[Terri Brantz]

Thanks for your prompt response! Right now, the card coming out of the Mac is a Media-100 proprietary card, with an ENORMOUS tool bar thing that all of the components plug into. When I get rid of M100, that card won’t work, so I need an option. Since I teach in a school, and this is for our (poor) studio, I need a relatively cheap fix, too– is there something less pricey than the AJA? I just checked a bit and found cards for $2000 and more– ouch… Thanks for any suggestions!
Terri in Wyo. 🙂

[Terri Brantz]

Thanks for your info on the tutorials– I can’t access the link in your previous post because apparently it’s a Mac file and (sigh) my district won’t allow Macs to be connected to the internet. This is the message I receive, suggesting I purchase a program to convert it–
“File Type: Macintosh Bin-Hex Packaged File

File Extension: .hqx

Description: Macintosh Bin-Hex files are files that are packaged for download over the internet. ”

I’ll have to see if I can access it on my laptop at home… thanks for the info! Did I mention I’m in a PC-rules district, and I’m fighting to keep the Macs I have? Even though Macs are industry-standard, and PCs have all kinds of compatibility issues, not to mention virus vulnerability, our tech people don’t support Mac use in any way, shape or form. When I went to the Dark Side and bought a Mac PowerBook Pro for my own use, it’s almost like I converted my citizenship or something.

Anyway– thanks for your info. I appreciate it!

[Terri Brantz]

Thanks for your feedback regarding Media 100— I still haven’t decided which direction to go. I’ve been going through the most basic steps, writing my own tutorial for my students, and they’re finding some success in getting started, which is good. Someone said there were good tutorials on here, but I can’t seem to find them– I went to the Media 100 Tutorials button at the top of the page, and I encountered a series of articles about the program, but not much in the way of tutorials. There was one tutorial on adding back-to-back graphics, but that’s all I found. If there’s another way to find them, I’d appreciate a steering in the right direction.

Some of my basic frustrations have been: a variety of levels of M100 on 4 different computers, resulting in different commands on different machines for the same function; the whole digitizing experience, regarding using different cameras with different audio levels; importing audio separately and trying to turn down the audio tracks on a variety of clips– there must be a way to turn down an entire track? and I’m somehow missing where to create a ‘scene’ of my work on the timeline, so that I have an error-free copy in the bin to revert to if my original gets hopelessly messed up.

I’m also struggling with trying to import different online audio clips, which require a higher version of QuickTime than Media 100 allows. What do you all do in this case? Is there a work-around? Render times are enormous, which is due in part to the ages of my Macs. The students keep double-clicking faster than the program can recognize their click, which results in having to completely shut down M100 and re-open it. They’ve also struggled with the audio imports via firewire– some cameras import in 48,000 Hz, some in 32,000 Hz, and the program jumps back and forth between them, regardless of what they’ve set up in the Preferences and Hardware menu. They can’t ever record their first 20 seconds or so of video, since they have to keep clicking “OK” on the audio window when the program jumps back and forth. A work-around is to record 20 seconds or more of black before they begin, of course, but there must be a solution other than that.

I’ll be using the program during this semester at least, and I’d appreciate any advice you have, other than the “you’re too stupid to use this” variety. Thanks!
Terri in Wyo.