[Tom Matthies]

What horror stories are you referring to? I’ve been running the Firestore for almost three years now and it’s been rock solid in performance although I did blow out my Firewire bus on the G5 by accidentally shorting out the cable while plugging in the disk while it was powered up. My bad and I can’t blame it on the Firestore. Just my own stupidity and lack of patience.
Otherwise, it’s worked great without any issues.
Heck, all this talk of tapeless acquision. I’ve been doing it that way for years now!
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Hi again.
Nope, the FS3 balances the camera nicely. I have a good sized lens on the front end making it a bit front heavy to begin with. The FS3 on the back actually makes the camera a little easier to use. I’m running NP1-type batteries on the back end rather than a big AB-type battery so it’s really not as back heavy as you might suppose.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Fast enough disks for playback? Abort on dropped frames turned off?
What kind of video codec) are you playing back and from what kind of disk drives?
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Depending on the codec, I sometimes have problems getting it to playback on both the viewer and the external monitor at the same time. For instance, when using the animation codec, I can get it to play in the viewer in I disable the external video out. If I turn it back on, it will play on the external monitor but freeze on the viewer. Just kind of got used to it being that way over the years and really didn’t think about it much before reading this post. I’m just used to toggling the external video on and off using the f12 key. Kind of automatic these days and I don’t even think about it much anymore. Hmmm…
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

A few years ago I had a Canopus ADVC-100. The ONLY format that it would play back consistantly was DV25. It was unable to playback any other codec at all. It would freeze on the current frame when I played any video other than DV25. It sounds pretty much like what you are describing. I’m guessing that it might be tour problem. I bought an AJA IOLA to replace the Canopus.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Yep. I use it weekly. I’ve hung a Firestore FS3 on the back and record mostly to disk these days. Really speeds up the editing process. Just copy to the raid and start editing. It’s a great time saver when I shoot in DV. Always record to tape for backup as well..
I’m also still using a tried and true BetaSP camcorder as well.
Just got a nice new Sony XDCam HD at work though. Might see myself getting spoiled soon.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

I too have a JVC DV-700 camera and see the same blanking problems as well. Just the design of the camera, I guess.
In the old days, horizontal blanking was fully adjustable by tweaking the “pots” inside the camera. These days, most of these adjustments are done by software tweaks that are often not accessible by the user. Ah, progress!
FWIW.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Or…
simply make a clock using your favorite graphics program & FCP (even the text generator would work for this) and then export it as a self contained QT movie. Just drag the resulting movie over your different exercise time lines and reuse the same movie for each sequence. You can do a luma key to put it over the video or don’t render the original “clock” time line and export it as an “animation” movie and it will retain the alpha channel.
Shouldn’t take much time to do and you can use it over and over.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Depending on the DVD you’re making, I’d avoid the DV50 codec. If you are just making a “standard” DVD for playback in a DVD player, it will work just fine. If you’re making a data DVD with a Quicktime file for playback on a computer, avoid the DV50 codec since most if not all PC’s cannot play it back DV50 without a fairly costly codec plugin.
Also, if you make a Quicktime file for playback, make sure that you enable the “High Quality” box in the Quicktime player’s properties tab. It will make a huge difference in how good the picture looks. Better yet, go into the Quicktime preferences and enable the “Use high quality video setting when available” setting. Then, when you make a Quicktime movie, the high quality flag will be automatically set.
Using the animation codec with it’s very high data rate can easily choke an older PC or one that cannot sustain playback/processing of high data rates.
Also rendering in YCrCb is the same as rendering in YUV. That’s the option given in Final Cut’s preferences I believe.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

What kind of camera was the video shot with in the field? Many cameras, especially analog cameras like BetacamSP, will have the black edges along the sides of the frame. These are not mistakes but are usually just the “blanking” of the camera. Most cameras have a blanking adjustment that will purposely bring in the edges of the video. It’s a throwback to the analog, linear editing days. Blanking can also get added depending on how the video was captured. Some capture cards, again, especially ones that capture analog signals can add this blanking while capturing the video. As they say, “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
Depending on your setup this isn’t unusual to see.
How to get rid of it? A slight blow up of the video? Depending on how and where the video is being shown, it might now even show on a screen or a TV monitor. You usually only notice it while playing on a computer in a window on the desktop.
Tom