but this should keep you happy until you do start to stray into Spielberg’s territory!

good luck.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100