iMac, FCP and Betasp

[tresbeez]

thought i would try posting this here before i went to another forum......

anyway, i'm starting build a small edit suite at my house and was leaning towards the 24" imac. my primary cameras are the BVW D600(yes i'm still getting calls for it) and a V1U. right now all i have is a beta deck and a Laird dv converter box, still need to get a deck for the V1Un and the imac.

i was talking to a buddy today about it and he was saying i may have some issues digitizing the beta footage, that i may have to digitize on another, larger mac, transfer to a portable hard drive then import it into my imac. something about the connections sharing the same BUS? does this make sense?

as you can tell i'm not all that computrer savvy, at this point my head is kind of spinning. any help?

 

[Chugach3DGuy]

I don't think you would run into any huge problems since you're converting your BetaSP video to DV on the way in. The data rate for DV is 25 Mbps, while a firewire 400 line has a maximum bandwidth of 400 Mbps. No problem there, unless he's talking about your hard drive. If your system has a single hard drive, it needs to spin and provide data to the CPU to keep things like the operating system and your other programs running. If you start writing video to the drive at the same time, it can put a strain on the read/write capabilities of the drive, and you might suffer the horrors of dropped frames. There are a few of these iMacs at my place of employment, and from what I've seen, they're basically glorified laptops because of their "all in one" nature. If you went with a Mac Pro, you'd be able to install multiple hard drives so you wouldn't run the risk dropping frames during capture. The Mac Pros are way more expensive, but on the other hand, if all you're doing is light editing, an iMac should suffice. Hope this helps...

 

[grassland]

FCP on an iMac

I teach editing at my local community college and we just "refreshed" our editing lab with 24-inch iMacs. They replaced G5 non-Intel towers. I have noticed no problems using these models for editing and everyone loves the 24-inch monitors. All our students are required to have their own external Firewire drive to store their video files on and you'll want to adopt the same approach. You don't want to put your video files on your start-up drive. Be sure your external Firewire drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (non-journaled).

For digitizing your footage onto your Firewire drive, you'll need to daisy chain the Firewire output from your camera, deck or converter box through the Firewire drive that is plugged into the Firewire port on the iMac. Should work like a champ.

Good Luck!

 

[tresbeez]

thank you for the responses. i forgot to mention in my original post that i plan on getting at least one 1tb external drive.

grassland, how, exactly, would i daisy chain the drive with the deck?

 

[grassland]

Daisy Chain

Your external drive should have two Firewire ports. Use one to plug the drive into the iMac. Use the other to connect the deck to the drive. The Firewire drive will show up on the desk top and Final Cut will "see" the deck (or your camera) as well, when you "log and capture".

Have fun.

 

[tresbeez]

awesome. it sounds like, in theory,it should work fine. i dont anticipate doing any heavy editing with it. i'm still waiting on a couple invoices to be paid before i pull the trigger.

 

[MtnShooter]

A recent convert to Mac, I have a new 24" iMac (2.86, 4-gig) and I'm very pleased with it. I've found I don't need to daisy-chain firewire because I just bought a $12 adaptor for the 800 firewire port, so now I have 2 400's coming out. It works fine.

I, too, am now spoiled by the 24" monitor, and I LOVE how quiet this machine is. My old PC was so loud when it rendered I could hardly hear myself think.

I have found one problem I haven't been able to solve. When using the Windows side (Windows Movie Maker, Sony Vegas Pro 8, or Adobe Premiere Pro) I can control the camera (or deck) just fine. But if I try to print back to tape, it starts the deck or camera and shows it's recording, but there is no audio or video going in. It was doing the same thing on the Mac side in FC, but FC has a "refresh camera" option that fixed it. I can't find a similar option for the Windows side., and the Apple people smugly say: "Sorry, we don't support Windows applications."

I have a friend who has an iMac and his will print to tape in WIndows and in Mac OS; but he has Tiger, and I have Leopard. I think the difference is there.

My workaround has been I either dump the master file and its components to the external drive, then move it to my PC to print to tape, or I save it as a .mov file and print to tape from FC.

Otherwise, the machine is awesome!

 

[tresbeez]

well, pulled the trigger on this the other day. went with the 24" imac, 4gb ram, 500gb HD and a 1tb external drive. should be here next week. cant wait, got some projects piling up.