[Tim Jeng]

Definitely a film maker. Call me ambitious, but one day, I want to be able to enter one of my films into the Sundance Film Festival.
And now that I think of it, I’ll go ahead and see if I can take out a mic loan from my school. Hopefully their reluctant towards me using it.

[Tim Jeng]

Dang, why do mics have to be so pricey!? I guess once I have enough money, I’ll buy the MKH416, but as of now, it is way above my price range.

Thanks for the help!

[Tim Jeng]

Thanks for the advice Mark. But quite frankly, I’ve had experience with Photoshop and to me, it was pretty easy to pick it up (tried a trial version of it in the past).

As far as the mics go, I’ll definitely go for the audio and give those mics a look.

[Tim Jeng]

Interesting take, but as far as microphones go, which type of microphone do you use in which type of settings/situations (ex. boom mics and lavaliers)?

My film will primarily consist of action scenes and dialogue; but for boom mics, what would be a decent setup? So far, I’m looking at the Zoom H1 as the recorder for the audio and everything else (boom mic pole, deadcat, blimp, microphone itself), I’m confused. What would you recommend?

Thanks for the help!

[Tim Jeng]

Thanks for replying. It really did clear up a lot of things.

Re: “I don’t know the specs for your drive, but I’d expect it to be ok for standard def but probably pushing your luck for high def”

I use the Western Digital Elements 2TB USB 2.0 hard drive. If I believe so, it uses the WD Green drives (heard that they have 64MB of cache memory in them), but like you said, USB 2.0 wouldn’t be my best choice. Not so sure what to do with this drive. Maybe use it to back up all of my personal photos, documents, and music? What would be your suggestion?

________________

But regarding your comment on using LaCie drives, how reliable are they? My teacher uses them, but has started to build a dislike for it because a lot of them have already failed in his case.

Even still, what would you recommend that I do? Personally, I consider myself an amateur, but I’m still debating if I should drop a ton of money on an expensive RAID, set up a RAID 1 or RAID 0+1, and have some data redundancy, OR if I should just be buying G-Drives and storing all of my projects onto them w/o having any sort of data redundancy considering I’ll be running through them and storing them on a shelf.

[Tim Jeng]

Thanks for replying Jerry! Really did clear a lot of things up.

But I still have a few questions. (sorry, I really new to FCS)

When you mentioned that the new FCP had ProRes LT, it had me wondering if I could upgrade using the upgrade price. Currently, I have a Volume License (not the Student Version) of FCS 2 installed on my iMac 21.5 from my teacher that installed it for me. Would it be possible for me to upgrade to the next version of FCS, when it comes out, using the upgrade price? Or would I have to buy the whole suite altogether w/o the upgrade price?

Also, how big are ProRes 422 LT versus ProRes 422 files in comparison? Is there that much of a difference in file sizes?

And one more question (this one’s been bugging me ever since I read your reply): How does the whole Final Cut Pro workflow work and how do you store your video files?

I’ve been trying to think how amateurs/professionals store, edit, and manage their profile using FCP. Do they store all of their raw files (ex. .MOV’s and AVCHD files) onto their RAID or external hard drive, set their capture scratch to their project folder on the external HD, and edit everything from that external HD?

Is that why a lot of people use G-Tech drives because of their reliability and speed?

If so, should I be looking forward to investing into one of their RAID’s? And how would I set up my digital workflow? All I own is a Western Digital Elements 2TB hard drive and this SimpleTech 160GB hard drive (I know, it’s pretty puny).

Again, sorry for asking so many questions. I’m still new to this and I want to make sure that I have everything down before making the workflow permanent.

Thanks!

-Tim