My G4 PB is from Macmall - bought it last year. Also bought an Apple Care plan with it, which came it handy when the hard disk gave up the ghost this year - no fault of Macmall, I believe. When I bought a G5 PowerMac this year, however, I went to the Apple store for a refurb - not only because of the model I wanted, but also because of the additional RAM I wanted. Macmall gives you a good deal on the RAM upgrades to Macs, but you're never quite sure (until after you get it) which kind it is. RAM incompatibilities seem to be at the heart of a number of user problems, at least from what I've read. As far as I've heard, that would be the only issue on which there would seem to be a need for caution re authorized Apple resellers.

Comments and advice needed on DV decks
 

I am in the market for a DV deck and am interested in finding out what your negative experiences are with and what you like about the following decks: Sony DSR-11, Panasonic AG-DV2500 and JVC BR-DV3000U.

FYI, I'll be using the new deck with FCP 3.

Your comments and advice will be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

tc breaks when using PD-170
 

Hello

I am capturing footage shot on a Sony PD-170 in DV-Cam mode (PAL). Whenever the power on the camera has been off during the shoot, FCP capture considers this a tc break and cues up the player to start capturing a new clip.
Funny thing is this only happens with footage shot in DV-Cam mode, with tapes shot in mini-dv mode capture now works just fine, I can capture long clips no matter if the power has been off or not.
BTW, I have tried capturing directly from the camera (instead from my DSR 11 player), and the same thing happens. And to top it off, we've been shooting with two camera's and this problem occurs with footage from both of them.

Any suggestions? Thx!

Change FCP preferences to not stop on TC breaks.

Thanks
 

Thanks Shane,
Thanks so much for the information.
Brian

I did consider doing that but won't that mean I'll run into tc problems and sync problems when I want to re-capture the footage later?

Also, I'm just curious why this happens only in DV-cam mode (because of faster tape speed...?) and not in mini-dv mode

I am a year in on my DSR-45.
I am very pleased.
no trouble at all.
I do heed the warning in 3 languages to insert the tapes by pushing on the middle of the tape.

i love the useless but very cool tiny little monitor.

Just a caution regarding Shane's posting. The Waveform Monitor in Final Cut Pro is not an analog IRE waveform, but rather a digital percentage monitor. That is why it looks different than most hardware waveform monitors. To quote the Final Cut Pro on-line manual,

"The way brightness (also referred to as luminance) is measured in analog video differs from the way it is measured digitally by Final Cut Pro’s Waveform Monitor, as defined by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) standard for digital video."

For additional information check page 320 of the FCP 4 on-line manual (found under the Help menu in FCP) or look for the article "How Brightness is Measured". Brian, for you this information is mostly irrelevent, but if you get some time you should read it. But it is an issue that has confused many others.

Hey, Gary, that "useless and tiny monitor" did save my butt one time. When assisting the edit for a feature our telelecine tapes came to us in DVCam format, and we were using a DSR-45 deck (great, reliable deck, I have to agree). One day I noticed the video was being squeezed on import, and that the Anamorphic setting was turned on with these clips. The video looked the same from tape in the external monitor we were using, and I could not find what was "different". Well, sure enough, that little monitor revealed the video image was squeezed, and being unsqueezed in the analog outputs. Putting in an older tape which had not been the source of any problems we could see the difference immediatley through the little monitor. Called the transfer house, told them they had a problem, and resolved the issue.

For my regular DVCam work I use a DSR-11, but with no external displays except through the monitor and no RS-422 input, it is definitely for DV work only. Still, has always done a great job for me.

Mason,

My understanding is this:

When something is CREATED as 24P, then a field must be repeated every other frame. Standard (not HD) TV is ALWAYS interlaced to TV set - that's all they know. IF the MPG encoder knows it started as 24P, it simply tells the decoder to repeat one field every other frame. REPEATING THAT FIELD MEANS THAT IT WILL NOT BE ENCODED AGAIN, THUS IMPROVING ENCODING EFFICIENCY. If the encoder does NOT know that it started out as 24P, then it will send each field separately, since there COULD be some new motion information.

Sequence length
 

I am trying to use FCP to play back content over our CCTV system. I need to find some way around the 4 hour limit on FCP timeline. Any ideas?

Changing Voice Pitch? (Final Cut Pro)
 

Hello,

I've been wondering if there is a way to change the pitch of voices on video with FCP? I'm not new to the application although I've never had to change voice pitch before, so has anyone discovered a way to do this?


Thanks,

Corey C.

compressor problem
 

I cannot export to compressor from FCP4.
It gives the option but wont open.
I can open and drag a QT file to the Batch moinitor and submit to compressor, which renders the file.
However, when i then import that file into DVD Pro 2 it sees the file but it displays the 'unusable' red dot and wont drag to the timeline.
I have updated to 1.1 right before these troubles.
I dont use compressor often, but dont recall this problem before update.
thoughts?

caption problem_fix
 

On July 21st I started a thread about, FCP capture problem. Sorry, it has taken this long to respond to all for your help. What needed to be done to fix this problem was, my 300gig external drive was formated for MAC and IBM. When I reformated just for MAC my problem went away and has never came back!
Thanks, Ron

Re: compressor problem
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Chavez : I cannot export to compressor from FCP4.
It gives the option but wont open.
I can open and drag a QT file to the Batch moinitor and submit to compressor, which renders the file.
However, when i then import that file into DVD Pro 2 it sees the file but it displays the 'unusable' red dot and wont drag to the timeline.
I have updated to 1.1 right before these troubles.
I dont use compressor often, but dont recall this problem before update.
thoughts? -->>>Try using Quicktime Coversion.