[Ross Spears]

Shane, Here is the computer I propose to purchase:

Apple 27″ iMac with Retina 5K Display (Mid 2017), CPU: 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7 Quad-Core, RAM | Storage: 8GB RAM | 3TB Fusion Drive, GPU: AMD Radeon Pro 580 (8GB)

Is this the type of computer you are suggesting?

Thanks, Ross

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[Ross Spears]

Shane, Here is the computer I propose to purchase:

Apple 27″ iMac with Retina 5K Display (Mid 2017), CPU: 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7 Quad-Core, RAM | Storage: 8GB RAM | 3TB Fusion Drive, GPU: AMD Radeon Pro 580 (8GB)

Is this what you are suggesting?

Thanks, Ross

Never Give Up

[Ross Spears]

Shane! Thanks for the insights, information, and suggestions! I am very much obliged to you for keeping me in the “filmmaking” ballgame. It’s all I can do to keep up with my content/subject matter on these films. Without your help I would be truly at sea in managing the technical sides too!

Many thanks, Ross

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[Ross Spears]

Shane, as for the camera, i just bought the Sony Pxw-X70 Professional Xdcam Compact Camcorder. Does that help with more info? As for the format, what do you suggest?

Thanks for all this info. It helps a lot!!

ROSS

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[Ross Spears]

P.S. I would like to work with full resolution if I can!

Never Give Up

[Ross Spears]

Thanks Shane! Here are my answers:

I almost always work with Macs, including my AVID work. For me LONG FORM means feature length or short series — i.e. from 2 to 4 hours in all. I will be shooting and also gathering footage from several sources — probably will have 100-200 hours to work with in all by the end.

As for cameras, I just purchased a SONY pro CamCorder for $2000 that is capable of shooting 4K. It records onto San Disk cards — the largest and best possible kinds. I like the Sony camcorder because its so small that I can still carry it around, it shoots in low light, and has a lot of focal length too. So far I have loved the footage, but I can’t digitize it until I get the right editing setup. I am hoping that you can tell what to do??!!

I still have my Sony EX1, which I used to shoot a lot of the previous films — a 3-film series called The Truth About Trees. You can see some of the footage on the website and YOuTube channel called TruthAboutTrees TV (or just TREE TV).

Thanks for your help1

Ross

Director, AGEE FILMS

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[Ross Spears]

I was having a similar problem a few years ago. I am also using MC 4. My test narration track was not exporting at the proper level, although it looked and played correctly in AVID. We solved the problem when we began exporting the sound at 44.1 khz; size – 8, 2 channels. Also uncompressed. Hope this helps.

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[Ross Spears]

Thanks very much. Two questions: Where do I get the AMA plug-in? From AVID?? Where do I get the Sony plug-in? From Sony? Will they still support MC 4?

If that doesn’t work, what else can I try? Could the color neg film be transferred to Quicktime movie and I could possibly import that?

Thanks, Ross Spears

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[Ross Spears]

Thank you very much. That seemed to work fine!

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[Ross Spears]

We discovered the solution! As usual, it was pretty simple, and I felt a tad silly not to have already thought of it! When doing the EXPORT, and then setting the Options, we simply discovered that we should click SAME AS SOURCE, rather than Custom. We also clicked “Use Avid DV Codec.” When we did this, the export proceeded smoothly and very fast (compared to our previous Custom method. The test narration came through at the same level that we had mixed it.

By the way, we also rendered all effects beforehand, and we mixed down the Audio and Video tracks. The Quicktime movie was excellent and we will now be sending it to our composer, Kenton Coe.

Thanks for all your suggestions!!

Never Give Up