Macintosh + HV20 = Highly Compatible???

[Hans Gruenig]

Originally Posted by Chuck Fadely

Final Cut Pro 6 won't even talk to itself nicely. It's having some unresolved childhood issues at the moment. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.

Interesting. Does it make FCP6 unuseable at this point? Is it better to find FCP5 for now?

Originally Posted by Chuck Fadely

Go take some editing classes at your local college, shoot lots and lots of tape, and pretty soon you'll start to learn what you don't know....

It's kind of intimidating now, when everything's new, but you'll learn it -- but mostly by doing it, not by reading about it! If your Powerbook won't play back HDV, and you can't afford FCS2, then downconvert to SD and edit with what you've got.

I thank you for your advice, Chuck. I'm a newcomer with a limited budget and a penchant for research, so I thank you for humoring me as I look before I leap. Past experience has shown me that a bit of research in the beginning almost always pays off in a big way. So I thank you (and everyone here) for sharing your knowledge and patience!

Best wishes,
-Hans.

[Chuck Fadely]

FCP6 is perfectly useable. There are some bugs that haven't been squashed yet, particularly in SoundTrackPro, which will have an effect on a production environment where you're used to doing things a particular way... but with Final Cut, there's almost always some other way to accomplish what you're trying to do.

The open timeline alone makes it worth it over 5.

Get the HV20, a big box of tapes (the $2 TDK's from Costco are fine) and enjoy! It's a blast. You'll make mistakes, learn from them, and do better the next time... and it will work fine with a Mac.