Hi Ricardo

Firewire cable out of mac into your camera then, video and audio cables (RCA) out of camera and in to TV with RCA inputs.

good luck
Scott

You can also get a second PCI video card that has s-video out, like you suggest. I have a Radeon 7000 Mac edition that I sometimes use for this. It supports two monitors each with independent resolutions. So, I can actually use 3 or 4 screens: 21" studio display connected to the G4's original AGP card, 15" LCD connected to the Radeon 7000's VGA port, and s-video to a 27" Sony WEGA. I often use a switchbox to toggle the WEGA between my camcorder's s-video (via firewire) and the Radeon, but I could actually connect a 4th monitor to the camcorder.

In FCP, under the external video setting you can choose either of the Radeon's screens or firewire. The PCI card cost a bit over $100.

Posting question for a Mac using friend....
 

My friends G4 just decided not to recognize his firewire any more. He tried connecting more than one camera and iFilm doesn't detect it. I also believe he checked in the device manager (or whatever the mac equivalent is) and it doesn't see the port. No settings were changed, nor were any new software/hardware installed. The only thing he did recently was remove the firewire cable. I don't see how that could cause the Mac to not be able to connect to any cameras or not detect the port?! Any advice in what he can do? Thanks in advance!

Probably the first thing to check is the cable itself. It is possible to fry a firewire port but a bad cable seems to be a more likely culprit.

I was having all sorts of problems getting a firewire drive to be recognized until I switched cables.

Thank you, guys.

NLE in Spanish
 

Anyone know of good NLE software that will run in Spanish? Could be Mac or PC I suppose, although I think they are using Macs now. This is for a friend teaching video among indigenous folk in Guatemala.

Avid has multi language support

Thanks Richard - I'll pass that along.

MAC to Camera..Firewire problem
 

Hey everybody,

First of all I like to say hello to everybody out there. this is my first post in the forum and I am excited to be in this DV world.

I have a G4 Mac and a TRV900...recently my camera got busted because of a firewire problem. The service guy at the store told me that the my G4 powermac with OS10 is burning out my firewire circuit in my DV camera because of the high voltage from my Mac being delivered to my camera DV firewire inputs.

I like to ask if anybody has a suggestion or advise on this. Does that means that in future I cannot connect my MAC to my camera anymore? This is distressing for me as I just bought the MAC machine and is looking forward to begin my editing career.

Thanks.

Regards,
Daniel

Daniel...

Check to see if the G4's firewire ports work with anything else just to rule out the G4. If it's able to mount external drives or other cameras then you know the problem is definitely the camera.

There's no way for the G4 to zap your camera through the firewire cable, unless there's a major problem with the cable you're using.

The G4 has a 6-pin socket which does supply power. However, the camera's socket is 4-pin, which is identical to the 6-pin except that there's no provisions for power.

Apple was among the first to adopt the firewire standard and, as far as I've experienced, all of them work as advertised. I have three Macs here at home and several more at work. None have had the problem you describe. I've connected an XL1, XL1s, Sony deck, Kodak DCS 620x, external hard drives and a Canon Elura without incident.

You might want to check with a store that provides Apple repair service to make sure it's not the G4.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

I have been experimenting with Plugins lately too. I have bought Joe's Filters, Virtex Filters and the big one BCC (Boris Continuum Complete) I got the Motion pack that includes Boris RED too.
BCC you can install into AE and FCP and RED too. RED is like AE but I'm still trying to get my head around it. New version or RED out soon too. I think I'd like Final Effects too but it is quite expensive here compared with BCC. i think their site is www.borisfx.com

swf to avi for use in premiere
 

Is there a program that converts swf to avi, with the wav sound, that can be easily used in premiere? (other than using quick time, and seperately getting the sound)

If you have the original .fla file you can export it as an .avi in Flash MX. I think Flash 5 will do it to, but not Flash 4 or earlier.

Daniel, you might also inspect the cable. I saw a cheap cable bend the pins on a Sony D8 4pin port, effectively disabling the port and shorting out the PC firewire card. (Luckily, it wasn't my camera, cable, or PC...). When in doubt, replace the cable first.

FCP4 ship date?
 

Anyone know of a confirmed shipdate for FCP4 yet?

QT 6.3 released
 

From the Apple web site -

Enhancements in QuickTime 6.3
Support for 3GPP, the new standard for multimedia on wireless devices, including:
AAC and AMR audio
MPEG-4 and H.263 video
3G Text
Native .3gp file format support (available via the 3GPP Component, a free download at apple.com/quicktime/download)
Playback of .amr and .sdv files (available via the 3GPP Component, a free download at apple.com/quicktime/download).
Automatic detection of streaming transport. [?3214344?]
Improved MPEG video playback in Keynote. [3069390]
Significant improvements to DV audio and video synchronization. [3144077, 3178468, 3243786]
Import and playback of Kodak DCS Photo Desk JPEG files. [3171514]

QuickTime Pro users also get access to an enhanced AAC encoder.

Confirmed, no. Thinksecret is reporting June 9.

Vcd
 

Hey folks,
I have a fcp project I would like to burn to VCD... I have Cleaner... and I tried it out... its now saved as an MPG file... i burned it to CD. the dvd player recognizes it... plays it.. goes through the time code... but the image stays on the DVD players main window... and no audio... Damn it, Im a filmmaker... all this computer stuff is giving me such a headache! lol Actually... you people have been more then a world of help. I appriciate it so much. With your help I will become supper savy with all this sh#t


Thanks
Michael

Automate to timeline?
 

Is ther a way to automate stills to the timeline with a default transition between each in FCP3 like there is in Premiere? Or do you have to add the transition manually between each still?

dies anyone else notice slower load tiems when playing m2v files? IT's taken me like 5 times as long to open an m2v file as it did in quicktime 6.2

combo update wrinkle
 

i just got my system online, so naturally, the first thing i do is download the OSX upgrade combo. Have lost the viwer and browser windows off my 2nd (left side) monitor. computer seems to see it in prefrences. also, mouse now move in opposite direction.

any one? and thanks.

nevermind, again.

There is always a way.

Drag your still from your viewer to your canvas and drop it on either Overwrite with Transition or Insert with Transition. FCP 4 should allow an even easier button or quick key to be assigned.

To semi-automate the operation, lay in a series of stills onto your timeline. Then, making sure your playhead is set to the beginning of the series, select the series in the timeline (dragging a marquee around them is the easiest way) and drag them up into the canvas, until you see the option "Overwrite: With Transition". Drop you selection here. Back on your timeline, you will see all of your stills with your default transition set in place (likely a cross dissolve, but you can change it under the Effects menu).

As an additional note on this, remember that any sequence can work as a template for future work. If you find you regularly create a series of stills with the same motion, effects and transitions, keep that sequence as a template (ie duplicate it, and call it "My favourite transitions". You can then simply copy from another still, and paste attributes, content into a still in the sequence you want to change. Only the content changes, not the parameters you had set previously. Repeat for the rest of the stills. I am sure you can see how this "a Sequence is a Template" technique has some far ranging implications, especially for people who produce wedding videos or other projects that are likely based on templates.

Good luck. Hope this was helpful.

Thanks, Duane. That's exactly the info I was looking for. Not as simple as Premiere, but certainly not difficult either. I've discovered over the years that no matter what the editing system there is usally a way to do what you want, sometimes it just requires a workaround! Again, thanks for the assist.

Jeff, take a look at the posting I made again as I thought a little longer and revised my original post. It just keeps getting simpler.

I was under the impression that FCP 3 in OS X did not support AE plug ins. Can someone let me know if my understanding is correct or not? Preferably someone using a specific AE plug-in describing what version of FCP 3 they are using and what version of OX X.

There are programs that can record (to an avi) changes that
occur on your screen (these tools are usually used to make
instruct videos to learn someone else a tool). These might do
what you want if you can't find any other way...

Thanks again, Duane. Worked like a charm!

Somewhere... there is a question in there! What settings did
you use in Cleaner?

After Effects 5 can import SWFs and export AVIs. I've never used it to convert one to the other before though.

Michael,
With MPEG you have to multiplex the audio, I believe. (Can't get to Cleaner at the moment to remember the exact wording of the setting... my first tries had no audio either.)

If you are using AE 5.5 which is for OSX then apparently some pluggins but not all will work if dragged into the pluggins folder in FCP 3 (runnning in OSX)

I installed the Boris BCC pluggins into AE 5.5 and FCP3 and RED 2.5.2 and they all work on my G4 running OS 10.2.5

My Virtex pluggins I installed in AE and FCP versions as above

The official word!!!
 

Here's the word straight from the horses mouth.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/jun/05fcp.html

Upgrade path from Final Cut Express announced
 

Whooh-hooh!

Apple Releases Final Cut Pro 4 at 4:00 p.m. on June 14
 

Just wanted to share this news with the community


http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/jun/05fcp.html

Ugh I'm just too impatient!

No more tapes, no more tear and wear; though at a high price.
 

Well, if you spend $1,180, you can live in peace without having to worry about replacing your deck's or camera's heads every a certain amount of hours.

I was reading Macworld today and there it was. The Datavideo DV Bank, an external firewire hard drive, that acts like a tape deck. So you can hook it up to your DV camera and capture up to 9 hours of footage --120GB. Isn't that something?!

According to the review one of the advantages of this device is that you can get "instant random access to all of your captured footage." On the other hand, it biggest weakness is that the process of capturing your media to your Mac happens in real time --IMO, no big deal.

After all, maybe this DV Bank isn't that pricy. How much does it cost to replace your camera's heads? About $1,000? At least that's what it will cost me for my PD150.

These devices were recently discussed in this thread. I'm still interested to hear any first-hand experiences.

Thanks for the link.

I had thought it would've been great to have a mini laptop for the same purpose, but didn't know devices like DV Bank existed already.

I think one of the questions is how much abuse can one of these machines take. If you bump it and the disk crashes that would be a bummer.