Instructions at http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/index.html

Get a 7200rpm drive instead of a 5400rpm. Bigger capacity drives are slightly faster, have more storage (which you can easily use up, and you are very unproductive when you don't have enough), sometimes give a better GB:$ ratio, and are more futureproof. I'd lean a bit towards getting a bigger drive than you think you need.

Seagate, Western Digital, and Hitachi are good. You can wait out for a hot deal on hard drives by checking hot deal sites. Look at expired deals to see what kind of capacity you can expect. Otherwise check pricewatch/resellerratings.com and newegg.com for a new drive (newegg.com is the least hassle of all the choices and the other choices aren't too much cheaper).

Thanks for the info, checked out the apple site. Do I need a ATA hard drive or a Scsi, can I
have two ATA hard drives fitted in my G4 at once?

Get ATA, not SCSI.

2- Yes, you can get 2 in there.

Oh dear.. what a mess.
 

I was just finishing a project.. Had sent the audio to be cleared up and then it was supposed to be delivered.

Today when I got the audio back I realised that I must have thrown away the wrong data in an attempt to free up some space on my harddrive.

So.. I logg everything back in, but alot of it is just not on place.. Some is alright but the vast majority is slightly off sync or completley diferent track..

Please tell me there is a divine FCP "undo stupidity and restore and fix to what I had" button.
I really didn't want to spend more time on something that was supposed to be finished..

O dear...

If you did your log and capture properly you should just see that all the clips have gone "offline" and it will just be a matter of importing the clips again from tape.

Well they did go "off line" But when once on-line again, things had happened for the worse..

Problem with recognizing camera
 

I tried to capture some footage from my TRV900 last nite and my G4 couldn't recognize my camera. I tried it on my PC and it worked fine. When I plug in my camera to my Mac via the firewire I noticed that the viewfinder shows DV IN on it, but Final Cut doesn't recognize the camera.

I'm wondering if the firewire port on my 900 is screwed up and needs to be replaced. I tried my PD170 and that worked fine. I called Sony for the firewire connection board in the camera and they want about $50 or so plus 2 weeks time to order the part. Anyone else have a similar problem and found a solution? I've tried resetting the camera but that doesn't work. Suggestions?

problem with DV Start/stop detection
 

I am shooting footage with a SONY DSR-PD170P (pal) and capturing into FCP 4.0 with an older VX-1000 for a pre-edit. I tried to use the start/stop detection after capuring an entire tape, but FCP tells me it doesn't see any start/stop mark in the time information on the tape, so it can't put markers into the clip.
Does the PD170 make such marks ? (I guess yes...)
or maybe does the VX-1000 not read or recognize tem ?
or even maybe my software configuration has got something wrong...
does anyone know someting about it ?
cheers !

The date/time has to be set on the camera. This is non-intuitive but true in my experience.

If you didn't set it... then DV start/stop detection won't work. The easiest thing to do would be to manually log and capture, or to capture the whole thing and add markers on your own and then make subclips.

thanks !
 

Ok, I will have a look in the settings / menu to see where it can be set. If anyone has got an idea that can help me, I'd be most grateful !

I have found some Sony products like being turned on before booting the mac, and others don't care.

I know it shouldn't be so, but... they're Sony... THEY don't have to care. ;)

Kevin's suggestion is a good one.

Failing that, be sure to look at Apple's support pages and message boards to see if anything specific to the camera is listed.

Failing that, I would try the old method of trashing your FCP preferences (Search for tips in this section of the forum).

Good luck.

Well, I got it fixed! I took apart the entire camera and pulled out the circuit board with firewire port on it. Put everthing back together and hooked it up and it worked. Wierd!!!

Now my problem is that I captured 4 hours worth of tape and my Mac has a problem booting now. I determined it was a problem with the 2nd hard drive with my video on it, I couldn't repair it and resorted to erasing the entire drive and starting over. Not sure why it does this but this is the 2nd time.

.TIF problems
 

I'm attempting to import a .TIF image into Final Cut Express. FCE doesn't directly import a .TIF image, so I'll have to convert it in another program. The desktop icon preview shows the image correctly, however everytime I open the image in Preview, it changes to very psychodellic colors and anything exported from there also results in the same wacky colors. I know the original file is correct because Quicktime opens it properly as a 2 frame movie. I can export the image as a .TGA from Quicktime, but does anyone know what's going on with Preview?

Video out of Sync
 

I just captured my 5th tape from a series of tapes that I am editing and pulled some of the video into the timeline in Final Cut Express 2. The audio is out of sync with the video. The other tapes are fine and I've tried to recapture this one tape several times but it is always out of sync. Anyone know why this is? I'm assuming that I'm dropping frames as is it being captured. Any reason for this? Is it my computer or my camera/tape?

It's probably not your computer. Final Cut can be set to report if you drop frames (I think it always does), and it can be set to stop capturing if you do drop frames.

Possible causes for audio out of sync:
A- Your camera's audio clock is a little off, say 48.009khz instead of 48.000khz sampling rate. Nearly all consumer cameras do this, although Canon is the worst. You may be able to check by right clicking your clips in the bin and checking their properties, it'll tell you what their sampling rates are.

B- If you have no audio in sections then FCP will mess up.

C- Maybe the tape was shot in 12bit audio mode- 12-bit depth, 4 channels, 32khz instead of 16-bit depth, 2 channels, 28khz. You should nearly always be shooting in 16bit mode.

D- Timecode breaks will cause audio to go out of sync. One fix is to dub the tape to generate fresh continuous timecode.

What camera was the tape shot on?

Final Cut Pro HD Motion and DVD Studio Pro 3
 

I go to the Apple home page about 5 min's ago and i see this

http://www.apple.com/software/pro/

all i can say is WOW.

New toys for us :D

sheesh no wonder after effects bit the dust.

it advertising real time... hmmm.

yeah thats what made me say hummm. i guess i ignored shake 3.5 since i know thats the price of everything i own now LOL

Final Cut Pro HD is also available
 

Also Final Cut Pro HD is available now as a download for FCP 4.0 users here:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/download/

or use your software update thingy : )

SD YUV over firewire>?

Panasonic and Apple Collaborate to Bring HD Over FireWire to the Desktop and Mobile Editing

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/apr/18panasonic.html

video was shot on a TRV900 which I never had any problems in the past before. This is the ONLY tape that I've had audio sync problems with. Audio is shot in 16bit mode and I don't believe there are any timecode breaks in the tape but I could be wrong. I do have other tapes that I've captured that have had timecode breaks and all have captured fine in FCE2 so I'm not sure what the problem is. I have turned off the "warn if dropped frames" occurs and when I do leave it on with this particular tape, it shows up and stops capturing so I believe it is dropping some frames.

Re: Video out of Sync
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Chun : I just captured my 5th tape from a series of tapes that I am editing and pulled some of the video into the timeline in Final Cut Express 2. The audio is out of sync with the video. The other tapes are fine and I've tried to recapture this one tape several times but it is always out of sync. Anyone know why this is? I'm assuming that I'm dropping frames as is it being captured. Any reason for this? Is it my computer or my camera/tape? -->>>

Just out of curiosity...

Could you try capturing this particular tape with iMovie and then importing it into Final Cut?

Black and White
 

I am editing a short film and have decided to make it black and white instead of color. It's all edited in FCP 3 and ready to go. What's the easiest way to make all the video black and white? I was looking for an effect but can't find one. Thank You.

You'll need to use one of the color correction tools to desaturate all of the sequences.

Running FCP3 and FCP4 on same Mac?
 

I am currently editing a project in FCP3, and I am going to edit a new project in a few weeks and the directors wants me to edit in FCP4 (which I would love to as I have heard many great things about FCP4).

I read that it is not a good idea to convert FCP3 projects (and media) to FCP4 projects, so I was wondering if I bought the FCP4 upgrade, would it be possible to run both FCP3 and FCP4 on the same Mac? Obviously not at the same time, but it would be cool if I could continue with my current project in FCP3, and switch to FCP4 for this new project?

recording back to xl1s
 

after capturing and editing i cant seem to record my final movie back onto my xl. using after effects and FCP4. is there some setting im missing to be able to do this. i thought that i could just go back onto my camcorder from firewire.

anyone care to clue me in on the necessary steps?

thanks a million.

J.

from FCP open your sequence and select File, Print to video (or similar wording) have your camera connected and in VCR mode, use your Cameras remote to record, un-pause. I don't beleive you can do this from AE, you would have to render the footage from AE to your HDD and import it into FCP and back to your cam from there. Does this make sense?

yeah thats exactly what i was doing. its been so long since ive had to get anything back off my computer that in the newest version i wasnt sure if there was some other preferences or something that had to be set or something.

hmm. ill give it a try again. hopefully itll work this time. im sure i just missed something.

thanks for the input.

i had both installed no problem when i first got FCP 4. i later converted all my projects with no ill-effects tho.

The next step with my new G5...
 

I was recently fortunate enough to con my father into co-signing a loan for a G5 (1 gig ram, 160gig, ati radeon 9600 pro). The world may mock my camera, but they will tremble at my dual 1.8's. At any rate, my budget is now in dire straits and my query is this;

what is the best move I can make as far as audio is concerned: should I get a better mic for my camera (which sports a mini input) or should I invest in some attachments for my computer and work on audio in post. (ALSO TO CONSIDER: I could sell this hp pavillion labtop i'm on right now for more cash to work with, but i fear losing my last bit of PC might kill me)

I know this is highly subjective, but I thought you all might like a change of pace and i also thought it might prevent another disaster... like my panny dvc7...

You could export a finished cut and desaturate the whole movie at once. If you really have a final cut and don't have to do anymore editing, it may be less of a pain to do it that way.

Getting good sound in the first place is many times easier than trying to fix things in post. The best thing you can do to get better sound is to get the mic as close as possible. The two most common ways to do that is with a lav or with a boom-mounted mic. For other situations a podium mic or handheld will get the microphone closer.

The second thing you can do is to get a more directional microphone... but that doesn't help too much. If you're going to mount the mic on the camera (which is always the furthest away from the sound source...) then you might as well get the most directional microphone you can get (ignoring parabolic mics, because they don't sound good). The Sennheiser MKE300 is one of the shotgun mics you can get that has a miniplug input.

What gear you should get depends on what you're shooting and whether or not you can get somebody to be the boom op.

2- I would've done things the other way around... spend a lot of recording gear and less on the computer. Recording gear (video/sound) doesn't become obsolete as fast and determines final output quality a lot more than your computer does.

You can nest your entire movie and desaturate the whole thing.

2- If you want to be fancy you could put a curves filter upstream of the desaturation filter so you can adjust which combinations of red green and blue go into the final image.

I don't remember if FCP has a curves filter.

Editing HD in FCP
 

Perhaps there are several threads on this here, but I wonder if there is a simple way to NLE on FCP from video originally shot in a Sony Cinealta. That is proceeding as you do when you shoot in film and do NLE on FCP or similar.

How do you do it? What do you need?


Carlos

It has a curves filter, but it is not an actual curve-based interface. Rather, it is a series of sliders, which is much more clunky (IMO).

I tried capturing this tape on a new eMac and it captured fine w/out dropping frames. So I'm assuming my G4 is giving out and I need that dual 2ghz G5 soon!

Lower Thirds?
 

Looking for some nice animated Lower Third Title backgrounds.
Right now I really need somthing sports oriented for basketball,
but would like to have a few generic ones for future use.

Appreciate any leads. Thanks
FCP