Badly OT: Mac video editing

[Freya]

Well traditionally I'm a P.C. person, but I aquired a couple of old PowerMac 850AV's. Basically I found one in a skip and then someone gave me one in better condition when I told them about the one from the skip.

That person also gave me a Jaz Drive, a firewire card, and a Miro DC20 card.

I also came across a G3 card cheaply on e-bay.

I like the macs. I've become a bit 'puterphobic the last couple of years but my macs are mostly different because they are cute and when my mac starts up and smiles at me, I feel good that my mac is happy and things seem okay.

However... and there had to be a however, the dc20 card doesn't seem to like the G3 card. They both seem to work okay on their own but when they are together things become temperamental. I think it might be because the G3 card overclocks the bus a little and I suspect that means it overclocks the PCI bus too, and I suspect the dc20 doesn't like that.

The G3 card is made by newertech.

I assume there is no way to slow the bus speed back down? I get the impression macs don't let you control stuff like that.

It's all driving me a bit crazy!

love

Freya

[Freya]

I'm running OS 9.1 with premiere and something called Avid Videoshop, that I really like.

I was wondering if there is a version of final cut that would run on old Mac OS?

Also I'm thinking about ading USB, so I could use memory sticks etc, as having sccsi is a bit of a problem because nothing else uses it. Can I add any old PCI usb card or does it need to be a special one with a chipset macos will recognise?

I'd like to be able to exchange data with a P.C. so I can use Vegas for some things.

Sorry for all the questions. The world of macs is all new to me.

love

Freya

[christoph]

Freya, do yourself a favor:
dump the beast on ebay and get a macmini for 500 EUR - or if you're really tight on money, a first generation second hand macmini ;)... i've been advocating how great OS9 and FCP 1.25 is myself, but that was like what, 10 years ago?

seriously, i wouldnt consider video editing with anything less than a 500mhz G4.. and OSX alone is worth the money!
++ christoph ++

[Freya]

Freya, do yourself a favor:
dump the beast on ebay and get a macmini for 500 EUR - or if you're really tight on money, a first generation second hand macmini ;)... i've been advocating how great OS9 and FCP 1.25 is myself, but that was like what, 10 years ago?

seriously, i wouldnt consider video editing with anything less than a 500mhz G4.. and OSX alone is worth the money!
++ christoph ++

*giggle* Actually I have access to the more modern macs anyway, and was hoping to exchange data with them through the jaz drive (lack of sccsi being a bit of a problem) but the thing is that I am working with analogue video, which the never macs don't really support.

I would just firewire the data out to a camera, but erm, I'm also working in NTSC!

and you know, I prefer the old macos to OSX in a way, it just makes me feel better... ;)

You are right about the money thing too, there isn't enough to go round.

So does FCP 1.29 run on OS9? Would I need a certain version of OS9?

love

Freya

[Freya]

Are there any fast software codecs I could try using on the mac? I guess I could remove the dc20 and use the built in AV ports with the G3 card and capture to RAM and try to do the encoding in software (real time) instead of hardware.

It's frustrating as I'm getting preety good captures at the moment.

love

Freya

[christoph]

i can't help you too much with the hardware problems because i hate them so much that i usually spend the money to work with quality equipment :P

as for final cut, as far as i remember (oh, glorious childhood!) it ran fine up to version two on OS9.. google for the exact requirements.
you'd want either v 1.25 (free update from v. 1.0) or v. 2.02 (free from v.2).. and good OS choices are 9.04, 9.1 and 9.21 .. check the requirements for quicktime too.. 6.1 or 6.51 were good if my memory doesnt fail me (which could well be given the historical timerange).

hope that helps and good luck
++ christoph ++

[Freya]

i can't help you too much with the hardware problems because i hate them so much that i usually spend the money to work with quality equipment

lol! Yes I do sooo know what you mean, but I'm sadly not in a situation where thats appropriate at the moment. Actually one reason why I stuck the dc20 in the mac to start with was that I couldn't get it to work on the P.C and decided it would just be a whole lot easier to stick it in the mac where I knew it worked.

I hate messing around in P.C's especially as I always end up breaking my fingernails or scratching my hands on the case. Awful.

Still the mac is very nice when it is running from the G3 card.

Thanks for your help anyway christoph, I'll keep an eye out for the final cut.

love

Freya

[Rick Palidwor]

I absolutely recommend Final Cut version 2 OR LOWER. I have ued v. 1.2 and v2 with no problems on OS 9.1

At my workplace they recently bought a couple G5's with OS 10.3 and Final Cut v.4.1 and it has been nothing but frustration. We upgraded one to Final Cut HD 4.5 and it's no better.

In other words, the older software (and OS) will be less expensive, AND BETTER IMHO.

Rick

[Evan Kubota]

When I had a G3 tower, I used FCP 2 under OS 9... it was fine. Now I use 4.5 on my G5 tower. It's also fine. In general, it's a very stable program. Ostensibly the later versions should be even better than the first one, when it was rewritten for OS X.

How anyone can argue that OS 9 is superior to OS X is utterly beyond me. Maybe for a few specific applications that aren't available on OS X, but in general OS 9 has nothing to recommend it over OS X, assuming you have current hardware.

[Rick Palidwor]

When I had a G3 tower, I used FCP 2 under OS 9... it was fine. Now I use 4.5 on my G5 tower. It's also fine. In general, it's a very stable program. Ostensibly the later versions should be even better than the first one, when it was rewritten for OS X.

How anyone can argue that OS 9 is superior to OS X is utterly beyond me. Maybe for a few specific applications that aren't available on OS X, but in general OS 9 has nothing to recommend it over OS X, assuming you have current hardware.

Every machine I am referring to is a Final Cut Pro dedicated station: that's all we do, and OS 10/FCP 4+ do not perform well in our experience. Very buggy, lots of unpredictable/unexplainable problems, never consistent from day to day. We have to trash the preferences so often ( a recommended bug fix) I am wondering why they didn't give us a key command for that.

I know lots of people who swear by OS 10 for general/all purpose/whatever they are doing use and I don't question them on that. But for Final Cut I think the platform took a step backward.

Rick

[tacotim]

not sure if this helps you or not freya, but there is an OSX driver for the miro dc30 card. Maybe it would work for the dc20, then you can have the best of both worlds, (osx and cheap analogue capture)


http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19366

-tim

[Nigel]

My editor had a 1.8mhz G5 when they first hit the market and it was shit...He sold it 6 months after he got it and bought a Dual Processor --I think the 2.0 but I might be wrong and it has worked like a dream.

Not all G5's are made equal.

Good Luck

[mattias]

afaik the dc30 driver doesn't work with the dc20, but it works *great* with the dc30 complete with rt extreme, so get a dc30 for $10 and put it in a $200 used g4 tower and you have a great box for digital analog video editing.

/matt

[Freya]

Somehow I missed the end of this thread as I kind of gave up on getting the old mac going. However I recently found that the g3 card has dip switches on it to set the bus speed and I got the dc20, the g3 card and 512mb or ram to all work together! So that is wonderful!

Mattias may have a point about getting a cheap dc30 and a g4 tho. I think if I spend cash tho, I will just get an ntsc dv camcorder with analogue in.

The reason I like os9 more is nothing to do with stability or power or any of that stuff, it's just that I think it is cuter and it makes me feel better about using the computer because the mac smiles at me and makes nice noises. The new mac os is a bit too much like windows or something.

I will be using some big aluminium mac tower things that run mac os tho so maybe I will get used to it.

Thanks to all of you for posting!

Hope you are all having a good christmas day.

love

Freya