Thanks Jeff. I had read the requirements and it didn't say anything about requiring .01, I just didn't know if each upgrade fixed seperate problems that didn't have anything to do with each other. Thanks again.

emac question
 

I recently bought an emac after my beloved g3 B/W died. I have the old apple studio display monitor that I used with my b/w. Is there a way to hook it up to the emac for a dual display, instead of just video mirroring?

Thanks,

Jeremiah Hall

Thanks all for the advice. I think the G5 would be the wise choice between the two, both being the same price. Glenn, great links to the benchmarks and discussion. It's great to finally get real-world feedback on this.

I'm going to begin editing towards the end of October, so I'm of course waiting for the last possible second to get the equipment and software. If I was in a super rush I might give more weight to the G4, but since it'll be about a month and a half until I start editing, the G5 is probably the best bet. By that point Panther might be out, which can only be a good thing for G5 performance.

As for the RAID thing, I wasn't planning on using it. I was going to just buy an additional internal drive for whichever machine I get. Which brings up another question: Where's a good place to buy a quality Serial ATA Hard Disk? Maybe a 160GB one?

Anyways, thanks for your replies. This helped confirm my gut feelings about G4 vs G5. As soon as I've got my machine ready, I'll keep you posted on how it handles.

newegg.com is usually a good place to get computer hardware. Sometimes deals pop up where you can get a hard drive really cheap.... try any of the hot deals sites around the net. pricewatch.com is also a place to look.

IBM and Western Digital are probably good. Check out storagereview.com for information on which SATA drive is the best (not sure if they reviewed many SATA drives yet though).

You probably don't want RAID if you're doing DV editing.

Thanks Michael. I ended out ordering the Maxtor 5000DV 160GB--having the USB was a nice bonus and the drives have an 8mb buffer. But the LaCie drives are definitely tempting for future purchases. Do you know what kind of hard drives are in the LaCie drives? I'd heard that they had Western Digital. Thanks again for the info.,

Peter

In System Preferences>Display>do you have mirroring checked? What happens if you uncheck it? If it is grayed out it can't be changed. The video card in the eMac may have limited memory to enable dual monitors and is limited to mirroring.

Looked good, and not bad prices either.

I can see that these will come in handy when, someday, you can lounge back on your couch, split your widescreen HD TV screen in two, and watch a movie while you're working on something. Until then, wired is okay for me.

What's the name of this software, Jeff?

One is TC Calculator, the other is MediaCalculator. I think they are both freeware.

Maxtor 40Gig Firewire External Hardisk??
 

There is a used Maxtor 40Gig Firewire External Hardisk near where i am going for about US$120. (Auction)

http://www.maxtor.com/en/documentation/data_sheets/1394_datasheet.pdf

Anyone have any experience with this Maxtor drive for video capture/editing and recommend it?

Thats quite a bargain. And i desparately need a disk for my laptop.

If i get the Green lights from the experts.. i'll go grab it. Yes?

Thanks in Advance.
Lee

I just picked up a new 120GB Maxtor (7200RPM) from Costco (in the USA) for $199. I would think that you could get more than 40 GB for $120 new somewhere, even online. 40GB will fill up pretty fast depending on the kind of editing you do.

At any rate, I'm happy with my investment. Maxtor seems to make quality drives.

AFAIK the eMac's only support mirroring, not separate screens. That was one of Apple's intentional limitations to keep people from buying the eMac instead of a more expensive model. But you really can't beat the eMac when it comes to 'bang for the buck', we have one at work and it's really very nice.

I think the least expensive macs that support multiple screens are the 12" powerbook G4 and the G4/1.25 single processor tower. The iBooks are like the eMac and support mirroring only (or at least the models I'm familiar with are like that).

One thing you could do with your screen... there are some relatively inexpensive scan converters that will take s-video or RCA composite input and send out a VGA signal.

I was just disk shopping yesterday at CompUSA (the system drive on my 3 week old PowerMac G4/1.25 died and I didn't have time to screw around with warranty service... ;-)

They were selling Maxor 40 GB internal ATA drives for $40 (with rebate), that seemed really cheap. There are some smaller capacity (60GB) firewire drives for well under $200 now, I wouldn't pay that much for a used 40 GB drive personally. 40GB fills up really fast... spend a few bucks more, get a bigger drive that's new with warranty.

Laird Blue Flame Pro transcoders
 

Do you folks know if the Laird DV transcoders will work with FCP 3 on a dual 1GHz G4 (MDD). We have them as part of our PC-based avid systems at work, but I want to bring my comp in to capture some stuff I shot a while ago on DVCPro for my demo reel. I can't take the deck home, and the deck doesn't have firewire I/O, anyway, just component, composite, etc. I suppose if worse came to worse, I could rent a DVCPro deck with Firewire I/O and just take the tapes home, but I'd prefer to do it for free.

If the laird won't work, any other suggestions for how to get the footage into my comp?