[Uli Plank]

Yes, the FW800 bus is not that much faster than the FW400 on both the G4 PB and the G5 desktops, but it still is. OTOH, even the FW400 bus is not used to it’s limit with a single drive, only a small RAID can really make full use of it.

And, to get back to the initial question, Scott should be fine using DVCPro HD on an Apple laptop with a small RAID, even with FW400. An interesting option for better throughput on the new MacBook Pro (even the 15″ model) will be that card for the new card slot introduced at NAB to attach S-ATA drives. It should be way fast enough for DVCPro HD, since there’s no load on the FW bus other than the playback device.

Hope this helps,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Hi Kerry,

of course you are giving the right explanation. I was trying to keep it simple. Technically speaking, the ferrite core is dampening the cable when it might act as a tuned circuit for certain frequencies, so it’s weakening it’s resonance for incoming signals and cable reflections alike.

BTW, one of the worst sources of electromagnetic pollution these days are cell phones. I suppose everybody has already heard the typical sound of a nearby phone on their stereo or iPod headphone by now.

Respectfully,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

For very high frequencies a simple cable is a very complex arrangement of capacitors and coils. This can cause reflections and subsequent enhancement or weakening of some parts of the signal. Think of the ferrite core as something like a sponge that cleans up undesirable ‘dirt’ signals.

Hope this helps,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Hi Lars,

while I haven’t tried it with an iPod, the only difference between 4-pin and 6-pin FW connectors is the lack of power supply via the cable, the data will be there.

A ferrite core is just an additional measure to make high-speed connnections more realiable, quite a few of the FW cables lying around in my studio had ferrite cores on them from the manufacturer. In many cases a cable without one will work as well.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

We compared five small HD camcorders and to me the HVX 200 had the most solid feel of the whole bunch. It’s design may look like that of a Krasnogorsk (an old Russian 16mm camera), but it is probably as sturdy too.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Hi Rainer,

I’m currently experimenting with HD log to use at least 50p in FCP. Will report soon.

Apart from that, if you plan on buying a MacTel machine, Premiere Pro with Raylight might be a temporary solution for you.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Raylight plus Premiere Pro works pretty well for me, as opposed to Final Cut Pro, which is not supporting European framerates (yet?). The big davantage is the possibility of working with proxies, so you can edit HD even with a relatively decent PC.

If Apple is not giving us 25/50p soon, I might change to this workflow, and I’m saying this as a diehard Apple user. No that we have double-boot 😉

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

While it’s great that we can do interval shooting without wear-n-tear on a tape mechanism at all, may I suggest a different solution?
I got very good HD time-lapse footage from a Canon S50 and a laptop using Canon’s remote software (free with the camera). It’s easier to connect with a huge battery and the laptop has it’s built in UPS anyway…

Sometimes I made more than a full day this way.

Reagrds,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

Sorry, Jan,

that wasn’t me 😉

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.

[Uli Plank]

I suppose Zacklg is referring to the image processing.

My two cents: this is highly dependent on your scene and lighting, it’s very hard to give any general advice. In my impression the standard settings of the HVX are already pretty ‘cinematic’ as opposed to HDV camcorders. You might want to reduce the edge sharpening a tad further, but from then on you need very good knowledge of all the options, a good field monitor plus waveform/vectorscope.

It pays to make yourself familiar with these possibilities, since the narrower latitude of CCD plus the 8 bit recording limit the possibilities of tweaking in post, as we are used to in traditional film. Try to adjust to your intended ‘look’ before shooting as far as possible.

Regards,

Uli

Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.