[Ron Moody]

[Filip Vandueren] “Cheaper Hardware is what prompted this idea, I think.”

Since I’m the one that offered the idea, I am uniquely qualified to tell you exactly what prompted it.

I’ve been a loyal Windows user from the beginning. I even remember DOS and taught the accounting office Lotus 123. I remember Word when it was graphical before it came to Windows; the first app I used with a mouse even before Windows was announced.

Windows 2000 was my favorite Microsoft OS since it was more stable than 95 and 98, and was in fact a faster than both. Adobe forced me to move to XP when I upgraded to the CS suite. In time, XP came to be a stable OS, although only about half as fast (by my subjective testing) as Win2K.

So that’s my history and my heritage. I believe I have a right to my opinion and here it is.

Microsoft will not gain another of my hard earned dollars. Linux is better, faster, and stronger on every level.

I have used and like Apple products. I can’t say I was a real fan prior to OSX, but with my prior exposure to Unix, I quickly realized the value OSX brought to the fray. It’s as good or better than anything else out there, but then the same can be said for Linux.

While it’s a distinctly different branch, Linux shares the same foundation as OSX. The main difference is the approach of Apple via Steve Jobs’ unique perspective that says ‘We know what you want and need better than you do’ and Linux that says ‘We’re all in this together to make the best possible product.’

It’s not about cost of hardware, it’s a philosophy, and it works. I will never give away my freedom of choice to a people that ‘know what’s best for me.’ That’s my job alone and I’m not surrendering it to anybody. Not even Apple.

This is not an attempt to start a flame war. And I won’t play if one begins. But I am entitled to my perspective. And that’s why I’ve chosen Linux. I use Windows inside a VM only because Adobe won’t play. And if the Linux community comes out with a competitor before Adobe makes the inevitable choice, that’s the way I will go.

Ron

[Ron Moody]

Here’s my point. I’m not investing in a computer for Vista. I don’t even think it’s worthwhile for XP. My 3.2 cpu with 2G of RAM may not be a barn burner, but it gets the job done most of the time. It’s buggy on occasion, locked up yesterday to the point of forcing a reboot (for example). I like Final Cut on the Mac but you give up so much of the advantage that working fully inside a suite provides. And besides, that suite had its own share of bugs as well.

Even if I could get the CS2 or CS3 suite to run inside Linux, I would do that. I guess I’ve just reached the point after 25 years of Microsoft that I say ENOUGH. I’m not investing any more of my time or money in their products, period.

I wish I could leverage the considerable investment I’ve made in Adobe products elsewhere, but it looks like the Mac is the only alternative. And I won’t use Premiere on the Mac with Final Cut available. I’d move Photoshop and maybe After Effects, but not the suite.

I know what you’re thinking… it’s cheaper to move the suite, but I already have an OSX version of Photoshop CS2 (legal, of course). I got it personally to use on one of the computers at work but I moved to another site that doesn’t have macs.

As far as porting, I would imagine that much of the work has been done for OSX. I realize that user interface is a non-trivial task, but I guess it just seems worthwhile to me. Perhaps it doesn’t to Adobe.

Oh well, competition is a good thing, and there are new products and new suites out all the time. The open source movement has born much fruit and perhaps in time they, or Apple will come out with something to give a viable alternative to Adobe.

ron

[Ron Moody]

Today I got hold of a new canopus advc110.

It worked.

For some reason the other advc110 would capture fine, but apparently will not output from firewire to analog. Last time I got video but no audio, this time nothing at all.

Thanks for swapping ideas.

ron

[Ron Moody]

Thanks for the reply, as well as the attitude of your response. A bit more info…

Audio in the project is clean. I saved the 30 minute project as a series of three ten minute avi’s and combined them back into a thirty minute project on a PC. From there I output the clip to tape via VT4. Audio was clean throughout and will be on our local ABC affiliate on Sunday.

I also tried sending video/audio to camcorder via firewire. Video came through clean but audio not at all. That was on a Cannon GL2.

Although I did not address every statement/question you made, I think you will find that all were answered in the comments above, except for the command 0 command 9 thing. I’ll check that out.

Thanks
ron

[Ron Moody]

The problem is not with audio coming in through the Cannopus. It’s audio from the timeline via firewire TO the Cannopus, and then to analog video and audio out.

ron

[Ron Moody]

I’m monitoring the output via the video monitor. It’s not overmodulated. Like I said in my post, it sounds like a sample rate mismatch.

Audio levels are fine.

Thanks,
ron

[Ron Moody]

Thanks,

It’s version 5.14 and I was on the right clip. I went ahead and turned out the show. The scroll was centered rather than right of center as I would have preferred. I’ll keep playing though.

Thanks again,
ron

[Ron Moody]

No, it didn’t do anything. I also tried moving the ‘pivot point’ (I’m not on the Mac right now and can’t remember what the proper name of the function is), and that both didn’t work and didn’t force a re-render either.

ron

[Ron Moody]

Just had to respond to your last post.

I’ve been with Premiere since computers were barely fast enough to edit non-linear. Ever since Encore came out, I too had high hopes. It’s been nothing but frustration for me. I use it for simple stuff, but it stumbles big-time on video files that Premiere doesn’t even stutter on.

I had high hopes too, and wonder just like you if they will get it right. The funny thing is that Audition is great, but they dropped it from the bundle. Encore has not yet reached good, yet they’re continuing that one. Go figure.

My greatest struggle is whether to give Adobe my hard earned cash to buy the production bundle, or fork out another $500 and get the Final Cut bundle. Yeah, it’s not integrated as well, but the individual programs are (for the most part) a lot better. Exceptions in my opinion are Photoshop of course, Illustrator, and AE. Even with AE though, Motion lets you put out a product and move on to the next one while you’re still playing with AE.

I’m curious how Avid fits into the fight…
Ron

[Ron Moody]

I’m not the authority here, but you are able to export captured mov clips and save them as avi. I don’t see (subjectively anyway) notable quality loss.

I use FCP with Motion and LiveType to turn out announcements, which are then output to an avi file and sent to a projector directly from the hard drive of a PC. In that application, I don’t notice loss but I’m not using it for broadcast or sale, and have never evaluated the process in that light.

But it’s possible. Whether it’s a time saver or waster, I really don’t know. It’s likely though that it wouldn’t save you a whole bunch of time. The only exception to this is if you were able to string a bunch of clips on a timeline (less than ten minutes long in each batch) and export the timeline to a single avi file. If you let the Mac do this in the background, it could save a fair amount of time I suppose.

Anyway… my thoughts.

ron