[Tim O’grady]

[Jason Brown] “But this new app isn’t for consumers…how many home videos are shot in 4k?”

FCS is capable of doing a lot of things now, but that doesn’t mean everyone uses all of it’s full capabilities. So iMovie will continue to evolve for the consumers while professionals and courageous amateurs will pony up the $299 for FCP and $1000 for FCS, whether they need 4k or not. As someone who teaches both FCP and FCE to students who have never worked with an NLE before, FCE, being so similar to FCP, is not much easier to teach. Maybe someone at Apple finally decided that there’s really only two markets, iMovie for consumers and FCP/FCS for prosumers/pros.

[Tim O’grady]

Here’s my take: (wild, unsubstantiated speculation) Pressure has been mounting for Apple to announce a new, built from the ground up, 64 bit revision of FCP. So they show it off to some key FCP editors to get the word out and create buzz in preparation for an announcement in June of the new, and now available for download, FCP. Then someone at Apple catches wind of Avid’s $995.00 (60% off!) promotion to lure FCP editors away to media composer. That, along with the buzz from the secret meeting, compels them to make the last minute decision to preview, ahead of schedule, the new FCP at NAB, but without the fully finished suite. It’s an uncharacteristically desperate move, but necessary. They can now say that FCP does many of the things media composer does but for $299. At that price point FCP can be downloaded by professionals and amateurs alike, so Final Cut Express gets the axe and they start selling FCP to everyone in June. Meanwhile they continue working on the rest of the suite for debut later this year at the $1000 price point.
Apple editing family: iMovie (iLife) $49 or free with a new Mac, New Final Cut Pro $299, New Final Cut Studio $1000.

One last thing: If you can afford to have both FCP and Media Composer in your arsenal and have the clients to make use of them, then more power to you! But if, as some people have suggested on these forums, you are jumping ship because a relatively short presentation, on the beta version of a major piece of software that isn’t on sale for another three months, didn’t demonstrate every single new feature and didn’t answer every single possible question, then, my friend, that Avid promotion was made especially for you.

[Tim O’grady]

The new maximum size for youtube videos is 1024MB (still 10 minutes). Here’s a good tutorial:
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/you_tube_redux_gary.html

[Tim O’grady]

[debe] “you are stuck using FW drives and a deck or camera on the same FW bus. That’s a recipe for all sorts of headaches.”

It’s true that having a seperate bus for a drive and deck is recommended, but I have not seen all the problems that you have with running both a firewire drive and deck off of the same bus, as I’ve been using that set up for two years and have never felt the need to add another FW card. The Powerbook also comes with two FW ports, but since both the FW 400 & 800 ports are on the same bus, the FW 800 port slows to the slowest device on the bus. This means if you have a deck and a drive attached, the FW 800 port slows to FW 400. So if you need to hook up two devices, the Powerbooks two ports are essentially the same as the iMacs. If you want to use the PBs FW 800 port you need to buy another FW bus, which adds cost to the extra $800. If an editor is only using DV then FW 800 is overkill anyway. I still don’t understand how having a faster procesor, faster hard drive, faster memory, faster frontside bus and possibly a faster graphics card makes an iMac something to futz around with. Again, I disagree with your assesment of the performance of the single FW bus. It seems to me that if the Powerbook had the same processor, memory, etc. specs that the iMac has, PB owners would be thrilled.

Thanks,
Tim

[Tim O’grady]

I don’t own an iMac but I think the fact that it is advertised primarily to non proffessionals may be giving it a bad rap. Talking strickly specs and presumably the ability to run FCP, the iMac seems to me to be the better machine.

iMac G5:
20-inch widescreen TFT active-matrix LCD 1680 x 1050 pixels
2.1GHz PowerPC G5
700mhz Frontside Bus
512MB memory (533MHz DDR2 SDRAM) supports up to 2.5GB
250GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load 8x double-layer SuperDrive
ATI Radeon X600 XT with 128MB DDR video memory
Two FireWire 400 ports; three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 1.1 ports (on keyboard); VGA output(2); S-video and composite video output(2)
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit)
$1,699.00

Powerbook G4:
17-inch TFT widescreen display with 1680×1050 resolution
1.67GHz PowerPC G4 processor
512MB memory (DDR2 PC2-4200 SDRAM running at 333MHz) supports up to 2GB
120GB 7200rpm ATA hard drive
Slot-load 8x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD

[Tim O’grady]

[Walter Biscardi] “$.99 for an iTunes download give you zero rights to anything but to listen to it.”

Not according to Apple.

From the iMovie import page:
“And let

[Tim O’grady]

Too slow.

[Tim O’grady]

Yes, go into Disk Utilities and erase the drive using Mac OS Extended. I don’t own a Lacie drive so I can’t talk to any issues associated with it, but I have seen the same problem with a variety drives straight out of the box.
Hope that helps.

Tim

[Tim O’grady]

I think you’re assuming too much. The program mentioned above is interesting, and attractive for that rare occassion that a file might go missing (for what ever reason), but it’s not something I feel I need, like say Disk Warrior. Just curious, I guess.

[Tim O’grady]

Thanks for the clarification Peter.

Tim