platform interchangeability
 

I am working on a single processor mac, and wish to purchase avid-dvxpress, which as I know can run on both. The problem is that I want to do the work at home and then go with my lacie drive to an editing house and have it made proper(audio etc..) The thing is at the editing house it is running on a pc. Although I am using the same program avid tells me there will be a problem with the formatted external hard disk. There is this program called macopener made by dataviz. But will it work? does someone have any experience with this kind of issue? What problems will I run in to ? Its a lot of money to spend if it is not going to work the proper way...

greetings

David

The drive swapping is not a feasible solution. Even with macopener, the PC formatted drive will not perform satisfactorily. PC emulators on Mac are too slow also.

So what should I do then if I want to continue a project done on a mac and needs to be finished on a PC

I would get a laptop (Mac) and hook it up to a PC network for finishing. Transfer the files over the network. But transferring large files on a daily basis will be impractical because of time concerns.

that is not a feasable option for me as I own a desktop. What about EDL?
would that not at least let me keep everything but I just have to recapture (timeline and so on..)

try this

see this thread on avid's forum

http://www.avid.com/community/forums...ml/002483.html

David, the EDL route would work, but you'd be duplicating your efforts. Capture all the footage twice etc. Also the EDL does not work perfectly. Some effects may be missing and need to be recreated etc.

the link leads to a product from mediafour.com called 'macdrive' I dont know if it will work..But it suprises me that to programs, the same... should work so badly together on different platforms

It did and I went to MacDrive itself, they told me they do not yet have a version ready for windows XP, because AVID uses 'striped' drives.
But I am thinking maybe if I format the drive as a windows/pc based drive, maybe my mac can see the drive and I can use it. It must be possible because lately I have been testing a product from FireStore (a portable drive) and my mac could see the omfi files on that drive but so must a pc also see those files.

But how do I format my external lacie drive to be a Fat32? can I do that on a mac or does that need to be done on a pc? are there any problems I need to be aware of?

Keep in mind that formatting a drive will erase any data on it!
I'm not sure if the Mac can do a FAT32 format, a PC can, ofcourse.

I dont have much experience with pc. How does
one reformat a drive on a pc? I dont think you can do this kind of format on a mac

On a PC you right-click on the drive (control + click on Mac I believe)
and choose format. That's all there is to it.