Maybe making the switch from AVID to FCP, would like some input please.

Happy T-Day to all. Would really appreciate any thoughts on this. I have many questions and need some answers from folks who are not always pushing AVID ( my vendor) I am a one man shop and use all Apple apps (LiveType, Motion, etc.) but have always stayed in my comfort zone with AVID Xpro and MOJO. Am thinking of going to Media Composer but after a few days of consideration and a trip to an Apple store, I may do a complete turn around and commot to FCP. Recently made the move to HD with the Sony XDCAM HD system. Here are my questions...plese be patient, this is a major move for me.
1. If I purchase a new Intel G-5, will the internal SATA drives be OK for 35MPS HD?
2. What AJA card or product should I buy so I can view HD SDI on a client monitor and output HD to a Sony XDCAM HD F-70 Deck?
3. What graphics card should I order on the new machine?
4. Can I use the FAM ( File Access Mode) to tranfer content?
5. Any other considerations when ordering the new Intel machine?
I know I have many questions, but I really believe it is time for me to make the move. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks again.
Tdub

1. Yes, but just. You'd only get 1 stream. Faster drives would allow you to do more than one layer of real time playback. You could stripe more than one internal sata and get the job done that way.
2. Kona LHe will do this, however you'd gain the ability to upconvert and cross convert the video to just about any format with the Kona 3.
3.The X1900. Motion and some effects in FCP will take advantage of it... down the line FCP is likely to rely more on the GPU is an educated guess of mine. the top of the line card is faster, but not enough to substaniate the price if you're working in Video. If you were working in 3D CAD environments, then the top of the liner would be the best choice.
4.I don't use XDCAM here, so I'm presuming that you're talking about a transfer mode with that. I'm pretty sure FCP 5.1.2 added this capability. Might search the COW on this term in the FCP forum there. http://www.creativecow..net.
5.Working with HD and MPEG streams would leave me wanting the fastest of the three machines. You'll want 4 gigs of RAM, but it's less expensive from other than Apple. I know just how scary it can be to move to a new platform, and did exactly as you are contemplating when FCP 2 arrived. I've never looked back. Hang here once you get started, and we'll help you with the transition. There is a book out there in the pro training series from Apple/Peachpit on ediiting on FCP if you're coming from Avid. I'd recommend you get that book. Will ease the transition no doubt.
Hope you make the jump!
Jerry

Similar Messages

Any success or regret stories about a total switch from Avid to FCP?

Any success or regret stories about a total switch from Avid to FCP?
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8) Final Cut Studio 5.1

I'm currently working on a job in a facility that has 3 FCP systems and uses Terrablock networked storage. I was 3 months here so I saw a lot of the good and bad with this system. It's Fiber channel so quite fast but there were a lot of issues with the compability of the OS. When working it worked well. The Avid Unity systems are very solid and proven.
The biggiest issue I have with FCP in this enviroment is it's great if you keep a project on the same system but when you start moving edits around then you get into the media managment limitations of FCP. A large project with lots of media, audio, gfx of different types, lots of renders, can be a pain when moving and reconnect on a different system. In theory it should be flawless as you point back to the proper folders and drives but it rarely is. It can be done is just takes time. And the better the editor is with his/her media managment then the easier it is. Avid's media managment works much different so by nature it's a bit easier in the networked world. We'll see what FCP has at NAB to make this better.
Bottom line, FCP vs. Avid is a debate that will rage. I use and enjoy them both on an almost weekly basis so I can argue the + an - of both. They are both tools, same buttons, different places.

I bought an album on iTunes and 3 of the songs only play for 30 seconds. I have tried re-downloading the album 3 times and the problem has not been fixed. I would like some help please and thank you.

I bought an album on iTunes and 3 of the songs only play for 30 seconds. I have tried re-downloading the album 3 times and the problem has not been fixed. I would like some help please and thank you.
Artist: Imagine Dragons
Album: Night Vision

Report it here:
iTunes Store Support
http://www.apple.com/emea/support/itunes/contact.html

Making the switch from Word to Pages

I'm trying to make the switch from Microsoft Word to Apple Pages. For my job, I push Word to the point of not working anymore with large, 150+page reports, that have many figures (images), tables and cross-references. I am trying to see if Apple pages will handle these documents any better than Word.
My problems are many, and any help would be very much appreciated.
I need to learn how to use the styles the right way,to set up my main report like so:
1. Heading Primary
     1.1 Heading Secondary
          Bodytextbodytextbodytext
     1.2 Heading Secondary
          Bodytextbodytextbodytext
          1.1.1 Heading 3rd
and so on. This can easily be done with the default heading tool and a simple press of the tab button-but I need to be able to change the font size on the different level headings, and the only way I can manage this is when I define each sub-heading as a different paragraph style (like 1.Heading 1 and 1.Heading 2), but it seems whenever I do this the table of contents has a hard time indenting the right topics.
Also, I'm not fully sure how to add captions to pictures and tables, and then how to below the table of contents make a list of figures and a list of tables, respectively. In word, it is as simple as inserting a caption and defining it as a figure or table.
Like I said, any help would be appreciated-I can't seem to pick these things up from tutorial videos or the user manual, so I've turned to the trusty Apple Support Community.
Thanks,
     -Skyler

Table of Contents doesn't adapt to the automatic lists numbering, sad to say. The TOC has it own Styles you can set.
For caption use a text box that you group with the image, table or any other object.
To make a list of images and tables you have to do them manually.
Pages doesn't have all the feature Word has.
Have you downloaded the Pages User Guide from your Pages Help menu?
There is a rather good boo you can get "The missing manual for iWork".

Making the switch from iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 today. Purchased a SIM adapt

I have a 2 ATT/Apple/iTunes questions.
I am switching from a 3GS to a 4 today. I purchased a SIM adaptor so I can use the new mirco SIM in my 3GS. Once I activate my 4 will my 3GS be deactivated? ie will be able to swap my sim from one to the other and use each seamlessly?
My second questions is if iTunes will allow two iphones to be synced on a single computer/account simultaneously?
Thank you for the help everyone!
Kalel

Kalel wrote:
I have a 2 ATT/Apple/iTunes questions.
I am switching from a 3GS to a 4 today. I purchased a SIM adaptor so I can use the new mirco SIM in my 3GS. Once I activate my 4 will my 3GS be deactivated? ie will be able to swap my sim from one to the other and use each seamlessly?
Yes, Upon activation of the SIM in the iphone 4, the SIM in the 3GS will be simultaneously deactivated. Only one SIM per mobile phone number can be active at one time.
My second questions is if iTunes will allow two iphones to be synced on a single computer/account simultaneously?
Yes.
Thank you for the help everyone!
Kalel

Making the switch from PC to Mac.

I am a dedicated Apple fan, to say the least. Like, I need a t-shirt and a tattoo. I have an iPod and iPhone currently and I've played a bit with the iPad but that's not what I'm asking.
My whole life I've had a PC. I hate Windows and PCs have always seem to fail me. I'm an extremely heavy computer user.
In school, I use Macs. I'm in Graphic Design. I also am a musician. I've been begging for one for a super long time. Now that I'm getting ready for college - a Mac could very well be my Christmas present.
In the past five years I've went through quite a few laptops due to Windows failing and what not, just dumb things that could happen I suppose. Being an Apple lover, I've heard that Macs are very could quality laptops, it's harder for them to get viruses, ect. Is it true?
Would it be worth it to make the switch?
What tips can you give?
& what antivirus software should be used for a Mac?
Previously, I used Norton and I haven't had too good of an experience.

Whereas no Windows computer would last very long without products like Norton, a Mac already includes all the protection it needs against viruses and malware. Norton a/k/a Symantec functions well on Windows PCs but it will cause no end of problems on a Mac.
A Mac is far removed from a Windows PC. It has always been so. Evolution of the two systems has been completely separate from the beginning, and have followed very different philosophies. Whereas OS X draws its roots from mainframe OS with multiple user accounts that must be separated from one another and the system that runs them, Windows took a very open approach from the beginning. It got much worse with Explorer and Active Destkop. Microsoft has been trying to shut the door on that Pandora's box of viruses and malware ever since.
Norton and its many Mac variants are one of the worst pieces of trash you can install on a Mac. All commercial Mac anti-virus software is superfluous and some of it is harmful. Apple Support Communities is full of horror stories describing the effects of installing such junk.
OS X already includes everything it needs to protect itself from viruses and malware. You don't need to buy anything else.
This is an interesting thread you might enjoy: Virus count?

Making the switch from a mini to a classic

I have an old version of itunes and had an ipod mini, i upgraded to a classic ipod and downloaded itunes 7.7 from the web site and restarted my computer and itunes still tells me my classic cannot be used. I am virtually computer illeterate and need help.

and downloaded itunes 7.7 from the web site
Did you run the installer for it?

Making the switch from PC to Mac what's my best option?

I am at the stage where I need to upgrade my notebook. I am looking at a Mac because of all the multi-media capabilities that come with Mac, but I will still need to function in the MS world. Any comments on running MS Office on a Mac? Can I run both the Apple software & the MS software on the Mac at the same time? I need some help to decide what to do.
Dell Inspiron 8200 Windows XP Pro

I am by no means a Mac head that will recommend a Mac in any circumstance, regardless of the facts. However, I think devbob's comments are biased and he has never used a Mac.
I own both a Mac and a Windows computer and I consider myself above average when it comes to computer knowledge, so I thought I would add my 2 cents. The Mac is, hands down, is easier to use and requires much less maintenance. And the Mac interacts very will with Windows for the basic stuff like email, internet, Word, and Excel. If you need to do anything else with other Windows users regularly, a Mac is probably not for you. Outside of those items, it can get very difficult to work across platforms and it would be much better to use the same opporating system your peers are using. In most cases, that is Windows.
devbob is certainly correct that there is more software for windows than for Mac. But there are also more viruses and spyware for Windows. For home use, I don't think there is a better computer than a Mac. However, I don't think I will ever use a Mac at work because, like devbob said, there isn't enough software out there for the Mac. Also, since only 3% of the world uses a Mac currently, there isn't much incentive for outside vendors to write for a Mac yet. Although, there isn't much incentive for people to write viruses for it yet.
If you are planning to use a lot of Windows programs at work, don't get a Mac. If you are doing a lot of multimedia, email, and internet surfing and only need very occasional access to Windows software, I think getting a Mac would be a good choice.
Oh, and one more thing. I don't currently have an Intel Mac, but if you do want to run Windows with bootcamp or Parallel, I am pretty sure that you will need to buy you're own copy of Windows XP and you'll also probably want to buy virus protection. That could set you back another $400. You could almost buy a cheap laptop for that.
iMac (Flat Panel 21) G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
iMac (Flat Panel 21) G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Making the switch - any suggestions?

So, I did it. I finally ordered a Mac (Mini) and am making the switch from MS/Intel to Apple. My Mini isn't even here yet (due next week), but I have been browsing the forums here to get an idea of any pitfalls I need to avoid, suggestions that look like a good idea, etc...
So, I ask the forum -- what do you suggest? I am fairly computer-literate (built my last PC from pieces), but have absolutely no experience with Apple/Mac/OS X...
Any books to learn the new lingo? Any apps that will make the transition a little smoother? While I am excited in the switch, there is some trepidation in learning a new language...
Thanks in advance...
mac mini, 1.66 Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Blankmange, welcome! And congrats on your choice to switch.
We can probably give tips that are better directed if you tell us a bit about how you used your PC, what programs and tasks you did with it, etc. And what you want to do with your new Mac.
Some tips up front:
1) The Mac equivalent of CTL-ALT-DEL to get the attention of a non-responsive program is Apple-Option-ESC. Or WinKey-Alt-ESC, if you are using Windows keyboard. The "Apple" key is also referred to as the "Cmd" or "Command" key. Or the "squiggle" key.
2) Don't rename your home folder, ie the one with the House icon.
3) Stay out of the iPhoto Library folder. It's contents are best used via the iPhoto program.
A thread on how to be a smart Mac user here:
http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=4086431
4) 512 Meg RAM on an Intel Mac is not a good match for MS Office. Need 1 Gig for decent performance. With 2 Gig, the Mini really shows its stuff when running multiple apps.
5) The equivalent of the Windows Control Panel is Apple Menu > System Preferences.
6) Unless you have more than 512 Meg RAM memory, don't get carried away with running "Dashboard Widgets". They can consume a fair amount of memory, and slow down your system.
7) You can use a two-button mouse with scroll wheel. The right mouse button will supply "context-sensitive" menus, which can be a real time saver.
8) The equivalent of "Properties" is "Get Info".
9) The equivalent of "Shortcut" is "Make Alias". Aliases have a little arrow in the bottom left corner of their icons. Be sure to note this, so that you can tell the difference between an alias and the original. Copying an alias will not make a copy of the original, only a copy of the alias. Deleting an alias will leave the original intact. Deleting the original, deletes your data.
10) The Mac has a very efficient virtual memory system and file system, and you usually don't need to concern yourself with either. Just make sure you leave 10% or more of your hard disk free, so that the OS has elbow room. The OS will even keep your disk defragmented automatically if you give it enough room to work.
11) If you buy external storage, firewire is much preferred to usb. Will be substantially faster. A dual-interface (Firewire+USB) will give maximum flexibility for devices that need to be used with PCs and Macs.
12) My personal opinion is that Norton Anti-virus is not a good choice for OSX. It hooks deep into the OS, and appears to be correlated with a number of mysterious problems reported here. Clam-AV would be a safer choice -- though most Mac users don't run any anti-virus, including yours truly. I would recommend that you turn on the Apple firewall and/or use a router with firewall protection.
13) Have a look at the free NeoOffice suite, if you'd like to keep some money in your pocket instead of giving it to Bill Gates: http://neooffice.org Reads and writes MS formats. Produces great PDFs, too. I exchange documents with many organizations using NeoOffice; never had a bit of problem.

I am having bugs and would like user input about the keyboard

i would like some input from other users and if you are having an trouble typing on the keyboard.
freezes or anything else. resets or bugs.
<Edited by Host>

ok it just did it again so it is definitely not emoji.
i am trying to pay attention to exactly what happens and when it does what key i am pushing.
i just happened twice and the first time was on the letter "o" and the second time on the letter "i". i have tried to fat finger the return and send and back buttons to see if that had something to do with it and nothing. if you fat finger send well it sends the text lol. i even intentionally touched in the texting space right above the letter i and o too see if i am touching the text space and causing it. it does nothing. it seems to happen when i am typing really fast. very annoying... this never happened on my 3g or any of my 4 3GS phones...
i guess i will do a full restore tonight and see if that ends the problem. i will not put emoji back on for a while to be sure it is not that program.
if anyone else has experienced this then hit me up on here and let me know. i am not sure about this new phone but on my last one the keyboard would start to freeze up and pretty much stop typing if i went for to many days without turning the phone off and restarting it. restart seems to fix it.
edit ~ ya its doing it bad now... did it on letter "y" this time.... seems to happen on the top row of keys. i just restored this phone from previous phones backup so i will wipe it and do a full install. hopefully that fixes it. maybe the OS got corrupted somehow.

To whom it may concern, Since I have downloaded the Firefox update for my phone. I have not been able to copy and paste. I would like some info on this. Thanks

With the previous version of Firefox for my mobile phone it had the gingerbread copy and paste system and now I am not able to do so at this point. I just want to know how to copy and paste with the new update version of Firefox for my mobile phone. I have a Samsung Infuse. I would like some input on this. Thank you and much appreciated.

Sorry, the new user interface in the latest update did not have selection/copying of text ready in time for its release. We're working on adding it back for an upcoming version very soon. If you'd like, you can already start testing it in our [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#Download_Nightly nightly development builds].

Switching fron AVID to FCP. Media Drives?

Making the switch. I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to the latest drives, any help would be greatly appreciated. I am currently using two internal ATA 250 GB drives. One for media and one for the system drive. I would like to add more space. I am currently editing DV but you never know about the future. Do I go with SATA drives, Firewire, or SCSI? I do know that I want the drives rack mounted. Looking forward to the switch to FCP. I like my AVID but I feel the future looks brighter with Final Cut. I am new to this forum, so any help would be wonderful. Regards, Thomas

That G5 has two internal SATA drives, not ATA drives which are plenty quick for DV all the way to DVCPROHD100.
I suggest a PCI SATA controller card with external connectors to a two or four drive SATA enclosure.
FirmTek
Sonnett
and others make them.
==+=+=+==
best wishes
david

I've Made the Switch (from iWeb) & Lived to Tell About It.

I've gotten a lot of help and useful information from this forum over the years and I will certainly miss it. I've just completed a 2 month transition where I've migrated my site from iWeb/Mobile Me to a new site made in RapidWeaver and hosted by Host Excellence. I figured I'd write a little (or a lot) about my experience, to give some others an idea of what they've got to look forward too. Hopefully it will arm you with some things to do and look out for. While I am describing RapidWeaver here, a lot of this process will be the same no matter what new software you use. I started off being pretty happy with what I had going in iWeb and not being thrilled at all about making the switch. Now I am so glad I made the switch and I am far happier about the new site than I was with the old one. BTW: the new sites address is: http://grillinsmokin.net . Feel free to visit. I think you'll quickly notice some things you simple can't do in iWeb. This isn't a knock against iWeb. I was very happy with iWeb and had no plans to switch. Where it hasn't been developed actively for four years now, it has been left behind somewhat.
To begin at the beginning: I've had a site made with iWeb since January of 2006 called Grillin' & Smokin' that combined my love of outdoor cooking and photography. Over the years it had grown rather large, with 375 photo entry pages and 230 blog pages. The Domain file was around 1.4 GB. This was not something I ever wanted to have to recreate from scratch. However losing MobileMe as a host was taking away Value Added features like the Hit Counter, Slide Show, Blog Comments, Blog Search etc. The handwriting is on the wall for iWeb too. I might have gone on using iWeb, but between losing key features and the fact iWeb was starting to show it's age, it was time for me to move on. Just before the iCloud announcement this Spring, I began researching website building software. I looked at their features, working methodology, themes, plug-ins and extensions. I download trial versions of the software where it was available as well as some of the themes or plugins I might be using. I gotta tell you, at first I was very frustrated and upset, because I was not finding anything that had the ease of use of iWeb and looked like it was going to be able to recreate the appearance of my original site. It appeared to be a series of compromises. I'd like the features of one package but I hated the themes available for that software. Another looked promising but isn't being upgraded regularly. My biggest frustration was some of the iWeb page types just don't exist in other packages. For example the Album Pages where multiple Photo Pages can be grouped and displayed, don't have a direct equivalent in any other package I saw. As part of my discovery process I read reviews of the various packages, including head to head comparisons of some of them. I also visited their discussion forums. After doing this for 3 weeks I "settled" on RapidWeaver. It was under active development; had a thriving developer community turning out a wide variety of add ons, plug-ins and themes; had an active user community & had lots of help resources available. The web pages it produced were standards compliant and you could get nice effects without resorting to Flash. I think the biggest selling point was all of the add-ons-kind of the same advantage the iPhone has with it's App Store.
Once I bought RapidWeaver & a 3rd Party theme, I tried the demo versions of some of the plug-ins and made sample versions of my page types from iWeb in RapidWeaver. I wanted to have a process in place, before I started mass production on the site. You really do need to do some of this homework in advance to avoid unpleasant surprises. The biggest minus I'd turned up about RapidWeaver (RW from this point on) is it didn't handle big sites well at all. The equivalent of the iWeb Domain file is the RapidWeaver Sandwich file or RWSW file. Once the RWSW file reaches 100MB or so you can get crashes or hangs uploading your site. Now 100 MB doesn't sound like much particularly when I was talking about a 1.4GB iWeb Domain File for my site, but RW doesn't include the photos in the RWSW file. Still I knew I was going to have to divide my site across several RWSW files. Initially the plan was to divide it into 3 sites: The main landing pages was one RWSW file and is the site reached by the url for the site. I was going to have a second RWSW file for my blogs and a third for my photos. Ultimately I ended up dividing the photos into 3 RWSW files. These extra files are hosted on sub-domians whose name goes in front of the main domain (http://sub-domain.main-domain.com). This meant some extra setup for me with my web-host, although they made the setup for the 4 sub-domains very easy and they were free. If you have a huge site and will need to split it, you'll want to check with your prospective web host if they charge extra for hosting additional sub-domains. For small iWebs sites this is not an issue-you have one RWSW file and one web address, just like you do now. My having sub-domains also meant more work linking files together across sites. RapidWeaver has something called an Offsite Page which helped with some of this, but having to split my sites up was the biggest PITA for me about the whole process. But knowing about this going in was better than finding out at the end when I tried to upload a single massive site. If you have a small site, the setup for uploading it is as straight forward as iWeb. RW has a built in FTP uploader or you can publish to file and use an FTP client like CyberDuck.
Once I had my site organization in place and had experimented with best practices for recreating each iWeb page type in RW, it was time to begin. I've gotta tell you when I started out I was not a happy camper. I liked the iWeb way of doing things about 70 percent of the time vs 30 percent for RW. At the end of the first week I told myself I have to move on and give up on the past. I was no longer going to be using iWeb and the sooner I embraced the RW way of doing things, the better off I'd be. At this early point it was still hard to see down the road to the end results. No matter what new package you buy, you should try to go with the flow and learn a new way of working. You'll be happier and less frustrated in the end. In my case after having gone through the entire process now, I've ended up changing my opinion. Now that I've gone through the entire process, I like the RapidWeaver way of doing things about 95 percent of the time and 5% for iWeb. That 5 percent is mostly the large site issue I've described. As I began working I was able to reuse much of the text from my iWeb blog in RW. I did have to paste it in as unformatted and reformat it in RW. My pictures were well organized in Aperture which also helped speed the process. One of the things I did is automate some of the tedious repetitious tasks. I created Quickeys macros to do things for me when ever possible. For example I could go to a particular photo page in iWeb and select the first caption. I would then trigger a macro that asked how many captions are on this page. It would then select the caption in iWeb, copy it, switch to RW and paste it in place and repeat XX times. If you know Quickeys or Applescript (I am guessing) there are plenty of opportunities to put it to good use.
RW present a different way of working than you are used to in iWeb and you'll just need to get used to it. What I am describing here would be true of any of the other packages I looked at too. First off it isn't WYSIWYG while you are editing. You are working with fairly basic looking text with few clues as to what the real page looks like. You switch to a preview mode to see what the page looks like in a browser. At first blush iWeb seems to win here. But what I soon realized is RW allows you to mix regular text and pictures together with html snippets right in the same text box. This makes adding counters or badges easy. Plus you can use HTML formatting for things like Titles occurring through your page. Instead of increasing the font size, making the text bold and changing its color, you can simply say this is Heading style 2 or 5 and this happens automatically per the predefined style. Better yet if you change a style everything on that one page or the entire site (your choice) inherits that change. So by working in a non-WYSIWYG mode you gain some long term. advantages over how iWeb works. The same is true with positioning. In iWeb it is fast and easy to place things on a page right down to the pixel. RW just doesn't give you that type of precision and next to splitting my site, layout was my biggest frustration with RW. At least to start. But there is a good reason for this "lack of precision" that may not be apparent until you view the site in a browser. When iWeb came out, you really didn't zoom your browser. iWeb uses Absolute Positioning where it uses anchored boxes for everything, whereas RW uses Relative Positioning. Objects with anchored text or picture boxes like iWeb start having problems if you zoom in or out more than one step. Text starts over flowing other text because the text boxes are anchored by one point. Pages just start looking scary if you try to zoom in or out too much. RW is looking at items relative positions and their relationships with one another. So initially you aren't placing the objects in the same way, it is more like eyeballing things in a way. But when viewed in a web browser you can zoom in or out to your heart's content. So what seems at first like a big disadvantage at first for RW, is actually a HUGE advantage.
This is why you need to go with the flow and try to embrace the new way of working. I mentioned earlier that I wasn't able to find a page type that was equivalent to the iWeb album page. I was able to use a very flexible plug-in for RW called stacks, which allows you to create various single and multi-column or multi-row layouts using empty stacks. You then populate the empty stacks with content, pictures text etc. These pages were not like iWeb albums where you nest the Photo Album Pages in the Album page and they create a skimmable preview and an automatic link to the album. Once I actually started making these new "Album" Pages in RW I realized I was gaining as much or more than I was loosing. The skimmable preview pictures was eyecandy I could live without. Nice touch, not essential. I never liked the way the preview picture shown on the Album page was the first photo in the Photo album. You couldn't change this. Now that I am placing my own photo on the Album page, I could use any picture and make it any size I wanted too. In iWeb the Album Caption was the name of the Photo Page. If this name was too long the caption didn't go to a second line, it got cut off. Any link in RW can have a description added to the link which is what you see in the yellow box when you hover your mouse over the item being linked. I used to hide text boxes links under the pictures on the Albums page for SEO and navigation help. So yes now I have to manually link the Album picture to the Photo Page, but I am no longer creating a hidden text box with a link that I have to remember to move when I add pages to the album. So once again my first impression was wrong. Advantage RW.
Another advantage to RW is any page type can have a sidebar. You can easily add favicons and site logos. You can easily add metadata to any page and customized the names of the path to your pages. The Themes can be more powerful and customizable too. About one week into the process I was begining to really go with the flow and see this new way of working had far more advantages for me than disadvantages.
By the time I finished my new RW site, my iWeb site was looking tired and dated. My biggest and most pleasant surprises were saved until the end. Any kind of SEO was a PITA with iWeb. You had to embed snippets on each page with a code from HaloScan or Google Analytics. Problem was, iWeb erased any such HTML code while you were uploading. So you then had to use a regular expression in the text box ("HaloScan goes here"), upload your site and replace the regular expression with the actual code using a 3rd party tool. Oh and don't do that on any blog page where you are using the built in Apple commenting system because the comments will disappear. I also had problems where the new comment badge would not show up for weeks or months after a comment was made. It was getting so the things I had to do AFTER I uploaded my site to MobileMe were taking longer than uploading the site. Once the site was recreated, it was time to add blog comments, a guestbook, a contact form, Google Analytics, and publish a site map. In my iWeb-influenced mind, I was saving the fussy PITA things for last. I was dead wrong. Unlike what you go through with iWeb, it couldn't have been been easier in RW:
-Blog Comments: Set up an account with the provider. Then I had to go into the page setup in RW for my blog page and click on a popup menu of comment providers & select Discus. If your provider isn't listed you paste some HTML code from the provider into a dialogue box provided by RW for the blog page. In my case it was simpler, just set Discus in the popup menu. Now instead of the iWeb badge showing me new posts (and only when it was in the mood), I now get an email.
-Google Analytics: Set up an account with Google. Go to the Stats area in the RW side bar, click on Configure, paste in your code from Google and you are good to go. You can monitor your Google analytics stats right from within RapidWeaver. (Also works this way for GoSquared Live Stats).
-Guestbook: Same as iWeb. You add a page with an HTML snippet from your Guestbook provider in an iFrame.
-Contact Form: This is a RW page type which masks your email address from the spambots by transferring the information to an invisible and inaccessible page within your site. This page then emails you the information.
-Full Site Search: This doesn't exist in iWeb. You can search your blogs right now, but this is one of the features you lose when MobileMe shuts down. By adding an inexpensive Plug in called RapidSearch Pro I enable full site search. You set up a MySQL server for your site. Host Excellence walked me through the 4-Step Process via a well written Help File. You then control what pages are indexed via your sitemap.xml file. You let RapidSearch Pro index your site and you are good to go.
-SiteMap: There is a simple SiteMap generation feature built into RW 5. There are third party tools for doing this for iWeb. I purchased an inexpensive RW plug in called SiteMap plus that not only generates the sitemap.xml file, it allows you to customize what pages get searched and at what frequency. This ties into what is searched via RapidSearch Pro. This plug-in also generates a visible and customizable sitemap page to help your site's users find their way around. Another bonus of being hosted off Mobile Me is when I went to add my sites to my Google account they had already been indexed. It seemed like they never crawled MobileMe unless you told them you wanted them to look at your site.
Link Checking: This doesn't exist in iWeb. I bought another inexpensive plug-in called Link Inspector for RW. It checks all of your internal and external links and generates a report showing the status of all links. This was just what the doctor ordered for my large site. I will run it periodically to make sure external links are still working and that I haven't broken any internal links.
My site was pretty much wrapped up on Monday August 8th. I just had to add in Blog Comments, Google Analytics, the Guestbook, Full Site Search and the Site Map. I figured I would go public on Tuesday or Wednesday. To my great pleasure these 5 items took all of 2 hours to get set up and working. This was a nice touch after 2 months of hard work.
So there you have it. This is the process I went through converting my site over to RapidWeaver. Your mileage may vary. I am not pushing RapidWeaver for everyone. You have to find what program is the right fit for you. You may find staying with iWeb on a new host is the right fit for you. You need to decide if you can live with the features you lose once you aren't hosted on Mobile Me. For me there was great pain, but in the end there was a lot of gain too. I do like my new site and I feel it will serve me well for years to come. Good luck to all of you in whatever path you choose. Lastly thanks one last time to the helpful folks around here
Jim
http://grillinsmokin.net
Message was edited by: Jim Mahoney

Thanks Roddy. I agree with your take on some of the other software you mentioned, at least from the perspective of having dabbled with demo versions of some of the others. I will add that with Sandvox I felt a little nervous about it. Kind of almost like the software was a "hobby" effort a la the first gen Apple TV.
I also agree with some of your points regarding RapidWeaver. But now that I've built my rather large (for a hobbyist site) website with it I will have to respectfully disagree about it being at the same level as iWeb, or as you put it: a sideways move. While iWeb can be made to do things it was never originally meant to do, there are many places it simply can't go that RapidWeaver can. I was often hitting the limits of what you could do in iWeb, whereas with RapidWeaver, with one exception, I didn't feel like I was running up against any limits yet. The exception is it's lack of ability to handle large sites well. That was almost the deal breaker for me. I find it unexplainable that a software package with all kinds of add-ons helping you make more ambitious sites, can't handle those same sites in a single file. This was almost a deal-breaker for me. For folks who have small to medium sized iWeb sites this isn't a concern. There are also ways to warehouse images on the server to keep file size down, but this gets more complex than many folks coming from iWeb would want to do. Me splitting my site up the way I did was more work than I wanted to do.I almost bagged the whole thing and was close to just taking the old site down.
Now if we were to fantasize for a minute I can think of a way where I could also say iWeb to RapiWeaver is a sideways move: While I don't think iWeb '09 is the equal to RapidWeaver 5, I'd bet that iWeb 11 or the oft rumored iWeb Pro might have been. I kept hoping that Apple would keep pushing the limits of what iWeb could do and add in some missing features and head down the HTML 5 road.
I will conditionally agree on your saying that the shopping list for RapidWeaver can be substantial. I will qualify that by saying: Depending on what you are doing with it, your shopping list for RapidWeaver can be substantial. With one exception, I do think the base package of RapidWeaver is fairly priced. I think the basic Stacks functionality and a few basic stacks should be part of RapidWeaver. The more esoteric stacks can be pay as you go. When iLife 11 was announced without a an update to iWeb, I did some preliminary pricing and I was rather discouraged at the total. This spring I got more serious about things and repriced RapidWeaver and add-ons. After trying out various themes and plug-ins, I was able to sharpen my pencil and reduce the cost of entry considerably. One of the things that helped is the theme I bought had a couple features built into it. It had a nice lightbox type slideshow for photo pages and animated banners/headers capabilities built in. This saved me the expense of several additional plug-ins. Also while I have a blog, I don't consider myself a blogger. I was able to use the built in blog page and I don't feel limited by it at all. Some of the other ad-ons I bought: such as the link checker, site wide search and a more sophisticated sitemap generator were items I added because I could tell I would want to keep the site going long term. Those 3 plug-ins did that a a low price. I didn't think they needed to be built in.
But everyone's mileage may vary. RapidWeaver or any other web design program isn't right for every iWeb user. It all depends on personal needs, abilities and budgets. I'm just glad I can get back to posting to the site and not recreating it.
Jim

Trying to make the switch from PC to Mac

Hi, I just graduated from high school and I'm off to college so I've been doing some research on what kind of laptop to get. I'm heavily leaning towards the Mac but I'm looking for that extra nudge that makes me a believer after a life on PC. I tend to be pretty virus-prone so the fact that Mac doesn't really have a problem with that is a huge factor. I really like the style and aesthetics that Mac has and it's simplicity of use. I'm not so worried about making the switch in that aspect because I feel like Mac won't be a very complicated and overwhelming change from PC. I also like the deal that I would get a free iPod Touch upon purchase and a $100 cut in price (so I'm told by the man at the Apple store). I have been looking specifically at the Macbook Pro 13-inch. However, one thing that I hear a lot about is problems with compatibility. Apparently there are a good deal of programs that don't work well with Mac and I don't know which ones. I would like to know exactly what kind of programs these are. Will I be able to download music or movies on a Mac? run games like WoW (if I would ever decide to play it) or similar MMOs? If it's not too much to ask it would be nice if someone could point out what Macs can do that PCs can't or on the flip side what PCs can do that Macs can't - Pros and Cons are good too. I would really appreciate any help anyone could give me. Thank you.

Hi Tower_Sage,
I hope you realize that you are going to get an extremely Apple-biased viewpoint here . The choice between a Mac and PC is purely personal, and compatibility is generally not an issue. There are really only a few instances where compatibility becomes critical, and that is the requirements of your college, and games.
First, my favorite, games:
Most high-profile, big-budge titles eventually come out for Mac. Unfortunately sometimes the performance of the game suffers compared to the PC version. This is not because of some flaw or problem with Macs, but rather the amount of time and effort developers put on the game. EA uses a Direct X "wrapper" for many of its games, and this results in lower performance than on a comparable equipped PC. The few games I have played this way (Spore, C&C 3, NWN2) all played "good enough" on my Mac. Some developers (like PopCap and Blizzard) actually support Mac from the get-go, and these titles do not suffer at all. Another example that I just discovered today, PopCap and Blizzard have created a World of WarCraft themed Peggle game, however this is available for PC only (at least right now), so I can't play it on my Mac. Bottom-line, if games are a priority, you need to investigate if the games you want to play are on the Mac, otherwise you will need to run Boot Camp.
School Requirements:
My college specifically requires Microsoft Office 2003 (not earlier or newer versions like 2007) for coursework, and Internet Explorer. So, when I switched to a Mac (in early 2008) I faced a few hurdles. I am a "computer geek," and was able to work around the compatibility issues by using Safari, and Office 2004 (and later Office 2008) for about 98% of the issues. The biggest issues seems to be the individual professors and classmates, as if they are not able to open your Word or PowerPoint documents, then you of course can't get grade. However, the work-around for this, was to use the Save-As command and save the documents in the 2000/2003 format. If you remember to do this, you should be able to get by using the Mac versions of Office. One of my final courses, I absolutely had to have Internet Explorer due to some glitch on the school servers, as I was unable to turn in assignments using Safari. Make sure you check with your college and see what requirements they have.
The only other "real" issue you will have, is software. Mac software is not sold everywhere, so you will end-up getting most of it online, unless you happen to live near an Apple Store (best place for Mac products, as far as selection goes). The advantage of getting software online, is that there is a lot of open source software that can be found for free.
Lastly, your copy of Office 2007 will not run on your Mac, without using Boot Camp. Under Boot Camp, your Mac becomes a PC. This means you must have a Windows disc (with license) to use Boot Camp, and this forces you to share your Mac hard drive with two operating system. Unless your college supports Macs (many do), plan on getting a copy of Windows at around $150 along with your Mac. Depending on the monetary support you have, you may want to consider getting a copy of VMWare Fusion (http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/) or Parallels Desktop for Mac (http://www.parallels.com/) for around $80 as well. This program will allow you to run Windows in a window on your Mac Desktop, and integrate Windows only program into the Mac experience. Plus, if you use Boot Camp, these programs can actually use that Windows install, allowing you to run in a window on your desktop, and if you need max performance (like for a game), you can re-boot into Boot Camp. This is how I currently run (with Parallels Workstation), and it solves 100% of the possible compatibility issues.
Good luck!
Rich S.
Coming Soon: Wombat Computer Service (http://www.wombatcs.com)

Resources for Imac ---Just made the Switch from PC to Imac--

Hello everyone,
I just recently made the switch from windows to the intel based Imac apple... loving it..but things are a little overwhelming while trying to get adjusted to the differences.
So on that note.... Does anyone know of a good "cleaning program" for temp and junk files...
Preferably a free one and also can anyone suggest good and reliable apple/mac support web sites (aside from Apple.com) for downloads and tips/tricks
Thanks so much

Gi - and congrats on making the switch. Just to get you started
For cleaning up and general housekeeping (although you shouldn't need to use it often) there's OnyX:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx
This one's useful for keeping your apps up-to-date:
http://www.macupdate.com
and here's a few general interest that help you follow truths and rumours (lots!):
http://www.tuaw.com/
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.macstories.net/
http://www.9to5mac.com/
It shouldn't take you too long to get up to speed... enjoy

Maybe making the switch from AVID to FCP, would like some input please.

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