CYBER TELEVISION STUDIO IN A SUITCASE
TMMac + Black
Mamba + FCPro =
iMotion Picture!
I live in Hollywood, I
do movies, I do DVD's, I edit
with a Video Laptop MAC using Final Cut Pro, Adobe
Premiere 6.0, Sony HD dual camcorders, I mix
my
audio with a state-of-the-art Fostex system and this my
meister is how I do it....
OK - principal photography starts in August - so this report is a pre-pre/ inter-flection-after already spending the dough-
type report.To define my use(s) for the Pana Mamba(NTSC ={never twice the same color}) slash Mamba (PAL) - I bought my cameras for picture acquisition only and bought PAL because my end product is to be DVD/FILM and I want to be prepared for video-to-film. (if I am going too fast , see Duart.com or Swisseffects.com. I will record my sound on a Fostex
PD-4, in my opinion the best production/post production
DAT combo out there.So I don't care about that my sound system that is limited by the cheap on board mice(s) {SEE SPECS}
The 43mm adapter ring holds the Century Optics.com 16:9 and the .3x fisheye lenses just dandy.
So for me, all said & done, my 2 (two) Mamba's I bought for my movie will cost me roughly the same price as 1(one) Sony PDX would in the U.S. AN XLR ADAPTER that would work on the Mamba would cost less than $200 USD! (but again I am providing sound from a DAT which will be dubbed to DVCAM later (no time code slate for me - how many else of you have seen the similarities w/ DV and "old school" film making methods"?)
This camera feels and operated like a consumer camera - a little fragile-/clunky (i.e. Sony PDX with stupid buttons/controls) why I could not easily reach the power, record and photo buttons puzzled me - have no doubts! The mechanism and offerings are OK but not Super (Matsushita but not Sony)
Still. for the dollar, for serious picture acquisition, the Mamba, especially with the Century Optics lenses, becomes an amazing tool for the price. I am very VERY pleased with my choice. I'm shooting 2 Pana's for the price of 1 Sony & loving the results.
On Final Cut Pro to DVD, the colors are "healthier" than any Sony Camera would provide.
I was so happy with the combo of chuckmeister's advice about CA and my FCPro editing system, that I skipped the showbiz expo in El Lay this weekend, simply because my questions for my next project had already been answered by der chucky.
-R. Howard
No really, I have (had) my choice of DVcam/DVCPro/miniDV cameras and I picked the Black Mamba2 as THE Cam of my choice. Now, if you can just convince Pana on a 24fps Digi HD mini version... :-))
FireWire VST Hard Drive Report
Review: VST FireWire Hard Drive
************************************************************
11 October 1999 Lucius Kwok
The Drive As small as a Palm III, the VST 6 GB FireWire Hard Drive is
a zippy little thing wrapped in orange and red. It also comes in
different sizes from 4 GB to 14 GB.
Along the back are two 6-pin FireWire ports, a slot for a security
cable plug, and a jack for the optional power supply, which is
another neat little thing we'll get to later.
There's no fan, which makes for a quiet and compact unit, but the
drive gets about as hot as a typical PowerBook G3.
Our testing platform is a 233 MHz PowerBook G3 Series computer
(single processor, 160 MB RAM, no L2 cache, 66 MHz bus) running Mac
OS 8.6 with a 2048K disk cache. We used a Newer FireWire 2 Go PC Card
as the drive controller.
According to VST, the FireWire Hard Drive can draw power from the
FireWire bus, but since the Newer card doesn't provide power on its
FireWire port, we couldn't test that out.
The Speed Make sure you download and install the latest VST drivers
because when we first fired up the drive, we got abysmally low
transfer rates of about half a megabyte per second. When we updated
using the VST Installer version 1.1, transfer rates improved
significantly. The Installer crashed at the end of updating the
firmware on the drive, but this didn't seem to affect the
installation.
In general drive feels fast, with Finder operations and spinning-up
generally twice as fast as the internal drive.
In our own testing with ZD's MacBench®
5. 0, the drive clocks in at about 9.1 MB/second for reads and 8.4
MB/second for writes. Duplicating a 32 MB file in the Finder takes 15
seconds. These very impressive numbers are up in the range of 7200
rpm drives. The ATA drive below is the internal PowerBook drive (2
GB, Toshiba mk2105mav), and the VST drive is the FireWire Hard Drive:
ATA VST Seq. read
5. 434
9. 198 Random read
5. 058
8. 256 Seq. write
5. 434
8. 141 Random write
-
8. 154 All tests are of the 1024K flavor, and results are in MB/sec
The Power (Supply) One of the better pieces of design is the FireWire
Hard Drive AC Adapter. No longer will you have to carry around a
wall-wart taking up three or more power strip spaces. VST's optional
power supply for the drive is a small rounded box about half the size
of the drive with a fold-out plug. Folded into the power supply, the
plug is safely tucked inside the box for travel. Open it 90 degrees
and it sits flat on the wall when you have it in a wall outlet. Turn
it to 180 degrees, and the slim power supply plugs into a power strip
while only taking up one space.
The adapter is an auto-switching power supply that can operate on
voltages from 100 to 240 at 50-60 Hz, a benefit for international
users.
The 6 GB VST FireWire Hard Drive has a suggested retail price of
US$469.95, and the FireWire Hard Drive AC Adapter retails for
US$21.95.
Conclusion The VST FireWire Hard Drive (6 GB) is small, pretty fast,
and reliable. After installing the latest drivers and firmware
updates, the unit runs without any complaints. We have been using
these drives for over a month and have had no problems. The only
problem we have with the drive is the price, which is currently
higher than a comparable external APS 9 GB Ultra SCSI drive, which is
bootable but much larger to carry around. Also, FireWire isn't nearly
as ubiquitous as SCSI, so older Macs will not be able to connect
without a FireWire adapter card.
Another minor quibble is that in order to use any FireWire drive with
PowerBooks, you need to have an external power source since the
current crop of FireWire PC Card adapters don't supply power to the
bus. The need for a second power source limits the drive's usefulness
on the road.
Rating:
If you can afford to get cutting-edge technology, go for it.
5 lightning bolts out of 5
Did you see the November issue of Camcorder
on the new G-3 Laptop and where they had
problems trying to get the Firewire VST
to capture video without crashing?
chuckmeister
Sent: Wednesday, October 20 6:17 PM
To: der chuckmeister
Subject: RE: Wireless Firewire
Dear chucky,
I still work with Hi-8, so it's analog. No experience with Firewire so far.
On my Powerbook G I use the Capsure Card for Video input and it works.
However saving to disk stopped working (though watching was no
problem whatsoever) when I switched to system 8.6. I don't know why -
I couldn't get it working with neither Apple's Video Player, nor
Premiere or other stuff. (I tried the regular stuff: system
extensions off, rebuilding desktops, zapping PRAM, different drivers,
etc, - no way) And even a (not thorough) search to find something
about that problem did not reveal anything. So I switched back to
System 8.5.1, assuming that it is some kind of System incompatibility.
I built a small start-up system and have it run from a 45 mb ram
disk. Creating a ram disk, copying the system to the ram disk and a
reboot from the ram disk takes about 2-3 minutes. The ram disk is set
to save at shutdown, so no losses - unless a system crash occurs. A
nice side-effect is that this is probably the speediest way to run
the machine. Now it works and I can capture 640*480 at 25
frames/second with very few frame drops (sometimes none).
Just today I downloaded Reel-Eyes from iRez, a videocapturing tool (I
attach a .pdf description), however haven't tried it and don't know
if it also works for DV or even under System 8.6.
Today I furthermore did a search on MacFixit (www.macfixit.com), a
place most Apple related problems are discussed. I found discussions
about Firewire PC Cards and their driver incompatibilities. There had
been a lot of problems, however fixed through new releases. The place
had nothing about Apple's own built in FireWire ports. Another
suspicion are the ATI drivers for the video card - there have been
many complaints in the past.
In my opinion video-capturing still is very much at the beginning of a
huge development and therefore prone for lots of mistakes multiplied
with Murphy's laws. But I assume that will change quite soon.
Sorry that I cannot be more specific and I hope problems will be
sorted out soon.
Best regards
Heinrich
The bad news was a brand new article in next
>months Camcorder "November" issue with a
>big huge 4 page lead off article with all
>praise and up beat written article on the
>brand new Apple G5 screamer with new
>OS and wonderful new Final Cut Pro... has
>a lead off paragraph near the end of the
>four pages that said they were never able
>to get the damn system to work..
>Which is echoed by at least 28 e-mailers so far,
>they can't get the system to capture video...
>what a stopper. Maybe it will work for
>Daddy USA for junior's ball games or daughter's
>recital, but not for commercial purposes.
>Thanks
>your island chuckmeister
Dear Chuck for your chuckmeister info from
http://www.theregister.co.uk/991018-000010.html
Cheers,
Heinrich
Posted 18 Oct 12:39pm by Tony Smith
Canon gets 1394 'FireWireless' up to 100Mbps
Canon has developed a wireless version of the IEEE 1394 bus capable
of transmitting data at a rate of 100Mbps, Japanese newswire Nikkei
reported today.
The company said the system, currently in the prototype stage, can
transfer data between devices up to 20m apart -- Canon demonstrated
the technology using a VCR and a digital camcorder. The prototype
operates at a signal frequency of 60GHz. It is not yet known whether
the system requires a line-of-sight connection.
This isn't the first attempt to extend 1394 into the wireless world.
Consumer electronics giant Philips had previously developed a
prototype system that operates at several megabits per second.
By comparison, radio-based wireless networking systems, such as
Apple's AirPort technology, transmit data at around 11Mbps. Of
course, products like that are aimed more at networking roles than
device-to-device communication, 1394's raison d'etre. However, given
that 1394, unlike USB, can operate on a true peer-to-peer basis, so
its use as an networking technology -- at least in a wireless
context, if not across a cable -- perhaps shouldn't be ruled out.
Canon said it will submit the specification for its technology to the
1394 Trade Association, which is currently developing a wireless
specification for the bus. ®
I WILL get some specs and crayon drawings from my
3 year old on my next Cupertino trip... Promise!
APPLE COMPUTERS
email at devincen@apple.com
fax
at (800) 462-4396
toll free at (800) 538-9696
This is Steven Jobs 
taking
care of your money...
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