Creating a Mac for Video production – Your software requirements

I’ll quickly touch on Hardware as i have had various builds with quite different results. I have 3 different builds on 4 machines, 2 MacPros with 1TB hard drives and 2 x Quad-Core Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 10 GB of RAM. Another MacPro with a HD and a 1TB raided, this is an extremely efficient machine as the software is running on the system drive and the video projects running from from the raid. Then 4th and currently my edit suite is a 2.26 GHz, Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 16 GB of RAM with a 500GB hard drive, faster access speed to the drive and I have never had any issues while editing, although the sometimes windows in the VMware runs a bit slow and the HD sounds like its going wild but that could be the configuration.

Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut pro? That is the question. I shall be honest, I was always a Final Cut person up until my latest role. The main reason we switched to Adobe was for better integration with the designer who already existed in the company. In the early stages there were problems, mainly with the quality of exports but that has greatly improved. If you could export to WMV on the Mac version that would be great! The workflow of Premiere is very efficient but I have not used Final Cut Pro for a while. You decide!

First things first, get Firefox web browser installed. I’ve not had too much experience with other browsers and video but firefox plugins seem to be a bit more readily available. Once installed and you’ve punched through your proxy (if you have one) install Video DownloadHelper. I’m often asked to download videos from various site such as YouTube for use in presentations and this plugin makes it real simple! If there’s something on the page that you can download the icon lights up and its a couple of clips to download.

Upgrade your QuickTime to QuickTime Pro, it’s essential and despite my opinion that it is not as good as it used to be, you won’t get away without it.

Get some codecs installed, Perian is my first choice and makes sure you can open many awkward video files. If your source files come from all over the place then get the MPEG-2 plugin for QuickTime installed, people still bring me mpg files and it’s not worth the time or effort sourcing another software (should come as standard) Get Flip4Mac on there, go all out and get the HD version you’re only going to upgrade it later otherwise. I’ve never had any playback issues in QuickTime and the output options are very flexible and unlike a few years ago WMVs are pretty good quality and a small file size.

I always have VLC installed, it allows us to view back .mts files shot on our camera kits without the need to bring them ink the edit, great for logging and an area QuickTime falls short. Get to grips with the export options, sometimes gets you out of a scrape when files don’t play on other players.

I use Handbrake for ripping DVDs into an editable format, despite trying to single handily educate the world of focus group facilities with the understanding that DVD recordings are output and they should get up to speed with recording techniques, I still get footage from all over the world as a DVD. We have however built our own viewing facility that can record direct to drive with VoIP access to the respondent area.

I also install DivX and DivX converter for playback and conversion, some recorders record in divx so it’s quite handy. Also allows you to open in QuickTime, do a quick save as and drag and drop the file into your edit.

I recently added the free Mpeg Streamclip when I had some files from Japan that I could not open in QuickTime this saved my bacon, there’s loads of nifty little programs like this and the recent addition of the Apple App store for your desktop makes it a lot easier to browse apps that the old website.

As I mentioned, I have had 2 edit suites hard drives die beyond recovery recently which resulted in a loss of work despite having Back up solution. Make sure you have a good backup solution in place, preferably with support.

April 16, 2011 | | Posted in: Production | No Comments »

Media Streaming, MacBook Pro, PS3, Xbox 360, MediaLink, iTunes Part 2

Ok, I didn’t manage to get this to work completely but as I think it might be down to the network I am going to post it anyway. I almost managed to stream the music from my MacBook Pro (iTunes) through the Xbox 360. The idea of this is to have all music in one central location to avoid duplication of songs and double handling when it comes to updates.

Also, if you don’t have your mac set up to run a Windows environment or need to improve your Bootcamp set up follow my blog post that talked about an easy installation of VM Fusion using your Bootcamp partitioned drive. I did need to import the Bootcamp Partition in order to mirror the music folder in OSX and Windows.

I didn’t use the medialink streaming server software, instead I opened up VMFusion and loaded Windows Media Player. In the VMFusion Setting found under Virtual Machine I then turned on folder sharing and mirrored the music folder where the iTunes Media folder resides. By doing this I was able to use the Add to Media Library under File In Windows media player in order list all my music without actually copying anything over into this environment.

Next, make sure all you media sharing is turned on in the windows environment (I’m using Vista) you can do this via Library > Media Sharing > Share my media to: in Windows Media Player, the Xbox 360 icon should appear in the box below,  or choose Control Panel > Classic View >  Networking and sharing > Media Sharing > Change.

With everything on, turn on your XBox 360. Go to My Xbox > Music Library and select your computer, you should see your playlists…. problem is, mine won’t play!!

If anyone can get ths working please expand in the comments area?

See how I got this to work on the PS3

April 8, 2010 | | Posted in: Apple Mac, Gadgets, Learn at lunch, Software, Tech, Web and Software | 1 Comment »

Easily remove Boot Camp partitioned drive and Windows

Trash_Can_Boot_CampI was going to remove my partitioned drive on my Mac that I had previously set up using Boot Camp but found another solution. Here’s how to do it anyway.

1. Close all programs

2. Go to the Utilities folder and select Boot Camp Assistant.

3. Select Restore the start up disc to a single volume.

Alternatively see my post on installing VM Fusion and booting from the Boot Camp partitioned drive.

November 15, 2009 | | Posted in: Apple Mac, Software, Web and Software | No Comments »

VM Fusion – Easily boot Windows from your partitioned Bootcamp drive.

VMware_Fusion_Boot_CampThe other night I finally grew tired of rebooting my Macbook to use windows programs, saving work to hard drives and rebooting back in Mac OS X.

I downloaded the latest trial version of VM Fusion fully prepared to delete the drive partition and re install all of my software (that would have taken hours) but VMWare luckily had thought of that.

I installed the virtual desktop and fired it up. To my surprise the first option on the list of windows choices was to boot from Bootcamps partitioned drive. Without hesitating I went for it. It does some stuff at the beginning which takes a minute or so but then I was in. Fusion needed to install VM Tools in order to get full functionality and for some reason went through installing device drivers again.

I did get the blue screen of death at one point but I think this was down to installing too many drivers and updates at the same time, but this lead me to start it up again in the old fashioned Bootcamp way and fix it so that still works too.

Very pleased! Took a little time to get fully functional but saved me a lot of time and will save me a in the future!

This might solve the media streaming to the Xbox issue, watch this space.

November 14, 2009 | | Posted in: Apple Mac, Software, Web and Software | 1 Comment »

VMWare vs Bootcamp – What is best for running a Windows Operating System on your Mac?

Unfortunately, though I tried to avoid it, I do have a need for both Microsoft software as well a Mac based software, both at work and at home. I am fortunate enough to run two different set ups for running windows on an Apple Mac machine. At work I have a VMWare environment known as VM Fusion running Windows XP and on my home MacBook I have Windows vista running on a partitioned part of the drive, set up using Apples Bootcamp which comes pre installed on the Mac. For both situations you will need a working copy of windows.

VMWare Fusion EnvironmentVMware_Fusion_Logo
The VMWare environment essentially loads a program and within this program loads the Windows operating system. All programs such as Microsoft Office work as usual within the environment. Fusion also has a handy little feature known as Unity which hides the VMWare surround displaying you windows programs in much the same way as you mac software. If, for example you minimise Word it slinks down to the Dock and not the Windows taskbar. If you take the time to set up VMWare Fusion you can also conveniently save down your files to convenient places within the Mac system so as to avoid the need to drag and drop files between the operating systems. We have VMWare fully integrated on the company network which means full support from the IT department.

Bootcamp_IconBootcamp
Bootcamp is relatively easy to install, it happens in two stages. First, you partition the drive, then you install your windows operating system on the partition. The benefit of running the Windows OS separate to Mac OS you would think would be less of a drain on resources but I have to say that when I boot up in Vista the Apple Mac hardware reacts in a completely different way. The fan kicks in pretty early and the system gets hot. Granted the speed seems to be good but if I’m honest with the processors and ram I am operating with I don’t think I’d notice a difference in speed between my windows programs running in Bootcamp and the windows programs running in VMFusion, the downside being running two operating systems at the same time. The main disadvantage is the fact that the two are separate, you can create a drop box to pass files between the two setups as you can see the partitioned drive from each system but it means rebooting.

In summary, if you are prepared to folk out a little extra for a VMWare licence it is well work it. It just means a more seamless work flow between applications. If you want to copy and paste from a window in outlook to Photoshop you can do, if you want to drag and drop from your windows desktop to an application you can do. As a time saver and for ease of use I’d say VMWare Fusion is the winner.

October 2, 2009 | | Posted in: Apple Mac, Software, Tech, Web and Software | 1 Comment »