[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you both for the help. I’ve been experimenting all day and it seem to work if I offline in DV25 and online from the UC digibeta. Been switching back and forth just to make sure and it seems to be fine. Thanks again!

[Samuel Frazier]

I’m sorry, that’s exactly what I should have done. I’m just not used to the whole media manager thing, but I’ll give that a go. Just to make sure, after I do this I can reconnect the media to the digibeta for the online after I’ve compliled a DV25 edit, right?
Thanks again!

[Samuel Frazier]

Jerry, thank you again for all the help. Unfortunately, I bought a mini to check out FCP and planned on using the external usb2/firewire drive in the usb2 port. I didn’t know about the Mac usb2 issues and I don’t think I can upgrade anything as the mini wasn’t designed for this kind of thing.
So, if you had to chose b/t these options which one would you take?

1- a firewire drive daisy chained like I mentioned or
2- a usb2 drive on one port and the usb hub with the keyboard, mouse, and shuttle pro in the other port

Thanks again for all the help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Sorry Jerry, it’s late and I’m a bit sleep deprived. I’m guessing you mean ATA to FireWire bridges are fast enough for capturing. Right?
Just thought I read here a month or so ago that daisy chaining a deck to a firewire drive to the computer’s firewire did result in a big speed drop off. I believe that drop off was supposed to be the killer for capturing. Strange, before now I’ve never heard any complaints about USB2 for capturing. Actually, it was advised for use Vegas editing software with laptops if you needed to capture in the field and didn’t have a secondary hard drive built in.

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you both for the advice. I will have to do some reformatting tomorrow. I was wondering what was wrong with USB2 though. I figured it would probably be faster than the setup with the firewire from the mini out to the firewire external drive, then out from there to the transcoder, then its s-video out to the external monitor.
The thought was the external drive could use one of the mini’s built in USB2 ports and I’d connect the keyboard, mouse, and shuttle pro2 to the other port via a usb2 hub. But, I guess the extra speed I was looking for would only happen if the 2 ports of the mini are on a different bus, right?
Is there another reason to avoid USB2? Thanks again for the help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Rojo is a pretty cool place, and walking distance for me. But yeah, I’m enthusiastic b/c I know pretty well everyone who goes to these meetings and I’ve been fighting a losing battle for years to get some respect for Vegas. So now finally they’ll get a look at what Vegas can do.
See you there!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you everyone for the help. Yes, my hope was to preserve as much of the resolution as possible by doing an anamorphic transfer. However, if it leads to poor letterboxed viewing, which would probably be how the film will be shown in festivals, then obviously an anamorphic transfer won’t make any sense.
I’m shooting super 16mm which is a 1:1.66 aspect ratio I believe. My DP advised cropping it further in post to 1.85. This would still result in some bars on a 16×9 (1.78) TV, but would preserve more resolution I would think if I did an anamorphic transfer. Not sure if any of this makes a difference to my situation though.
I probably won’t have the money after production concludes to do a hardware conversion though. So I was wondering, is the AE conversion really good enough, or does it lose every 4th line of resolution or have weird artifacts? Don’t supppose there are any examples online, are there?
Anyway, thank you all again for your help.

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you all for the input. I think my plan at this point will be to buy a Lacie Extreme extrenal drive and use it for capturing when I capture the footage from a friend’s G5. Then I’ll empty out my old acom firewire/usb2 hard drive and use that for the dv25 editing. I’ll have to get something to dump off the stuff on the drive right now, but it seems like the wisest plan at this point.
Thanks again for the help!

[Samuel Frazier]

Thank you so much for responding while the whole NAB craziness is taking place!

Anyway, I spoke with the colorist at the lab today who promised me that anamorphic transfers do not crop any part of the image. It just squeezes it in and I can unsqueeze it later in post. So, I should have the same options as far as repositioning framing when I crop to 1:1.85. Also, I would think I could still make those widescreen DVDs you mentioned that would come close to filling a 16×9 screen (only a tiny bit of letterboxing as I’d be 1:1.85). They would still automatically add letterboxing on 4×3 screens, right? If so, and if I could just render out a letterboxed version from FCP if I ever needed a letterboxed version for Digibeta or Beta SP, then is there really no reason not to transfer S16 footage anamorphic?

Thanks again for all your time and help! Man, I sure do appreciate it.

[Samuel Frazier]

Shane,
Don’t feel like you were pounding your point. I thought you were very curteous and what you wrote was very educational for me. I appreciate it. Sorry if I didn’t make it clear, but I was looking to send this short to festivals. So I would send out DVD screeners and probably send out some form of Beta tapes or HD tapes for viewing at the festival (if it ever gets accepted somewhere). So I was looking for a workflow that would yield the best results for both Digibeta tapes and DVDs.

Guy,
Thank you so much for your help. I’ll try that workflow. About the anamorpic options, that’s damn good advice, but here too I get a bit confused. We’re shooting super 16mm, but my DP (who does a lot more than just DP work) suggests cropping it further to 1:1.85. Not sure if I’ll go that far, maybe just 16:9. But, and please correct me if I’m wrong, there’s no reason not to telecine the footage anamorpic, right? Otherwise, you’d just be losing resolution I’d think. If it’s telecined anamorpic, can’t I always just go back and make a letterboxed version? My friend who made the feature on super 16 did it this way I believe. So I’ll get it anamorpic unless I’m wrong about something here, and please tell me if I am.
Thanks again for the help! The time and advice of people like y’all is invaluable to me.