Dan,
It's actually worse than just being a "switcher". As head of technology and/or chief information officer for several sizeable financial organizations during my career I've procured and directed the implementation of countless millions of dollars worth of gear, much of which was MS-platformed. In many respects I was a poster boy for Microsoft technologies.

It's off-topic here, but I should add that I still admire Microsoft and still have MS-based systems at home. They never let me or my organizations down when I needed their help. But for my current post-war needs and interests Apple provides the most innovative and rich platform. (Not to mention a platform that's just plain fun to use.)

So I don't think you'll see me standing in front of a white background lit like a police line-up giving testimony any time soon (even though Apple would probably like to hear my story), <g>

I'm in the same boat, Ken. We're (FAA) loaded with DOS/Windoze based stuff, plus Ultra, etc., so I have to come home to have my MAC experience. Been using 'em since my beloved SE-30.

I was in Boston last week to get my son settled in for his second year at The Boston Conservatory, and took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to a "real" Apple store out in Lechmere. Question -- Are all the Apple reps typically as clueless as the one I chatted up? I felt like I was in Radio Shack or the Apple section of Comp-USA! (Cool looking store, though.)

Cheers

Yes, that would have worked (and i tried it) but then it wouldn't allow me to use the transitions on the nested ones.

The setup is, a set of clips (source clip is 40 min long continously) from the same source, white still image as background, the video material cropped. To try the nesting, i cut up the background to fit the length of the clips, then nested each clip.
but then the resulting nested clip had a fixed duration and you could not lengthen it even though there are more sourcematerial.

Hm. just thought of one thing, maybe i can go into the nest and manually extend the source material there.. i'll try that when i get back home.

/Henrik

In my experience, the Apple stores are either very good, and extremely knowledgable or the exact opposite. I've been in 7 stores and 4 of them had clueless help. The 3 other stores were very good. Unfortunately the Tampa store is one of the former, clueless stores.

Jeff

Clueless personell can be found in many stores, pc or apple =)

A very funny episode with a colleague of mine who went into the computer store to buy DAT tapes for his audio gear. And asked the guy behind the counter if these tapes were good quality for audio recordings? And the guy looks at him and says in a patronizing tone "No, these are for DATA, thats what the DAT stands for". =) My friend just looked at him, shook his head, pointed to the "Digital Audio Tape" labeling and left.

Some people should just not be allowed to work with customers :P

Oh btw, for the record. I has been a Unix based system administrator for 12 years, and profient in systems development in both Unix & PC systems. And when it came to buy my own editing suite, i didn't hesitate two milliseconds. A nice shiny G4 :) Can it be done on the PC? Of course! Do i want to do it on the PC? Nope :) The G4 is much more fun :P And FCP doesn't come for the PC. And having bled myself working with Softimage|DS (v 3.x) on a PC platform, the FCP is a lot of bang for the bucks. (Especially with it's FXBuilder feature and its expandibility. Brilliant stuff =)

/Henrik

I'm not folloiwng the visuals here at all but the remedy for most of these conundrums is to render the nested sequence (add some handles first) and then import the rendered QT file as a clip.
You may need to experiement with the QT or FCP export settings for a self-contained movie or just force the rendered file. Sometimes the renderdf ile doesn't have all the pieces you thought it would, that's why I usually use a self-contained movie. Just like pre-rendering prepcomps in Æ.

BTW: I've cut my share of 16mm film for a/b printing and I understand optical fades and I'm conversant in Æ but I'm not sure I know what an optical fade effect would look like in After Effects.

david

I know of a couple of things to try. What OS are you using? How do you have your drive partitioned? How full is your drive? How are you trying to capture and how long is the clip? If the box *limit capture to 30 minutes* is checked, uncheck it. I used the Dazzle Hollywood Bridge recently for a review and it worked fine. But it does seem to be the most problamatic for users (also the least expensive).

Jeff

Cleaning up sound in post?
 

I need to try and clean up some audio from a shoot and really do not know what I should use to do it with. For instance, we had a shoot in an alley and there were air conditioners running, I would like to try and take them out if possible or bring the noise level down without dropping the voice levels . looking for some suggestions on audio packages for the Mac that will allow this type of operation among other tools.

If all else fails I may have to go back and do VO's.



Forgive me if this has been covered, but searching the board has not turned me on to anything as of yet.

Thanks for the help.

JayT

Thanks to everyone who responded,

My followup questions are:

1. Where would one find a discontinued G4 Tower (my local apple dealer said that they were not available anywhere anymore when I showed up to buy one)

2. If its an 800Mhz processor, with the same RAM, and hardware...what is the fifference between the IMac, EMac, and tower? To me it seems like the same computer in a different shell.


Thanks

Bad audio can only be fixed on Star Trek.

There are some things you can do with some of the packages by filtering the audio. You can use pass-band filter restricting the pass band in the range of the voices you are interested in.

I think the problem you are going to run into to is that the compressors are probably producing noise right around the bottom of the human voice range.

There are several key differences between an iMac and a G4 tower. You can only mirror with a second monitor on iMac. G4 allows the second monitor to expand the desktop, giving you more working space (needed for FCP in my opinion). G4 has internal expansion, you don't have to rely on FireWire for all your expansion. The G4's have better video cards, with more memory. It frees up the processor to allow it to do effects, rendering etc. quicker. These are just a few of the differences. Apples site http://www.apple.com/powermac/ will got into detail for you. I would try Small dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com/ I've purchased used, refurbished, discontinued and new equipment from them in the past and have had great service. You might also try Zotz digital http://www.zotzdigital.com/ one of the sponsors of this community. They are Apple dealers but i don't know if they deal in used etc.

Jeff

FCP color correction feature?
 

Hi guys :)
I have two different takes where the main subject's skin tone is different on each take. Is there a feature on FCP that allows me to pick the correct skin tone from one take and apply it to the other take? (maybe by clicking on the subject's face and automatically adjusting his tone to match the other take.) If so, how is this effect achieved? Thanks :)

I don't know of any feature like that in FCP or Avid Xpress. Do you just want to correct skin tones and not the entire scene? FCP has correction filters that you can apply to a scene, then render. If it's just the skin tones I'd probably do it in After Effects, but it wouldn't be click, click.

Jeff

If you have anything white in each scene you could use FCP's color correction filter to white balance (via the eye dropper for whites) each scene which would theoretically help to normalize your skin tone between scenes. Otherwise you're into the dark, mystical world of the colorist. You certainly -can- balance color between scenes with FCP but, as Jeff noted, it won't be "click-click".

Fcp 3 & Qt ?
 

i just installed FCP3 (upgrade) in 10.1.5 and i installed the supplied QT . however when i opened QT in OSX and registered it still says that i have vs. 5.0.2 instead of 5.0.4(in the "about QT" window)? is the X version of pro still 5.0.2? i have opened a project and everything seems fine i just dont want any problems down the road because of a QT error

thanks for any info
matt