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Walter, thanks for your input. You guys are awesome! Where else can a person get the best advice available so quickly? I need the investment to last 3-5 years. Our present G5 is 5 years old, still going strong , but not up to much HD (Canon HV30 30P works, beautiful cinema display picture, but strobes significantly with pans, reason maybye codec busting or graphics card? Static shots with limited motion beautiful!). I will feed my experience back to the Cow as I can; maybe it will help someone else.
Regards and thank you all!
Terry

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Thanks, David and Scott;
David, I have not noticed a problem with my 2 gigs of ram for FCP, however the ram preview on AE Pro is limited to about 17 seconds. With my average AE clip at 30-50 seconds, that is a lot of effort to preview the whole thing. I have heard that Mac likes at least 1 gig of ram per processor, but I am no expert.
I will probably get AJA LHi board and HDTV to start, per your advice. My concern is that in the SD world that I am familiar with, my Sony 800 line Trinitron is self-calibrating via blue screen/SMPTE bars, etc., but in the HD world, there are so many display options that there is a concern that FCP output will look great to me in grading, and like crap to my client’s quality engineers, or to final viewers. Do the waveform displays in FCP have any usefulness? Boulder Digital Arts has already given us training in using those screens in FCP.
Thanks again to you both for your advice.

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Hello, David;
Thank you for the rapid and, as usual, thoughtful response. I have a AJA IO for our present (aging) G5 dual 2 gHz FCP system and love it. The telephone and driver support from AJA has also been outstanding. I was mainly asking if you can get away with using the LHi without the “calibration” feature of the MX02, and still use a HDTV, or sans the MX02, need a more professional (read that expensive) monitor such as a offering from FSI. I am not totally aware (yet) of the technical requirements of my intended clients, but I know I need to deliver quality grading or I will be staying in the SD production world forever! Thanks again for your insight!
Terry

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I have had a G5 system running FCP (now Studio 2), Photoshop, and AE Pro for over five years with constant internet access and have never had a problem with bad stuff coming in, like in the PC world. The only precaution I took was to not set up E-mail on the Mac, since we have that on a Dell 530 workstation that has Norton Security on it. We also have a hardware firewall hub that serves both workstations, so that might have helped. I routinely do software updates on the Mac, which is nice, and get technical help on all applications online or search for answers online (like for instance on the COW!) when I get stuck. I heard a long time ago that antivirus software slows down any computer’s functions because it has to individually examine and filter any I/O, including hard drive transfers. Maybe computers are fast enough now or have some other features that make that notion obsolete.
I hope this helps.

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David;

Thank you for the rapid and thoughtful response, as usual. Before Jerry Hoffman turned me onto the Cow, I didn’t know that all you sharing professionals were out there. Abundantly glad I found out.

Terry

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Hello Sam;

You did not say what format you recorded in; my HV30 can record in 5 different formats (DV 4X3, DV 16X9, HDV, HD “24P” and HD “30P”). I think that any HD format is actually recorded on the tape as HDV, so you have to use one of those easy setups. The only format that I have put in FCP6 is HD 24P or 30P, but it is still HDV on the tape. See the Apple support paper on the subject, such as https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2410?viewlocale=en_US,
or search the internet for topics like “HV30 to FCP.” That’s how I found the above thread, and it got my footage in. It plays jerky on my G5 during pans, but it plays, and it is HD.
Hope this helps.

Terry

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[Graeme Nattress] “I don’t know about other people, but I’m looking forwards to the challenges, finding the solutions and making interesting programmes.”

I couldn’t agree more, Graeme! Hopefully one of the first things that happens when the HVX-200 is released is that there is a comparison of it with HDV cameras and the VariCam, etc., to establish a baseline of what to expect and what can be done to optimize the acquisition from the camera. I am also interested in how the camera will contribute to better keying than DV supports. Other than that, it is up to us to tell the story. If head clogs become a thing of the past, so much the better!

Thanks for your support.

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[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “More later,”

Thanks, Jan (and Luis for your earlier response)! A great use of this forum is that those of us without unlimited budgets can get a sense of direction to help plot our future course(s). Keep it coming!

Regards!

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Touche, Jan!

Speaking for myself, I just hope there will be an affordable solution (for us little guys) that, if by some miracle our stuff makes it to the “Silver Screen” or equivalent, the A/V quality will contribute to the story rather than detract from it.

Thanks from all of us for Pana’s and your contributions to that end.

Regards.