[Todd Gillespie]

Hi Chris,
I love my Road Rags kits. I do NOT have the kit from your link, but I do have all the components.
I don’t use my RR for shaping source light as much as cutting down Sunlight and bouncing sunlight.
I’ve found that I prefer the larger 24″-36″ frames.
I was trying to figure out if it’s a good price…$300 for the RR kit, $150 per C-stand @ 2, Minigrips, case…yeah, it’s a good price.

As I said, I use the RoadRags as a bounce too, so I ordered the silver reflector as well. Since I have 2 RR kits, it really helps with outdoor interviews. I can use one to cut down the sunlight (used for the kicker). add some fill light with a bounce reflector, then I’ll use my Kinos (w/ daylight tubes for the key) -almost the exact set up you have.
The MiniGrips are cool and very useful with other stands, but you don’t need them when using the C-Stands since they come with a Gobo head.

I think they are a much better investment than traditional flags/reflectors. They’re more portable, more durable (since you can’t poke through them when storing them), and don’t require a lot of space to hold or store.

BUT, if you are a one-man show, it’s still a lot of weight to add to your setup. The C-stands are still big and heavy, by comparison. Since I don’t have everything in a case like that, I don’t know how easy it loads.

But you can’t go wrong with the Road Rags.

Hope this helps,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

[Dave Potts] “Is there a way to view your comps from a custom perspective (3d view) and rotate around in the comp window as you are working?”
yes, under the active camera pull down -custom view (but the layer needs to be 3D first)

[Dave Potts] “Is there a way to easily replace footage or stills once they are loaded into a comp? (Switch one object for another)”
Yes, rt click on any file, footage,etc “replace footage”

[Dave Potts] “Can you work from inside the project flowchart view, or is this just for an overview?”
This one I’m not so sure of… I don’t believe so, I think is just a graphical chart, but not a workable interface.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

This can happen to a lot of users.
Usually it’s an issue with the HD, reformatting it usually solves it. Occasionally I’ve found that I’ll need to trash FCP prefs then restart before it start performing correctly.
it’s an issue with allocating disk space. If you wait long enough (sometimes a LONG time) FCP ususally figures out to take off the unused disk space.
Unfortunately, you don’t know when it’s going to happen until it does. But having a 40gig drive is a little on the small side. It doesn’t take long for you to go ‘through’ the entire drive. Once you do, the drive can become too fragmented. Even though you might be emptying your trash as you go, a small drive will become fragmented quickly.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

It sounds like you are saving/have saved more than one project (media) to the same place. A 10 min project should take up around 1.5gigs, depending on efx, rendering, etc. BUt 40 gigs seems a little high. You need to look in the capture scratch folder to see if you recognize different video files hiding in there. If it looks OK, then you should check your other folders to see which ones have a lot of gigs in them.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

…Tom get’s Todd’s rebound a makes a slam dunk!
LOL

Just for a little more detail why. Although USB2 has enough speed to use as a video capture device, Firewire also carries across the timecode info.
Tom, correct me if I’m wrong here, but USB cables cannot do that.

BTW, are you working on a FCP 5 book?

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

You can’t capture using a USB cable with FCP. You need to use a FireWire cable.

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

You’re dancing around in circles a little bit…yes it’s cheaper to buy a ‘cheap’ PC than a Mac.
But if you have limited funds, why are to trying to squeeze a PC purchase? Wouldn’t it be better to buy a newer Mac: one you’re saving yourself in buying a copy of AE for the PC ($800-$1,500). Second if you buy a Mac, then your still can use it for FCP.
If you really want to get a PC speed demon for AE, then you’d be spending as much as a MAC, it would just be faster.

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Are you recompressing the footage with your final render? If you rendered out a movie with the DV codec, then used that movie back in AE, then made a final render with the same file, that won’t look so good.

Usually my workflow is that I keep the ‘movie’ as uncompress as possible until the final encoding. So if I was you, I’d skip the DV export and instead render out either as uncompressed or as animation codec. Then encode to MPEG from that file. The DV codec is a horrible codec and will loss a lot of infomation. So if your MPEG encoding is looking at a higher quality movie, then it will have a higher quality results.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hi There,
It’s always a good idea to search the archives for your question before you post one yourself. Usually you’ll find someone has already had the exact same question as you.
You’ll see someone ask this very question less than a week ago.

https://creativecalf.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=871461

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production

[Todd Gillespie]

Hello,
from reading the tread, I think I’m missing something?
But to answer your question: You CAN record to tape while digitizing through firewire as well.
This is more of a XL-1 question-Canon Forum than a FCP quesiton though. I think 🙂
I believe Tom was speaking to the fact that you will NOT have matching timecode-So the digitizing footage of the Mac will NOT match the timecode from the tape. But it’s a very common pratice to digitze straight to your computer. It difinately saves a step.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production