cmgoodin

The different flavors of Vista are mainly a few additional collaboration features turned on the more you pay. I don't think they remove any features for the business version. I haven't heard of Gamers or others who are upset by the horrible drivers available for VISTA ultimate are flocking to the business version. I believe the main differences in Vista Versions are the terms of the license agreement, and product support, not the functionality of the OS software. Apple doesn't have to worry about different versions of Leopard because it doesn't do huge corporate site licences, or OEM licenses to system builders or VAR licenses, since they don't allow their OSX to run on any hardware that they don't make. It is Apple's failure to implement more draconian DRM that has prevented many movie studios from making their content available on the iTunes Movie Store. For the First Year it was only Disney owned product that was available and only that because Jobs is a major shareholder in Disney as a result of the Pixar buyout. I'm not sure if that has changed, but more Down loadable media supports Windows licensed DRM than supports Apples Proprietary format. While Apple may have the most popular music player of any single brand, it is not the leader in Movie or High-Def Downloads. It is the studios fear of accessibility of High quality down-loadable content that forced Microsoft to include the rigorous DRM that is contained in Vista. If you want to playback Blue-Ray DVDs or HD-DVDs you will have to have this locked down video chain. And as a by-product your analog video outputs will be controlled by the movie studios not you. No one is talking about DRM in Leopard yet, but I bet it will be a nasty little secret that no-one finds out about until it is shipping. ---Courtney

I just got back from a day at Infocomm 2007. The largest convention for AV equipment and information communications hardware going on in Anaheim this week. It has the convention center divided into sections covering Audio, Video Display, Digital Signage, Event Staging etc. There were over 900 exhibitors and almost all had some sort of computer related or driven product. Or they were using computers to generate the displays they were showing. Thousands of computers in media related use and I began to notice a couple of odd things. There were NO Macintosh or OSX products or computers anywhere. Not one. Curious. I started to take note of each booth I visited and look at the computers they had (almost all laptops) and what operating system they were using. Every computer was a PC and almost all were running Windows XP. I only saw 2 copies of Vista running out of all the hundreds of PC based programs or displays. I did see one Mac-Book pro laptop, but when I got closer I discovered that it was running Windows XP. Also, I didn't see a single CRT display or CRT based projector in the entire convention. While this convention is for High-Tech state-of-the Art computer controlled displays, audio equipment, & lighting and event staging control, none were running the latest version of the operating system from Microsoft. Even though that is the primary operating system that is shipped on all PC's since January. I think the DRM stuff that locks up the Video outputs on VISTA equipped machines (and the dumbed down video drivers because of this DRM junk) has made the operating system a pariah in the AV world. While Apple has the niche markets of Non-linear Video Editing and Pro-Tools centric post production sound sewn up, they have almost no penetration into any of the above fields of corporate communications or event controls systems at all. I also wonder if Apple's new OS "Leopard" will have the same draconian DRM controls over all Audio & video streams that VISTA has been burdoned with. If it does it may hurt their professional appeal in their current dominant marktes of Video Editing and Sound Post. I just have to wonder if that is what is holding up the release of the now very late OS. I hope they don't give in to the IP lawyers and ruin the only thing they have going now in the professional A/V market. ------Courtney

Jeff wrote: But Jeff, I did answer you in my first paragraph. On a windows PC if you just do a single click on a link to an MP3 file it will launch Windows Media player (in a seperate window) and start playing it while it is still downloading. Or "inline" playing as you refer to it. You don't have to save it first then load it in the media player. It all happens automatically with a single click. On a normal DSL line the MP3 can be a 2-hour long file and it still starts to play almost immediately and never stops. This is how I listen to podcasts on my PC since MP3 can download faster than it plays. Of course this will only happen if you haven't installed the pushy embedded Quicktime player that tries to take over MP3 playback from links to files embedded in web pages. IF you have that installed and don't drill down deep in the settings and turn it off, will insist on downloading the entire 2 hour file before it starts to play the file. During that time you have no indication what is going on. IF you say on a Mac it starts playing right away you should make audio files MP3 if you want to post a link. It will then be the best for people of any computer persuasion. It has nothing to do with poor encoding of a web-page or any PHP coding. The players are part of the operating system or add-ins to the browser. Sure you can set the parameters to "Stream Only" for a copyrighted or protected file so people can't necessarily capture them easily. But this has no effect on the above mentioned scenario. WMP will start to play any MP3 file, whether it is special stream only format or just a plain MP3 recorded on your dedicated MP3 recorder as soon as it has about 5 seconds buffered locally. Quicktime for Windows doesn't do this. When you click on the Ray Charles link in your original message does it start playing in your mac? ---Courtney

Well, I don't know how the current MACs handle clicking on media files, but on a PC if the file is a registered format for Windows media player, when you click on the link it will start to download it and launch the media player and start to play it as soon as a small amount has been buffered. You have to have Quicktime installed for the AAC files to play. While Windows Media player is on all Windows PCs, Quicktime is not. You have to consciously download and install it. Many windows users don't like to install it because it used to take over your media files. It also seems to require you to finish downloading the file before it starts to play. This feature makes me hate QuickTime only compatible files embedded in the website. When you click on them, you are presented with a blank page in the browser while the entire file downloads. (no information, no "downloading file" message, nothing). You can't even continue to read the page that contained the link, because it is blanked while the entire file downloads. Then finally several minutes later when it is completely downloaded, it will play in the Quicktime player embeded in the browser. With Windows Media player, the MP3 and WMV files start to play almost immediately and with a fast connection they never stall like they do with Quicktime streaming. Also, the Windows media player launches in another window allowing you to continue to browse the current page or even navigate to other websites while it plays the MP3 or WMV or WMA file. You can use iTunes to convert to MP3 files. Or many other utilities. Almost all recording software has a save as or Export to MP3 format. ---Courtney

Jeff, if you want to embed a sound file that is playable by everybody don't put it in a form that is "MAC centric" convert it to MP3 if you want others to be able to listen. AAC is not normally a click-able streaming format in the Windows world except through custom applications like iTunes. But mp3 IS universally click-able and playable by everybody including Linux and older Mac and Windows machines. -----Courtney

The 744t only supports a limited subset of all firewire devices out there. They have to have compatible chipsets. They support the Prolific and Oxford chipsets. Can't remember the specific chip numbers, but you might open up your La-Cie drive and check out the chipset used in the Firewire interface. There may be a thread on the SoundDevices support forum on which chips are supported. Lacie changes chipsets frequently and just because a particular model of drive worked for somebody else doesn't necessarily mean that the same model purchased later has the same internal chipset. ----Courtney

I don't think Nitto has a US distributor. Guys I know that have the stuff got it in Tokyo or elsewhere in the far east. Maybe some of the forum users in Japan can site a stateside source. -----Courtney

Just sync at the nearest Even Second. As long as the 29.97 was Non Drop it should hold sync fine. You just cant use frames after the 00 second mark to sync on. ----Courtney

Jeff, The Mac Mini is a lot more capable than the APPLE TV as a media center, has the same form factor, can play DVDs and it can be hooked up to any LCD or Plasma HD display via DVI or a DVI to HDMI adaptor. It has all the media capability plus the ability to run many more 3rd party applications and store and play all types of media off it's internal hard drive without having to be hooked up to another computer. It is the same form factor as the Apple TV (just a little thicker) And it only costs a little more. The apple TV is just a video iPod without a built in screen. It costs them too much to build and maintain the Mac Mini compared to it's retail price. So they will probably kill it. Another problem is that the Mac Mini won't run the new FCP 2 suite of programs. That program will be their cash cow. Especially since they are only selling the new version as a bundled suite and not as independent products. So if you just want the new SoundTrack Pro 2 you have to plunk down $1300 for the whole FCP Studio suite. ----Courtney

But you could by 2 Mac Mini's for the price of the $1900 Mac Book Pro. and have money left over for a screen and keybaords. That would make a better backup and give you a separate machine to use for playback or other chores while the primary machine records multitrack using Boom Recorder or Metacorder. Apple will probably kill it because they don't want it cutting in the the APPLE TV market which is more profitable. ---Courtney

Perhaps it is 25 to 24 FPS speed change. But that has nothing to do with NTSC. NTSC Pull down is .1% As I said I don't think they know what they are doing. The program seems to have been designed by someone who has little knowledge of the world of Film sound Recording. ---Courtney

I don't know. Looking at the screen shots it shows a menu for NTSC Pull Down and shows a new sample rate of 46.080khz for 48.000Khz with pull down. I don't think they know what they are doing. Be afraid.... Be very afraid... ----Courtney

There are a couple of problems with this Idea. One is RF interference. Running the Card out of it's slot and connecting it through a flexible ribbon cable will probably increase the RF emissions dramatically. 744t already has a problem with excess RF that swamps nearby wireless receivers. Second, since the extender is attached to a cable of some sort there will be more stress (back and forth movement of the cable while connected) to the pins of the connector inside the 744t. This could cause the connector to fail even sooner if the pins become loose or the solder joints become intermittent because of constant movement. This movement would be more frequent than the stress of just inserting and removing the card from the primary connector. They could design and machine a new top piece for the machine that would add about a 1/4" to the thickness of the machine and add a CF slot accessible from the front. The cables would then be internal and not subject to movement and they would be RF shielded by the new lid with a 1/4" lip on it. ----Courtney

I agree with Andrew. The Windows ability to run multiple instances of a single application is a great feature and is completely controlled by the software author. Some applications prevent you from running more than 1 copy at a time. Some allow you. If the Apple OSX prevents this in all cases I think it would be a negative feature. I run multiple copies of IE or BW-Pro or other software. It is great with multiple screens since I can run 2 instances of a program on different screens and have different tools and layouts available on each instance. Programs that use an MDI (multiple document interface) like Photoshop and MS Word will just open another document in the one instance of the program running. Others that don't support MDI open a whole new instance of the program. ----Courtney

I would only buy a DAT machine if you need it for Film work. Some transfer houses outside of the Major Production centers still only accept audio on that format for use in telecine sessions. Used TC DAT machines may be cheap, but they are impossible to get repaired. If the transport goes down on that $4000 DAT it becomes a $4000 door-stop. If you are recording primarily for backup of audio being fed to Camcorders, then the FR-2 or even better a SD-702t would be the better option. At the prices charged in your area you would be better off to own your own gear if you do a lot of work. That rental price seems a bit high for just a couple of middle ground mics and 2vlow end wireless and a pole. But if there are not a lot of rental houses in your city the powers of supply and demand rule and with little competition they can get the higher prices. A good mixer would be high on my list. Get that first. Then add mics and pole. Then recorder after you pay off the mixer and mics. If you are recording to camera many producers don't want to pay rental for a backup recorder. They will not continue to hire you if you blow a job because you can't control the level of the mics going into the camera and they end up with audio that is either over modulated or noisy or too low. ----Courtney

It's true. But they say they are working on it. However USB2 does work and most external drives have both interfaces (or USB only) these days. ---Courtney

I did try BWF-Widget Pro under both Boot camp and Parallels. It works fine on both. However you can't use it to see files on a MAC HFS formatted disk. But if your mac is connected to a USB2 Hard drive or network attached storage it works fine. It will work with Fat 32 and UDF 1.5 DVD-Ram Disks. IF VMWare Fusion is another version of WINE it dosen't seem to work with that. That program only seems to work with a limited number of Microsoft titles. ---Courtney

just posted a new version of BWF Widget Pro. a few fixes and some new features. BWF Widget Pro Version 1.175 added the following features. Will play and edit metadata on SD744T created FLAC files (lossless compressed multi-track files) Will play FLAC files with running time code Added ability to switch off iXML metadata parsing to speed up filling grid on large folders. Added ability to detect and mark files with odd byte counts in the audio data which may be problematic in other applications. Added ability to batch correct odd-length files (mono or odd byte count poly files) so they will load in AVID and Pro-Tools ----Courtney

Very curious. Especially since BW-Pro calculates the End Timecode based on the number of bytes in the Data chunk. So if there is sound there it should show an end time code equal to the length of the file in HH:MM:SS. Even for non BWF files BW-Pro will calculate an end time code based on starting at 00 and ending at the duration (based on the default TC rate listed in the Options Menu) I guess if there is a bext chunk, but gibberish in the TC field it could cause BW-Pro to calculate a negative number for the start time or something, that would screw-up the Out TC calculation. It could be that the data chunk did not get the chunk-length updated at the end of the recording. This can happen if you remove the CF card or shut off power before the file is closed. IF a device locates the start of the Data chunk and there is sound there it might play it until the file runs out. Perhaps something stupid was going on like shutting off the ext power to stop recording. That would really screw things up. This validates my opinion that the manufacturers' claim that the recorder will warn you if there is a problem with writing the file(verification during recording) is really a myth. There is no "Real" confidence during recording on most HD recorders. Espcially those that record or mirror on multiple media. At least with DAT we could monitor off the recorded take with only a few millisecond delay that would serve as confidence that the data was recorded and playable (at least by the source Dat machine). ---Courtney

Thanks Jeff, Deleting the specific cookie for jwsound.net did the trick. I can now sign in on IE6. Must be the new cookies won't overwrite the old ones and the old ones are not compatible with the new version of the forum software. That is a software design issue. ---Courtney

It does seem to be a cookie related problem. The machine I had a problem on running IE6 I had deleted the cookies on. They're turned on, but I deleted all of the Internet cookies. Now I can't log in. Maybe there was an old cookie that worked, but the new cookie has some incompatibility. HMMMM. I am on a new laptop that I have not deleted the cookies on. This one works and allows me to log in. Both machines are running Win XP IE6 -----Courtney

What frame-rate is the timecode running at? It could be that either the HD-P2 or FCP is not dealing with the pull down. What is the frame rate of the project in FCP 30.00 or 29.97? or 25 or 24? FCP is pretty new at the whole read the time-stamp thing and a lot of software gets is wrong for about a year until they figure it out. If the timecode starts at around 10 am there will be about a 30 second offset. To figure out if it is the pull down problem, convert the time of day on the slate at a marker to total seconds. Then multiply by 1.001 and convert that back to hours, minutes and seconds. Also multiply by .999 and convert back to HH:MM:SS and see which way matches the numbers that are coming up in FCP. That will tell you which way they are making the mistake. ---Courtney

Noticed the difference. Don't like it much. The new layout is cramped and harder to read. I prefer the older layout. ---Courtney

It May be able to be recovered but you need to know more about the file's structure. Does the file show up in the directory? Can you copy the file to another Disk? IF you can, try to make sure the file is named correctly (with .wav as a filename extension). You can then use any hex file viewer and check out the file header to see if it is a proper formated wav file. If you have a PC you can use BWF-Widget Pro (demo version) to see if the file will play or check to see if it has all the required chunks using the View Raw Data button. The FR2 files usually contain 6 chunks; bext, fmt, elmo, data, cue, LIST In that order. If you can't find all the chunks in the header (especially the "data" chunk the file may not be recoverable without a lot of work with a hex editor. To learn more about file structure check out the BWF documentation online at EBU's Website http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_274-chalmers.pdf Here is what the start of a BWF file from an FR2 should look like in a HEX viewer like AXE. After you look at the file and see if it has all it's chunks you may be able to load it in applications like Audacity.  Some editing programs can load partial files if there is a proper header, but truncated data etc. ---Courtney

Marc, What was wrong with the 50 tracks? Just curious. Wrong settings? Curious if they were beyond correction. I guess going to the DAT backup is easier than trying to fix them. ---Courtney