Welcome Daniel!
I am delighted to see you join our community and moderate this forum.

I am a long-time FCP user myself, although not professionally. I, too, am very enthusiastic about the capabilities that FCP (and comparable NLE's) place in the hands of everyday people who want to tell a story. It's a good time to be on the planet, eh?

Interestingly, I was recently considering attending one of the workshops up in Maine (the 2 week documentary class). I think Charles Papert, one of our other moderators here, has also been an instructor up there in the woods.

Dan:
Thanks for your inputs. Unfortunately, JVC doesn't have much backup here in India, where I'm at. Panasonic and Sony provide much better prosumer/pro service and backup.
Best,
Ram

Sure Enough- FCP 3 DOES TC windows
 

Of course FCP 3 allows for you to create a TC window in your timeline that you can then put to tape.

here's how!

1. Save your present timeline with your completed project.
2. Create a new timeline and open it.
3. Drop your completed project timeline inside of the new timeline you just created.
4. Highlight your completed project timeline, which is now being treated as a layer of video.
5. Go to "EFFECTS and slelect VIDEO FILTERS>VIDEO>TIMECODE PRINT to apply the filter to your highlighted completed project.
6. Throw your highlighted completed project layer into the Viewer and click on filters in the Viewer window to highlight the Timecode Print Filter Options.
7. Make sure you set Mode to "Generator."
8. Leave your Format settings at 29.97fps(DF) unless otherwise necessary.
9. you can then center and position the TC window anywhere in your frame and set the size of the numbers in the window.
10. RENDER. Note that this filter takes a longer than normal time to render but the results are what you want.

Happy Editing!

OS X Drivers for RT Mac?
 

If I am correct, the RT Mac does not yet have OS X drivers available, so it is moot point in recommending it as a tool for FCP 3 on OS X at this point.

Jaguar (OS 10.2) Prices:
Mac Mall & Club Mac -
$120 (+shipping) minus a mail-in rebate of $21.

MacConnection: $99.95 (pre-orders only)

It's better than no discount at all.

OK for straight cut editing
 

I presently own and edit with FCP 3 in cutting station mode on an iBook dual USB 500mhz.

I would not recommend it as your main editing station or for final edits needing any sort of rendering. Take it to the next level at this point and purchase a G4 TiBook, you will be happy with your investment down the road when you are in need of rendering.

Check out these articles on FCP 3 set up
 

FCP Book Author and BOSFCPUG member Charles Roberts has written two excellent articles on setting up FCP 3 on OS 9 anad OS X:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ambitious_fcp_3.html
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ambitious_fcp_3_x.html

Happy Editing!

Gaffe made with fluorescents - Please help!
 

Hi there.

I'm making my first documentary, self financed, low budget, learning all the way and making lots of mistakes.

I'm from the UK and visited LA to take footage. I was inside a room filled with fluorescents and although there was no noticeable effect through the PD150 viewfinder or screen, when I got the footage back home and watched on my PAL Tv there is a distinctive flicker.

I really really want to use these scenes, they contain that something and I can't do without them. I also can't afford to go back to the States and re-shoot!

Can I get rid of the flicker in the edit? Final cut Pro trickery perhaps? Please help, wise ones!

Cheers

Simon

thank you very much, i tried it and it works fine!!

perhaps you can turn the flicker into something positive, depending on what the scenes are of and if a cinema look might make it more interesting.

Bruce

i have OS X installed on an iMAc dv SE 500(384ram) and it runs fine but i would def not run FCP on this machine.

Thanks Jeff,
I am still putting this system together. I admit, it would have been much easier to just go out and get a new G4 with a super drive (aka Pioneer A04) but I got this older blue and white for FREE, so I'm going to mess with it until I can scare up the $ for the new system.

Like I said, this is a 600mhz blue and white. There's about 22?.00 k of ram in there, but I can get more. It currently has a 6 gig hard drive, but that's soon to change. I'll be inserting a IBM Deskstar 120 internal drive as well as a 40 gig for the software. Both of these drives will spin at 7200 rpm's. I run OSX. I was going to edit on iMovie until I get the hang of the mac and then move upto FCP3 (which I have) I was looking into Toast for mac to make the DVD's with, but I've also heard that iDVD is cool. Will I need both?

Currently the A04 works with the mac as a CD ROM drive only. The machine recognizes it as a drive, but it doesn't know what it is. Pro-Tape sold it to me and they don't think they have drivers for it there. Only PC. My silicon valley friends say I just need to proper software to launch it, but my mac friends say the mac should just "see" it and know what it can do. Of course that doesn't seem to be doing the trick...

Any and all your advice is appreciated.
Thanks again
-Kyle

Kyle,

Please use your Apple System Profiler and tell what it reports about your AO4 drive, fireware version, everything. Try to put as much RAM in as you can, it will max out at 1 GB. Does this Blue and White have an accelarator card in it? The fastest stock G3 Blue & White was 450MHz. If it has an accelarator board that may be why the DVD is not being recognized. What version of OS X are you running?

Jeff

Happy Mac Owner! :)
 

Well after sweating an upgrade charge for the new OS, it all ended with a happy ending. I contacted Apple today and did not even get a hassle. It appears that they are giving a tad bit of grace. The upgrade was handled via the web, as it looked up my serial number.

So instead of the $129.00 charge, it was only $19.95.

Thank you Apple!

That was a class act on Apple's part. Good for you...and kudos to Apple.