Tom Matthies
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COW Coin
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DaVinci Coin
Forum Replies Created
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The Firewire drives should work just fine for you. Drop the hub and just daisey-chain them like mentioned above. Otherwise a fairly cheap ($50) PCI Firewire card would do the trick. Much cheaper than buying all new drives. Approved or not by Apple, Firewire drives do actually work pretty well. Don’t tell anyone, but I have eight FW drives and an AJA Io on this machine with a pair of FW 800 PCI cards and they have worked flawlessly for almost three years. However, the new system we are installing right now will have a Huge systems raid on it. I wouldn’t worry too much about the Firewire drives. Just loose the hub.
Tom -
Or if it’s a transitional-type effect, you can just Option-drag it from another layer. It will duplicate the transition at the new location.
Tom -
I guess this should be in the classified section but…
Does it include the SCSI card and, if so, what kind is it?
I’m looking for something that will work in a Quad G5, 2.5GHz.
Tom -
I’ve been using a G-Tech 800Gb for about a year now with flawless results. Nice unit! My 2
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You could try using the remote controls for the cameras (if they have remotes!) to do what you describe. Both cameras would respond to the same signal from the remote and switch modes (play or record) at pretty much the same time. Depending on what you are trying to use “synchronized” cameras for…it could work. Just a thought…
Tom -
Try changing your pre roll under the
User Preferences>Editing>Preview Pre-roll pull down menu.
On my system this value is also used to determine the VTR pre-roll amount with a DigiBeta deck. No need to muck around in the presets this way. Witgh a Digibeta I can almost alwys get away with a 2 second pre-roll. Sometimes less if the shot is really tight. Otherwise, the capture now method will work as well…just a little less elegant. I usually also change the post-roll to a small amount for capturing when the shooter didn’t give me much heads or tails on a scene. This will prevent the system from rolling the VTR past the outpoint and through a time code break. Put it back to a longer value when you are done since it also affects your “play around” times as well.
Tom -
For what it’s worth, I use a Firestore FS-3 for capturing from my camera in the field. I then copy the files from the Firestore drive to my RAID. It sounds like this is the same way that you are doing it. I’ve never had any problem exporting QT movies using the copied files, either as a self-contained movie or a reference movie. As long as the files are on-line, it sould work. Just make sure that you are not actually referencing the files off of the Firestore’s drive by mistake. It doesn’t sound like this is the case, but it bears mentioning. I’ve been using the Firestore for over two years now, and it just works. Everytime. It’s a great time saver. I’ll be looking at the FS-100 at the NAB convention is a few weeks. Hopefully Focus Enhancements will be showing it. Hopefuly it will work as flawlesly with the Panny HVX200 as the FS-3 works with my currect camera. 🙂
Tom -
Yes, you could just use the camcorder as a DV bridge and output that to a monitor. I just happen to have an Aja Io in my setyp and it feeds my production monitor. I just feed the output of my camcorder into the Io simply to avoid having to get back behind my equipment rack and move the cables around. You could just feed your camcorder, or any other device-like a Canopus ADVC100, into your monitor and it should work fine. I assumed that you had an Io in your system somewhere since this was posted in the Io forum.
Tom -
I found a kind of a way around the issue. I go out from PhotoShop CS2 via Firewire to my camcorder. I have the S-video out from the camcorder going to my Io. Usually there will be a conflict between the two and the Firewire bus, but I found that if you open the Io control panel, set it to S-video input to shot what’s coming out of the camera and then quit out of the Io control panel application, CS2 can then send the Firewire preview to the camcorder. With the Io still powered up (and the control panel closed down) it will still pass a signal in whatever configuration it was in when the Control Panel app. was closed down. In other words it will allow CS2 to send the video preview to the camera and then the camera to send it thu the Io to my production monitor. It’s a bit confusing, but it works great. The preview from CS2 isn’t really high quality, but I gives you an idea what a graphic is going to look like when it goes to video.
Tom -
Thanks for the info. I went to their website. Very interesting solution to the problem. A few questions. The PCI express control card works well? The few cards out there now seem to get mixed reviews. Are all of the drives powered from the G5 power supply and if so, does it handle the extra power load-OK? How about heat buildup and the CPU controlled fans & different zones within the case?
Otherwise, a cool solution that I’m going to check into in a little more detail.
Thanks for the tip!
Tom