[MacDV] Re: Cinema Display and comments...

[James Asherman]

Just seconding the contour shuttle pro remarks.  It rocks!
I zip through stuff with it. Both hands are busy.
And obviously if I was doing something *important*,which I don't, I 
would turn on the video monitor.
On the otherhand not using the outboard monitor gives you the realtime 
dissolves.
I shoot with a VX1000 and a trv900 and have Lacie electronBlueIII 19 
 and crappy panasonic monitors.
Oh and a quicksilver 867.
Jim

Richard Brown wrote:

> I recently did NOT purchase the 23" Cinema Display, in favor of a 22" 
> CRT for about $2,700 less money. When I was considering the Cinema 
> Display, I ONLY considered the 23" as it has vastly better specs as to 
> graphics work. The single most important thing you can do for Final 
> Cut is to buy the Contour Shuttle Pro. I just finished, on location, a 
> 26 minute show on my TiBook and never once missed either of my 22" 
> CRT's. Width is not crucial when you have a jog shuttle and instant 
> cut to cut jumping. While, yes, you can do it on the keyboard, nothing 
> beats a jog shuttle, because once familiarized, you NEVER half to look 
> at the thing. Ever been impressed with someone who rocks on a 
> calculator's number pad? Same thing with the Contour Shuttle. My edit 
> had 27 hours of source footage and, though an industrial, has a 
> entertainment cutting style. I used to spend more than $600 an hour to 
> edit this kind of stuff (to get it close to FCP) in the linear, analog 
> world. FCP, even on the PowerBook, is blazingly fast and creative (the 
> only annoyance - occasional renders, but WHO CARES?)

Really!

>
>
> However, it is absolutely crucial that you have an NTSC monitor online 
> all the time in FCP editing. It is the ONLY way to grade color if 
> using color correction, and the better the monitor, the better off 
> your results. I use a Sony Broadcast Monitor normally with SMPTE C 
> Phosphors. This allows setting to bars, and doing "standardized" color 
> correction. If you look at DVCAM footage from a PD150 on such a 
> monitor and a Beta SP or DigiBeta on another monitor of the same ilk, 
> the similarities so outweigh the differences that when "going home," 
> they could be interchangeable. We have. No one noticed. Brave New World..
>
> For cutting, short of color correction, using even just using the 
> TiBook for FCP is fine. Newer generation ADS Pyro Drives (the ones 
> that DON'T look like their industrial design comes from 1961) work 
> perfectly for DVCAM/DV streaming relative to FCP editing. We had eight 
> video and eight audio tracks without a hiccup. Remember to mixdown 
> your audio on complex edits, however. Trying to play back more than 8 
> tracks of 48 KHz is demanding on FireWire.
>
> Richard Brown
>