Ok, will do.

I cannot say thanks enough. This forum is an invaluable tool. Hope I can return the favor someday.

Jag Rocks.. I gotta tell you, I am impressed. I did not want to spend the cash for it first, but I'm glad I did.. This FCP deal will work out I'm sure.

If it's not a Mac, take it back..

See ya,

JayT

Here in Albany, there were about 300 people in line, in a mall where everyone else was wondering why people were standing in line at 10:20pm to get into a computer store. I could here many people in line say self deprecating things about their "geekiness", and when asked by a passer-by what was the fuss, they were clearly embarrassed to have spent their Friday night in such an endeavor. We're a self conscious bunch here in the Capital. I myself, fully aware and slightly proud of my MAC propensity, entered with only the intention to pick up a copy of Jaguar, but then looked at the coupon I was handed by the friendly Appleworker and saw 10% Off Everything Till Midnight (if you buy a computer). So, while I was going to wait for the 1.25, I simply had to pull the trigger (what's .25 anyway?). Throw in a 23" Cinema Display and a Lacie 120GB ext. HD, I rolled out of there well under $6,000 (after $500 rebate). Got to bed at 4am that night, my geekiness in full throttle! Spending about every waking moment transferring stuff from my Powerbook without incident. Haven't had the time or need to run FCP yet, I'll go at it next week. Righ now, I just need some sleep.

I ordered mine from Apple Store on line. On line is the only way to get the education discount (I teach and my son is in the 4th grade). FedEx arrived Friday around noon and I immediatly installed Jaguar on my G4 dual 450 that I do most of my editing on. I worked most of the Friday on it, finishing up a web site in Golive 6 and worked a little in FCP yesterday. On my older G4 it seems quicker the 10.1.5 Windows open in a snappy fashion. Graphics look better and I can't use Quartz Extreme. The improvements to mail are nice and the address book are nice. Played a little in Sherlock last night and it seems OK (still probably use Watson).

I have had a few problems. Microsoft Office is broken. It quits at the loading fonts and then crashes. Excel does the same and Powerpoint does it sometimes. I've posted on several boards but no response. I've reinstalled twice, but it does exactly the same everytime. My Corel Graphics 10 suite does the same. It looks like I'll be on the phone to Microsoft on Monday. I really need Word to work.

Overall I'm very pleased and it seems to have resolved a couple of issues I was having with Quicktime 6. Overall I'm very pleased and I've noticed a nice speed improvement on my machine.

Jeff

making cd/rom autoplay?
 

Can anybody tell me how to make a cd/rom autoplay? I dont know much of programming, is it possible that toast can do this? or will anybody who will play my video have to enable this on his or hers computer?

The Canopus ADVC-100 showed up this morning. I plugged it in and it worked great! Same price too.
Another nice feature is it has a toggle switch on the top allowing one firewire cable to be in or out.

Thanks for your help Jeff.

One more question:
If I upgrade to FCP 3.0 is it backwards compatable to my projects in 1.2.5?

Thanks again
Kev

If you have a project not finished on FCP1.2.5 still on your drives i would complete any unfinished projects before updating. Sometimes media can't be easily recognized and other frustrating problems occur after updating. I'm glad the Canopus is working well for you. I just received a Dazzle Hollywood Bridge that I'm reviewing for another site. I'm curious to see if my results will mirror yours.

Jeff

I can tell you howto do this for a Windows PC. But not for a
Mac. If you need to know for PC let me know.

yes rob i need to know for a pc as the film will be played mostly in pc. So if you know how..
thanks,

can't hear audio/need to render digitized clips
 

I am running FCP 1.2.5 on an iMac w/256 RAM.

1) If I have a capture device plugged into my firewire port on the Mac, I can not hear audio through my built in speakers. Is there a setting to get around this?

2) I have a Canopus ADVC-100 converter. The clips captured through the converter need to be rendered. If I upgrade to FCP 3.0 would I still need to render?

Thanks

Kev

Jeff:

Your problems with Office X is enough to make me wait. I exchange too many Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with others to risk incompatibility. If MS advises on a fix, please let us know.

Doug

Well, I haven't run scripts on PCs in a long time, but I believe all you need is a file called autorun.inf and have code similar to below (just create this in a plain text file):

[autorun]
open=autoplay.exe
icon=war3.ico

I got this 3 lines of code from my WarCraft3 CD.... I don't think the icon part is necessary. Correct me if I'm wrong Rob...

Underwhelming
 

Like every other OS upgrade I've performed for the past 20 yrs (mostly on MS systems) this one has been less than thoughtful or trouble-free. After what seemed to be an extraordinarily long update process (approx 40 mins) I discovered all the usual droppings of this process. Specifically, so far "Jaguar"
- broke my Wacom tablet driver,
- broke both of my print drivers (HP G85xi and Epson 2000P)

Unlike Jeff, my Office seems to operating correctly, as does my Airport and FCP3 (so far).

The wreckage is not yet cleared (4 hrs later) since I'm still having a nasty time getting my HP printer running again. But I took a breather and toured the new OS a bit. My impression: Big deal. Aside from features such as AOL kiddie chat, incremental enhancements to Mac Mail (which I don't use) and a handwriting rec utility (who cares) I see -absolutely nothing- of added value so far. Performance is unchanged from any practical perspective. All in all, "Jaguar" looks mainly like an enhancement to Apple's 2002 earnings rather than an enhacement to Mac users' computing experience.

Ante-ing up to update your computer's OS is inevitable if you plan to stay current with your applications. It's the perennial financial wind beneath the software industry's wings. But I'd recommend that anyone contemplating a "Jaguar" upgrade ignore the hype hurricane and put it on your Christmas list. At least that way you will not have spent your own money for this "upgrade" and, perhaps by Dec 25. 2002 peripheral vendors will have some 10.2 drivers.

Microsoft, Apple...not much difference on the OS upgrade front. I like my Macs but personal computing is personal computing no matter whose brand you use.

Summary: Disappointing.

Jeff,

Looks like you'll have to do the ole' add fonts one-by-one back into the fonts directory routine to find which is the culprit (be sure to leave the base system fonts in, though...I'm sure you know that, but figured I'd better say it just for "public posting" sake). If you have any font names beginning with a period or a number sign, take those out first and give it a try. Usually that does the trick.

Thanks John. I tackeled the job last night, with some 2000 fonts I didn't relish the task. I rounded up the usual suspects, but to no avail. So, I just kept taking half out until I got Word to run. What was strange was I did the install that made a copy of your old files. So when Word didn't work I suspected the fonts and just replaced the new fonts with the old. It still didn't work. I've got it narrowed down to about 100 fonts. Under 10.1.5 Word loaded slow and didn't have a snappy feel to it. Now, with the bad fonts out, it loads in less than 2 seconds. But I find it a little strange that something in 10.2 makes Word more selective about font files. I wonder if it has to do with Quartz Extreme?

Jeff

2,000 fonts! Wow! I thought I had a lot...

Just wondering if you've checked out the downloads on the Mac OSX site--they have these programs that might help:

FontDoctor - for diagnosing font-related system and software problems
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/imaging_3d/fontdoctor.html

FontAgent X - organizes fonts into libraries
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/imaging_3d/fontagentx.html

Font Reserve - souped up version of the above
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/fontreserve.html

Also, I can say from experience that Extensis Suitcase works pretty well. I used it to manage my fonts pre-X. Just never got around to getting the new X version since making the switch from classic...but I've missed it. They have a demo at
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/extensissuitcase.html

Soooo...having 2,000 fonts...you wouldn't happen to have the type of font they used for the title on "Sleepy Hollow" would you? Kind of a creepy, rough-edged, Victorian script. I have about 1,000 fonts...let me know if you ever need anything. We can swap!

I loaded Jaguar last night and everything seemed fine until I tried to run Illustrator. Each time I tried to load the app it would hang. Other than that things appear to be fine.

Looking forward to digging into the OS.

mark has it partially right. You need to create a PLAIN TEXT
file in the root of your CD called autorun.inf. Now there might
be two ways to get your movie to play, i suggest you cut a CD-RW
first to try which one works (i used an mpeg file as an example,
ofcourse do not include the dashed lines, only what is inbetween)

--- first try ----
[autorun]
open=movie.mpg
-----------------

if that does not work:

--- second try ---
[autorun]
open=start movie.mpg
--------------------

either two of these should work. If that does not work, send me
an e-mail (to make sure i notice) and I'll find a solution that does
work for you. Good luck.

I've always had problems with Illustrator. The installer still won't update 10 to 10.0.1 I think it's on the third installer now. GoLive 6 was updated today and posts are up all over about the installer not working. However, Photoshop 7 updated just fine. I think Jaguar has a more noticable affect on the older systems. My dual 450 seems much more responsive, snappier. I was at a studio today running a dual gig with FCP and it didn't seem all that different. Quartz Extreme is very nice. It won't run on mine because of too little video memory and being PCI based.

Jeff

ken+any one w/ gripes,
check out the new coreaudio implementation. we finally have some incredible audio/MIDI capabilities in OS X, which will, w/ the release of Logic, most likely soar above and beyond that of competing Windows systems.

in general i'm extremely pleased w/ Jaguar. i've found performance to be much snappier, and i do dig the new Sherlock. i even get better airport range. i have had no trouble w/ any applications whatsoever, and have plugged into numerous USB printers and run the drivers fine. all the "little bugs" are fixed. boot up time is WAY faster (like 3x faster)... time from hitting power button to opening my first application is around sixty seconds. this is all on a 667 mhz G4 tibook w/ a gig of ram.

i wouldn't say that i think jaguar is oh so uber kick-ass, i would say that i'm glad we finally have a real OS. even 10.1 was essentially a beta OS or very close to it.

sorry you've had so much trouble ken. is that still keeping up? i was quite displeased w/ the 40-50 minute update as well.

Dave,
Well I'm glad to hear that 10.2 offers you some features of value. Expanded MIDI capabilities are not my cup of need.

Yes, indeed, I've since discovered that HP does not yet support Jag for its multifuction peripherals (such as my Officejet G85Xi). In response to my email inquiry HP (to its credit) has already told me that they do plan to offer support "...at some future date.". The scanner of the G85 seems to work fine, but the printer belches jibberish.

To lurkers: Make sure that your printers and other peripherals are supported with 10.2 drivers by their vendors BEFORE you install this update. Apple seems to have changed some of its driver architecture...for reasons only they will know. My earlier recommendation to ask for it for Christmas seems even sounder today.

Hi Kevin,

You might want to read this AppleCare document http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75074 I hope that answers most of your audio questions. When you say the clips need to be rendered to you mean the audio or audio/video. If your having to render the video, your preferences are not set right. If the audio needs to be renderd, either the bit rate (16 or 12) is set wrong or the frequency is wrong (32KHz, 44.1KHz or 48KHz). These are also set in preferences.

Daniel, I figured it out.
 

Well, I did figure it out, and boy I kinda feel real silly.. There is a switch on the front of the SR-VS20U that allows you to change the Dubbing direction, DV -> SVHS and DV <- SVHS well it appears that it has to be in the DV <- SVHS setting for FCP to pick up the SVHS portion of the deck, other wise it just says allocating drive space and locks up... My bad. I realized this when I booted into 9.2 and was getting the same error.. I knew then it was nothing with 10.2, Oh, well I guess you live and learn.. Now if I could just control that portion of the deck with FCP I would have it made.. :)

Thanks so much for your help, hope I did not send you on to big of a chase..

Yeah, I'm all kinds of red right now, it's not everyday I get to make an id10t out of myself in front of all these good people.

JayT

Thanks for the update and the info Jay. Certainly you did not make an idiot of yourself. On the contrary; you've given us all an answer to a puzzle that may well arise many months after this thread is buried in the archives.

An article on DVD Studio Pro in the lastest issue of Macworld says that all audio streams on a DVD take up bandwidth whether they're being used or not. Which means I was actually making my situation worse by putting both AC-3 and PCM audio tracks on my DVD! Fortunately, I read the article before building the final disc image and making 30 copies of this DVD project.

Hi Jeff,

The rendering issue was my settings. My capture settings were different from my sequence. I made them the same and everything is fine. It still has the red bar indicating unrendered, but it plays fine.

I'll check out that article and let you know how it went.

Thanks

Kev

That article was exactly what I needed

Thanks again for your help

Kevin

DV input/ any format output?
 

Hi all:
I've run into a mental block here, and forgotten everything I know about digital formats :-) (Remember when you're writing something and suddenly you can't figure out what the right spelling of a word is? This is the video equivalent!)
1. Assuming I'm shooting on an XL1S, and digitizing to FCP, can I output my final film in DVCAM format on (say) a DSR-11 Sony VTR? Does input format have anything at all to do with output format beyond the limitations on image quality etc. imposed by the input format? (I've probably sorted this out in my head once already , but it's bothering me again!)
2. If I had to submit a final tape on Beta SP after shooting/digitizing from Mini DV, what would be the best way to do this? (Dump final cut to Mini DV/DVCAM and transfer at a post-house? I don't think I'll have access to an analog breakout box, so that rules out just hiring a Beta SP VTR and dumping straight to that. Also, I'm putting together a system that includes a DSR-11 VTR; and the DSR-11 only gives composite outs for a monitor.)
Thanks a ton!
Best,
Ram

Jag on new machine.
 

Well, I may be in a slightly different position than many here. I opened up my new 17" iMac and found my copy of 10.2 on top of the box. I had been told that I would have to pay $19.00 for shipping (are they kidding?) when it became available, but the delay on the bigscreen iMac evidently coincided with letting the cat out of the bag.

Booted the machine last night, then immediately ran the 10.2 update. Comparisons are hard because my first FP iMac had a lower clock speed on the processor. This puppy is fast, but is it the marginal improvement in processor (700 to 800) or the improved OS? Who cares, it's great.

Office X installed without incident. I have been updating all of my title bar links and bragging about my new machine on my favorite forums...now I am going to start installing the rest of my software (PS-7, InDesign. Go Live) Hope they all go as smooth.

Got an underwater housing for my little ZR-50 and a dive trip coming up next week. Though I have real work to do, looks like the first editing project on my 17 will be a fun one.

Any questions about the 17" iMac, I will be happy to address them.

Only minor complaint so far is that all the extra real estate is in the width. Could have used a bit more heighth to go with it. I love it anyway.

You can convert any input format to any output format as long
as you have the software that can read/write those formats
(or accepts plugins that can or something). Ofcourse quality
may suffer. Depending on what you do.

I cannot answer your other questions because I never have
outputted to Beta SP. DVCAM should in theory accept your
DV streams just fine.

Rob, thanks:
From what you've said, perhaps I should refine my question a bit.
If I digitize to FCP 3 from Mini DV, but want to output my final film (i.e. print to tape) in DVCAM format, what would I need to do?
a) Would I need any additional software/plug-ins to convert DV to DVCAM in FCP 3?
b) Is it just a matter of popping in a DVCAM tape into the Sony DSR-11 VTR and printing to tape on it?
Anyone?
Thanks and best,
Ram

Read this as well...
 

If you run into more setup problems, try out this article:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ambitious_beginning.html

FYI, here are the requirements for running FCP 3.02:
- Macintosh computer with a 300-MHz or faster PowerPC G3 or G4 processor and built-in FireWire
- 500-MHz or faster single or 450-MHz dual processor Power Mac G4 or PowerBook G4 required for G4 realtime effects
- 667-MHz PowerBook G4 required for mobile G4 realtime effects in DV format
- Mac OS 9.2.2 or Mac OS X v10.1.1
- QuickTime (included)
- 256MB of RAM (384MB recommended for G4 realtime effects)
- 40MB of available disk space required for installation

What rev iMac do you have?

Dan
--
Daniel Berube
Apple Certified Trainer
Member, Apple Consultants Network

President/Apple Ambassador
Boston Final Cut Pro User Group - BOSFCPUG
http://www.bosfcpug.org
Email: dberube@bosfcpug.org
----------------------------------------
noisybrain. Productions
digital_storytelling/
DV Consulting & Training for Business, Education and the Arts
http://www.noisybrain.com

Jeff,
Hey, thank you very much for that tip, Jeff! The symptoms described sure sound like mine. I never heard of the "gimp-print" drivers (the name sounds a bit derogatory but appropriate in my printer's case). I'm giving it a whirl today and report back.

As far as I understand it DVCAM only differs in the tape format
used. The digital stream is the same. So yes, if you have a
DVCAM recorder you should be able to just print to tape to that
device and all should be well.

I suggest trying it out before commiting to it though. When things
need to work together it not always works as it should. Better
safe than sorry!

Thanks for the additional info Dan.

I am running a "Snow" iMac.
Power PC G3, 500 MHz, 256 RAM.

I know that I will need more RAM for 3.0, but are there any other issues I should know about?

Thanks,
Kev

Let's start here...
 

Do you have Peak DV installed on your computer yet? Are you on OS 9 or OS X? If OS X, are you on Jaguar? I ask because it helps me to suggest which software to use.

Only 1 incident so far...
 

Here on my end, Jaguar installed like a charm on my dual gig, annd the resulting performance is extremely pleasing. Logging in time is reduced, and the performance overall is faster. The only incident I experienced so far was with attempting to quit FCP on one occasion when I finished editing. I selected "Quit FCP" and it proceeded to hang with the 3D lolipop icon tot he point where I keystroked a force-quit on the app; however, as soon as the force-quit window appeared, FCP quit before I could select it in the pane to quit. It only happened once.

I am in no way dissapointed by the release of Jaguar.

You can play and roll...
 

Jay,

No question here is a bad question!

I asked a rep about your deck and yes, you cannot control the VHS part of your deck, but you can print to video by playing the timeline and manually rolling tape on the deck via firewire. Not bad for this model at the price point it has. I am tempted to pick one up as a complimentary deck to my editing suite. I've seen SVHS dubs made off the deck from miniDV and the results are fantastic.

You will need patience but...:)
 

Kevin,

You will need to realize that you will not have realtime effects with your present setup, though you can still definitely edit with it, either set up to run in "Standard" or "Cutting Station" mode.

I have often used my iBook dual USB 500mhz on the road to digitize to and edit with, and am repeatedly satified with its' performance in straight cut and simple dissolve editing. However, when my editing tasks become more complicated, I resort to my dual gig tower to complete the job.

But I will never get rid of my iBook, because it has saved me in editing situations so many times. I can use it to digitize footage to my external firewire drive and at the same time continue to edit on my dual gig. Lats week I had to rent a DSR-11 deck at a rental shop to digitze PAL footage to my FireWire drive, and the iBook did the job with no problems on location, saving me money from having to pay extra to take the deck home.

So although our 500mhz G3 macs will never do RT efx, they will always be able to be used to digitize to and to edit in cutting station mode.

I absolutley recommend, though, that you also purchase at least an external 120 gig 7200rpm firewire drive. I recommend OWC's Mercury Elite series with the WD 120 gig 2mb or 8mb buffer drives. You can learn more about them at:
http://www.macsales.com. Then, in prefs, select the external firewire dirve as your main scratch disk, and go to it.

Happy editing, and let me know how it works out...

Here ya go...
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Ideosync : Rob, thanks:
From what you've said, perhaps I should refine my question a bit.
If I digitize to FCP 3 from Mini DV, but want to output my final film (i.e. print to tape) in DVCAM format, what would I need to do?
a) Would I need any additional software/plug-ins to convert DV to DVCAM in FCP 3?
b) Is it just a matter of popping in a DVCAM tape into the Sony DSR-11 VTR and printing to tape on it?
Anyone?
Thanks and best,
Ram -->>>

FCP is a pixel pusher. So, as long as you have the proper in/outs/ b.o.b., hardware cards to support the print to tape, you're in business.

To answer your questions, you do not need anything other than a DVCAM tape and a DVCAM deck.

Did you say you own the DSR-11?

Do you have Peak DV installed on your computer yet?
yes
Are you on OS 9 or OS X?
10.1.5
If OS X, are you on Jaguar?
no
I ask because it helps me to suggest which software to use.