Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Post from PETER RUDOY

I worked with Nana yesterday afternoon, but we were not able to get
accomplish anything due to serious technical problems:

1) we couldn't get either tape player to communicate with eMac FCP1 even
after swapping out firewire cables. Video and audio were getting through,
but there was no machine control.

2) it looked like Nana had a bad recording for most of his College Mentor
shoot. Video and audio had significant stuttering, were not useable and
could not be captured by Final Cut (see Nana's tape labelled College Mentor
1). Brad looked at the problem and said he has seen it at HL before. We have
seen this same technical problem with recordings for several months, so
there may be a bad camera or one that needs a thorough cleaning.

I would recommend that we permanently dedicate a tape player and a hard
drive to each Mac and avoid moving any equipment around (i.e. prohibit the
moving of pieces of equipment without permission). The uncabling and
recabling of gear makes the process of capturing video unreliable,
frustrating and difficult to learn.

Regarding purchases:

* We need amplified speakers for each Mac (existing speakers seem to be
broken). They should be simple 2-piece systems.

* We need a better storage system for tapes.

* We need enough tape players to dedicate one to each Mac.

* We need working cameras and mikes (these need to be thoroughly checked out
to make sure they are in working order, and repairs need to be made where
necessary).

* Cameras and players need to be cleaned frequently, so we need enough
head-cleaning tapes.

* We should get new firewire cables, since existing ones may have been
damaged by mishandling.

HAPPY HOLIDAY!!