I have changed the title of the thread to better reflect what you
are looking for. I hope some will notice it now...

Thanks, but I think it was better the way it was. The question was already posted under a different heading and went unanswered. That is why I made an individual plea to Steve Mullen.

Regards,
WW

Try sending him an e-mail. If all else failes I will change the title
back for you and reply to make the topic current again. Just drop
me a line. Or if you really think that other line will get the attention
I can change it back right now... Let me know!

Avid XDV analog audio recording--PLEASE HELP! ...pretty please...)
 

I need to get audio into XDV from a minidisc, but I'm not having much luck. I thought my best option would be to simply do an analog record through the mic input on the sound card. I turned off deck control in the record tool and selected microphone as my input. I can hear the minidisc plain as day through the monitors when I do so, but the audio tool doesn't show any reading. I tried recording anyway and when I checked the recorded clip in the bin, it was blank. The sample rate is correct, so I'm mystified as to why this isn't working. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance...

Have you checked so that your Mic-volume isn't muted?
I think Avid turns off mic-boost when it loads.

AVID Free DV
 

I just received an email this evening that AVID Free DV is on the way! I don't know if that is next week or six months from now, but it said in "2003"!

Being a Premiere and Pinnacle user, I'm anxious to try this system out - even if it is a stripped down version. Anyone else trying the free AVID?

I already use 3.5, and will be upgrading to XpressPro when it comes out soon. But the AVID Free is a great way to learn the interface. Lots of people complain that AVID is " not intuitive" especailly when they come over from premiere, (Or have no experience editing FILM) On the other hand, AVID is the "industry standard" by which I mean AVIDS are used the most in Broadcast and FILM Production settings. (Though I have to say FCP is making a huge inroad in the small, indy and commercial market).

XPressFree was announced as a marketing device in response to FCP announcing their version of a stripped down FC... FCXpress.

You see how the marketing guys are hard at work. Final Cut PRO says "Hey, lets call our new, stripped down version of Final Cut Pro... Final Cut Express... that way people will think Avid Xpress is stripped down... ANd we will sell it for less, so people will learn the interface, and buy the more expensive version." Then the Avid guys say "Hey, let's call our new version of Avid Xpress DV,,, Avid XpressDVPRO... that will sound more like Final Cut PRo,... then we will GIVE AWAY our stripped down version of the interface, to undercut Final Cut Express... that way people will learn the interface, and move up to the more expensive version...."

Will it all work? WHo knows. Long ago, I took all references to "More intuitive" with a grain of salt. SO much depends on where you are coming from to begin with... your familiarity with editing FILM of Video, linnear or non linnear, Mac or Pc...

My general advice is, understand what you need NOW... anticipate what you will need in the NEAR FUTURE and buy the most you can possibly afford.

Then wait six weeks... it will all be obsolete.

Ha ha. You're probably right about the six weeks. I'm not unhappy with the two programs I use now, but you can't go wrong with "free", right? And you are correct that it is (was?) the industry standard, so learning it - even part of it can't hurt me!

Thanks for posting! I may bug you (or others) once it comes in!

AVID and the DVX
 

I am the post production supervisor on a feature film that is shooting with the DVX100. I want to offline on an AVID film composer, and Finnish on HD. I know AVID has announced support for the camera, but when are they planning on releasing a solution? Does anyone have any experience with bumping the DVX to HD? Are there any Scan converters that work with the footage? Can I do a traditional online to Digi-betacam and then scan convert to HD? If anyone has any thoughts I would appreciate it.

AVID nightmare - please help
 

Where do I begin...

I have an external case housing my media drive. It connects into my firewire port - I tried daisy chaining my Canon XL1 through it but it didn't like that. It kept removing the hard drive from the system. (yes the firewire drive is the master and I reformatted the drive using FAT32)

I have since bought a firewire repeater - this enables me to have both the camera and the external drive recognised by the computer ONLY if I turn on the HD first, then the laptop, then open up AVID, then turn on the XL1. Not the best of circumstances but considering what I've been going through I thought this was breakthrough - I can finally edit...

No I can't.

When logging my tape I have no problem - deck works fine etc. But it won't record any of the clips - tries but can't do it.

I got one to tape but then when I try to play it I get an error from AVID then a runtime error from windows and it crashes me out of AVID.
It is obviously something to do with the drive but I'm at a loss.

Please help

FYI - P4 2.2 laptop, windows XP pro, AVID xpress DV 3.5

firewire drives are 6 pin and dv camera's are 4 pin ..

so i assume you are using 6pin to 4 pin cable ?

i've never had any success capturing using one of those cables ( or daisy chaining the camera ) ...

can you capture connecting XL 1394 to computer ?

if you can capture to the computer C drive then proplem is with 1394 box ? ...

can you transfer clips/files from C drive to 1394 drive - and will they play from the 1394 drive ..

have you tried a different 1394 cable ??

can windows media player play the captured clip ?

what brand laptop are you using ? and is the 1394 connection built into it ?

why format FAT32 ?? i say NTFS

as far as firewire drive being the MASTER - i assume you are setting the jumper pins .. if you have a western digital drive inside they should be set to SINGLE ( most of them) ..other drives could be different .. if ADS pyro look at their web site for proper settings for different manufacturer drives ...

Dear Don,

Thanks for getting back to me.

In the end I threw the external dirve in the river (metaphoricaly speaking) and bought a Lacie external drive. It's picking up everything OK - not perfect. I sometimes get a "delayed write failed" message from windows that says that media is offline, which it isn't, and crashes me out of AVID completely.

It's a pain but if I restart all the media is there including my last batch record and all is fine again for a while.

Hi Anthony,

are you by any chance using a Dell? There has been a lot of discussion regarding Dell laptops capturing firewire from a DV source to an external firewire dirve, and the consensus seems to be that because almost all devices on Dell laptops (especially Inspirons seems to suffer) are on the same IRQ 11 (this includes the graphics card, network interface, WLAN if you have it, PCMCIA slots etc), it's only a matter of time before something goes wrong in timing sensitive applications as video capture. Theoretically devices are meant to be able to share IRQ's since PCI came around but I guess not in this case.
One thing that did really help for me was to disable the infrared interface in the device manager btw. This also got rid of the high-pitched clicking sounds I was getting when using headphones.
I have an Inspiron and suffer from the same, so I now capture to the laptop's drive, then copy the media over to the external disk afterwards. Not ideal, but at least it works. I hope that Dell will at some stage release a new BIOS that will allow for setting differenet IRQ's for different devices.

HTH,

Kai.

Hi Kai,

You got it right on - I'm using a Dell Inspiron 8200. Things are going ok with the Lacie drive for the moment. Worled for 14 hours yesterday and only crashed out once.

Thanks for your reply.

Anthony -
one question; are you able to plug in your XL1 straight into the Inspiron and capture from it that way? On mine that doesn't work; only if I daisy-chain through an externally powered device (i.e. a firewire disk with a power brick) will my laptop recognize that there's a camera attached to it...

Thanks.

Kai.