finalcutpronews

Mike's current FCP HD (really HD) recommendations

HD For Indies

End of year - Mike's current FCPHD system recommendations

iMovieHD? iMovie5?

There's a big rumor right now in the Macintosh Rumors grist mill. A $499 Mac.

But there's a second one that is being referred to - a new version of iLife, particularly including a new iMovie. And there are people saying it'll support HDV.

I'm not a big fan of rumor sites (they tend to miss, and often miss big. Remember the predictions of a cheap pod? Oh, those may happen now, after the minipod. And everyone criticized the minipod to begin with.)

So, I wouldn't necessarily think that this is going to happen - We all know how Steve Jobs & co. like to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. But just in case. Here's the info.

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0412expo1.html

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0412expo2.html

http://www.powerpage.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/powerpage.woa/wa/story?newsID=13405
http://jeffcroft.com/blog/archives/2004/12/500_mac_must_be.php
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/12/20041229012802.shtml
http://www.hdforindies.com/2004/12/macworld-rumor-time-imovie-5-to

iDVD Theme PAK 9

iDVD Theme PAK 9

More iDVD themes for gorgeous looking DVDs. These are all holiday based. DVDthemepak is really a trove of iDVD templates. Oh, yes, there are tricks to getting them into DVDSP.

DV archiving problem(s)

MacInTouch Home Page: "Readers chimed in with suggestion to archive large iMovie projects"

Ever digitize something from a non Timecoded source? You should back it up, well...just in case.

Macintouch has a number of ideas on how to backup larger DV files.

Yasu

Yasu

Yasu 0.8

Designed with System Administrators who service large groups of workstations in mind, Yasu was built for doing a specific group of maintenance tasks quickly within a few clicks, rather than endlessly typing shell script commands in the Terminal app. Requires Mac OSX 10.2 or greater.

Similar to the also free onyx.

Upgrade-itis

Last week, I helped a former intern get his FCP system back working. There was some prebinding issue, an obscure apple FCPHD technote and a solution.

As I work with OSX. I realize that there are a number of "voodoo" steps that I do before an upgrade.

I read MacFixit as well as a number of other tip/fixit websites and I'm finding some common themes.

It's not the sort of "do this and your system will work," but rather more along the lines of "I'm doing this and my system isn't suffering any headaches."

So, here are two great links that I've stumbled across in the last couple of days

zeldman

I like Zeldman's general approach. I'll mention the usual - there are two types of people: people who backup and people who haven't lost everything yet.

daring fireball

I like the daring fireball method/commentary a bit better. I think he is dead on about whether or not to Optimize before a update (prebind), and the whole font cache thing is new to me. So, I thought I'd share a couple of items with you. Remember, the Mac is supposed to be simple, right?

1) Backup your system monthly, key items weekly, and projects daily.
2) I'm a big fsck fan. Apple no longer recommends to do this in OS X.3.x Secretly, I suspect that part of the reason is that when OSX checks disks...it's doing it. Nevertheless, before a software update, I do the FSCK dance to make sure my HD is working ok.
3) Before the update? Repair permissions. Use Cocktail/Onyx/Disk Utility
In fact right now, I'm a big Onyx fan since my previous favorite cocktail went shareware. Once a month, I run the "cron" or chronometer utilities to rebuild all the logs.
4) I really like the idea of rebooting with the shift key down (safe mode) now that it was mentioned. I've never done this before, but I will the next software update I do.
5) Wait at least a day before you use the software update. Are you doing daily mission critical editing? Wait until the major job is finished or smarter yet, wait until a moment where a three-five day problem isn't going to piss your client off. Check macintouch and macfixit

Oh, and if you use FCP and you work with PCs (or your parent is a PC person?). How to fix Mom's computer

myDVDEdit

Editors' Bin :: myDVDEdit :: Overview :: myDVDEdit 0.9.1

myDVDEdit is a piece of software to help you understand/interpret DVD structure and even change several items after a DVD is finished.

From the Author:

My hope is that myDVDEdit will be to DVD's what ResEdit is to programs on the Mac, a tool which allows you to understand and even to modify the content of a DVD, at the deepest level.
The format of a DVD is very complex. I have tried to make it as accessible as possible and have therefore left aside explaining some bits of information, which, although they are important in enabling the DVD to be read by the DVD player, are of no importance to anyone who simply wishes to understand the DVDs structure.

O'Reilly: Exporting QuickTime Movies with Simple Video Out X

O'Reilly: Exporting QuickTime Movies with Simple Video Out X:

SimpleVideoOut X converts any QuickTime movie into a FireWire stream, regardless of whether it originated with your digital camcorder, your hand-held camera's movie function, or even (heaven forfend!) one of those illicit TV torrent sites. With SimpleVideoOut X, you can easily play through to FireWire and connect the output to a recording device or your TV. This article introduces you to the program, walks you through setting up the physical connections, and adds a few tricks along the way"

Compression Engine 2 (server technology)

News : Popwire Technology: "STOCKHOLM - December 21, 2004 – Popwire, a Teleca company, today ships its Server media coding software, Compression Engine 2 running om Mac OS X. It is a high performance digital media coding system for Broadcasting companies, media houses, ISP’s and mobile operators who deal with large amounts of content. The Compression Engine 2 follows the well received Compression Master 3, which was the first Mac OS X tool on the market with support for Windows Media 9. Other new features are Real SureStream, MPEG-2 and DV transcoding.

more inside

DVDThemePAK releases iDVD Holiday collection | MacNN News

DVDThemePAK releases iDVD Holiday collection | MacNN News: "DVDthemePAK this morning released a new Holiday ThemePAK collection of ten menu themes for Apple's iDVD 4.0 software. This new $40 ThemePAK includes Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, 4th of July, and Easter Themes. Each theme includes completely custom button designs and composite graphic backgrounds. This new ThemePAK contains 8 animated themes and 2 still background themes. A new St. Patrick's theme is also available if purchased before Feb 1st, 2005. End users access the themes from the same menu as the pre-installed themes or they can be listed separately."

(Via http://www.macnn.com.)