[Tom Brooks]

Bob,
Although I’m fairly new to Final Cut, I did a lot of research before buying. You need a RAID of some sort to edit anything more than regular ole DV25. We started out with a G-RAID firewire 800 1-Terabyte drive. I felt it was a stopgap when we bought it, but it has been great. It’s two 500GB drives in a neat little case that matches the G5 and it’s all set up as RAID-0. The RAID setup gives it the throughput to play out multiple layers of DV25, DV50 or 8-bit UC. It seems to do all that is claimed of it. You can’t find a simpler system, and so far, it has worked flawlessly. We just connected it to the built in FW800 port on the G5 and started editing. There are a number of other brands that now make two-drive RAID systems that mimic the G-TECH. You can find them at places like FirewireDirect.com, Mac-sales.com (I’ve dealt with both and was happy) and many other very good suppliers.

Since then, I’ve had to do some DVCAM edits, so I’ve added another Firewire 400/800 card to allow the drive and the deck to be on different data busses. This whole separate bus thing is important. Basically, you should keep only one major video device on a Firewire bus at a time. In my case, the G-RAID Firewire drive is on the built-in Firewire-800 port and a camcorder or VTR comes in on the separate Firewire PCIe card. Two video devices = two data busses.

There are many steps up from this mimimum configuration. SATA would be my next choice. The new Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P host adapter looks good. This card allows you to connect multiple sets of external drives with a simple, fairly secure cable system. With this system, you are using the faster PCI Express data path. This type of drive can be used all the way to uncompressed HD if properly configured. You can find SATA RAID drive arrays containing anywhere from two to 12 or more drives. More drives in a RAID usually means more speed. On the other hand, two fast SATA drives in a RAID-0 set will be fast enough for most any standard def work, with the possible exception of 10-bit uncompressed. SATA systems are not quite as simple to set up as the preconfigured Firewire 800 drives like the G-RAID.

We haven’t bought a SATA system as yet. The G-RAID has been enough for the moment and I wanted some of the new devices to get into the real world before I purchased them. When we need the space and the speed, we’ll probably start out with a 2.5 Terabyte SATA RAID using the Sonnet card. At that time the G-Tech might become more of a backup device (a pretty fancy backup).

As far as resources go, you can’t beat Creative Cow. I have found a lot of helpful info about Final Cut and various drives at the other websites I mentioned above and also at http://www.lafcpug.org, sonnettech.com, kenstone.net, barefeats.com (links to many drive makers), and larryjordan.biz. You can find all these sites by starting at Creative Cow.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.2, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

We’re using Kona LHe. This card has HD capability also, which will become useful for us in the near future. Have only had it a couple months. So far, everything has been great. Deck control is RS-422, handled by the Kona card. Very smooth and responsive. I’m still in the process of calibrating frame accurate edits. To date, we have not needed to insert into an existing Beta master.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.2, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

Ok, I was coming at it from the wrong angle. Found out from Shane’s Stock Answer #18 and then the manual how to do an Edit to Tape. A guy can ask the dumbest questions while learning a new edit platform on the run. But gimme a break, the manual is about a third of a meter thick. Love the Cow.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.2, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

I appreciate your thoughts. I haven’t had the system long enough to have made a digital tape master yet–so I haven’t even pondered where the tone should be set. Everything has gone directly to DVD or other compressed file formats. I felt that my DVDs were running a little too low in audio level and I needed to capture audio as high as I reasonably could. My Kona card seems to think the ideal digital level corresponding to 0 analog is -18 dB FSD. I’ll go with that and be happy.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.2, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

Hmm. I did read that Kona2 FAQ, but it didn’t hurt to read it again–right down to the LAST paragraph, which pretty much answers my question.

When Log and Capture is open, the Kona analog audio is simply E-E and there is no control over the level within the board (except by changing the setting in the Kona Setup tab to +18. which gives you 6dB more level but is not recommended for US broadcast).

In the v.5 FCP log and capture window the new clip audio gain slider is set full up by default and that is labeled as a gain of 1, aka, unity.

I was instructed by the Kona rep to set the Mac system audio input level to 67%. Turns out this has no effect during log and capture, because FCP’s maximum setting of “1” overrides the system setting, and the FCP setting corresponds to 51% in the system setting. It doesn’t go any higher than that and no amount of trying will make it stay at 67.

The trouble with our wonderful information age is that so much of the information conflicts! Anyhow, it all becomes clear in the end. Thanks for the input. You comments helped sort it all out.
-Tom

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.2, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

You can also create text in Photoshop, then convert that to shape (Layer/Text/Convert to Shape). Using the Path Selection Tool (arrow), you can then draw a box around the shapes to select them, then select Edit/Copy. These shapes or paths can then be pasted into After Effects and used as masks or in the ways you describe in the tute. The nice thing about this is that you can modify the shapes of the letters or arrange them any way you want in Photoshop before they are copied and pasted into AE. The modified shapes can also be used to “Create Custom Shape” in Photoshop, giving you access to the whole arrangement any time you need it. It’s a fast way to make customized text shapes and combinations of text shapes that can be used as masks or paths in AE.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.1.6, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia 7800, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

Do a search on “zit removal?.” Chris Smith has a great method.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.1.6, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia 7800, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

I guess it’s worth a try, even though I only have the one version. I’ll let you know. Thx.

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.1.6, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia 7800, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

Is MainConcept the encoder used in Sorenson Squeeze?

[Tom Brooks]

If you’re going to optimize the picture in Photoshop, why not make it exactly the frame size of your output video or sequence rather than 2X (assuming you’re not going to zoom or move the graphic, of course)? Isn’t that 2X also “wasted” on the sequence?