Intel Macs and HDV Rack
 

I run hdv rack on my intel macbook pro. I have windows xp pro running through bootcamp, and it runs great with one exception. I just finished a project in 30p and everything works the way it is supposed to. The really cool thing is, I record straight onto a lacie bus powered firewire 800 160 GB hard drive, which is formatted NTFS obviously. OS X tiger reads the hard drive just fine, and I use MPEG Streamclip to get my files onto another mac formatted external drive. The issue lies with 24p. My 30p project worked great, but when I try to record tracks in 24p, the first couple of minutes show on the dv rack player(the waveforms) but the waveforms stops and the player keeps going. In other words, you are supposed to be able to access any part of the footage instantly for review, no problem in 30p, but in 24p, you only get the first 1 to 3 minutes to view. All of the footage is still there, and I can transcode into aic no problem. you just can't review any part of the footage past 3 minutes. I don't know if it is a SM problem or what. I had this problem on my desktop hp pc as well. I have only brought it to SM's attention once, but my schedule has been hectic, and I haven't talked again. I will be on it when I get back from vacation Friday. Anybody else have any similar problems with hd100 24p and HDV rack?

[QUOTE=Jason Coblentz]

does the field monitor display 16x9? in the basic dv rack i can only get 4x3.

[QUOTE=Brian Luce]You need the HDV version for this. The DV mode is 4:3 only.

I am running DirectX 9.0c on my Windows side of the computer. Was able to use DXDiag no problem.

Up until very recently Macs have used a completely different architecture than PCs, the hardware itself was incompatible.

Now that Macs run on PC hardware, I could see people releasing software that will let you run Mac software under Windows. I agree, FCP under windows = holy grail. Or at least let me run MacOS on off-the-shelf hardware so I don't have to pay the outrageous prices for Mac hardware.

Not any more. DV Rack 2.0 SD (released today) now has a 16:9 Field Monitor. (and lots of other new and improved features, of course)

I don't really find the prices of Mac any higher than the PCs. I'll buy a MacBookPro over a PC laptop any day. The perception that Macs are more expensive than PCs is something of the past, check comparable features and you'll find that Apple's products are very competitive.

yeah right.

Thing about Mac desktops is with a PC you can put your own together, much better than an of the shelf and for cheaper. Macs are proprietary. Besides that, Macs are still more expensive anyways. You can buy a Dell Inspiron 9400 with the same specification as a MacbookPro 2.16Ghz for more than $400 cheaper.
Not to mention Macs look too geek for my tastes. But that may be just me.

Care to elaborate? Windows is *the* proprietary OS by definition. Microsoft is the poster child of "not invented here" mentality and the main responsible for causing the proliferation of proprietary protocols or proprietary variants of existing ones. That has been always their way of displacing the competition, see what happened with IE. The blatant disrespect for HTML standards has been the hallmark of IE in all these years. Say what you want about the machines but the Mac is one open system and Apple has gone the extra mile to keep the architecture as open as possible embracing open standards (cups, ssh built-in, unix-based architecture, Bonjour, all the standards for internet/html) and even making part of the Mac OS open source (Darwin).
When comparing the two architectures, PC and Mac, is important to have a base in experience. I worked with PCs for about 20 years and switched to Macs 3 years ago. I know both systems intimately. I have no interest in entering a "machine war" discussion and I will not post replies past this one. So the moderators can relax :)
It's the spreading of misinformation that bothers me and that's what pompted this reply. The Mac is one open system, conforming to open standards. The new MacPro systems are so open that 2 days ago Anandtech demostrated how to replace the CPU with the latest Intel CPUs. And don't forget that FireWire, a standard that we use every day, was invented by Apple and now embraced by the whole industry.

I'm not sure they're talking about Windows, the operating system, but rather the hardware.

You can order all the parts for a PC and then put the machine together yourself. I went into a Mac store and they had a handful of models and when I asked about using my existing video and audio cards, adding my existing hard drives, getting a different case, etc. etc. they said that was not possible. It was a completely closed system. I looked at the Mac notebooks and there seemed to only be two models, the cheap white and the tinny silver. There may have been an option for two screen sizes, two. But I think they do this with all their products. There is one style of Ipod, with one type of navigation... and you have to buy special music to use on it, etc. etc. etc.

With a PC you can use Windows but you also have Linux and other options.

Jack, Apple uses a different approach to customizing their products.
There are 6 models of laptops, 3 MacBook and 3 MacBookPro. The feature list is generally so rich to make endless variants not necessary. More than adding 1GB of ram to my MacBookPro I don't know what I should do. Bluetooth is included so I just bought a bluetooth mouse and it's great. The inclusion of 2 FireWire ports allow me to use about 1TB of external storage. It's a different concept. I stopped building PCs years ago, life's too short. I can build a PC and recompile Linux during breakfast, that's not what I want to do. Just because I can, it doesn't mean that I have to. I switched to the Mac exactly because I needed as system that is up and running in the shortest time possible. If I need an editing workstation on the run, I can just get a MacBookPro, out of the box, and I'm ready to go. Endless permutations based on every little video card manufacturer in Taiwan doesn't buy any more productivity. And at least I know that Apple has verified the working of their OS on every hardware configuration. That concept simply does't exist in the PC world. BTW, the new MacPro has a completely configurable architecture. You can add more HDs, AJA/BM cards, expansions, etc.

There are 3 major types of iPods: iPod, Nano and Shuffle. There are several sizes of storage available, depending on your needs and budget. You can play any MP3 file on them. You can use MP3, you can rip any CD, it's a completely open system. You don't want to buy from iTMS? Then don't, buy a CD and rip it.
Forgive Apple for providing the first, global, store for buying CHEAPLY, legal music and making it better every few months. Regarding FairPlay? You really think that the recording labels would have greenlighted music download without any form of protection? Not a chance in hell. It would not happen. In fact Windows DRM is even more restrictive. If anything, we should be grateful to Apple to apply such a lax systems and still provide music that you own and that you can use both on Macs and PCs! Nobody else has anything nearly as simple and open. Most competitors use a single-platform, proprietary encoding: windows media.

Linux has been available on the Mac for years! I hear that now Ubuntu can be installed on even old G3s, and Intel Linux is not a problem on the new Intel Macs. Not that this option adds anything to value of a Mac or a PC. I can't edit on Linux! But since your brought it up...Linux has been built with multiplatform abilities since... ever! It runs on a IBM 390 for crying out loud. Hardly a PC exclusive. I run my business on Linux, I use a linux machine at home as a Squid cache and print server. It's a wonderful OS that I promoted for years and still promote today. In fact one of the reasons why I switched to the Mac was that I was famiar with Linux and that made switching to a BSD-based system piece of cake. A few years ago PHP and MySQL didn't come bundled with Mac OS, Apache did, and so I was able to take several Linux packages and recompile them under Mac OS.

I hope this sheds a little bit of light on the difference between the two systems. As I mentioned before it's important to be familiar with both platforms before you can formulate conclusions. Since this is probably stretching the limit of acceptable "off topic" in this forum, I'll be glad to provide any more information about Mac and Mac OS and comparison between platforms, via private email.

Gotta go back to editing :)

Paolo,

Thank you for the explanations. Very helpful.