Hardware setup advice needed for 2 track 'better than demo' sound recording

I've enjoyed browsing the forums and seeing of the good help that people get here. Hopefully, I'll be next.
I have an accoustic guitar (Taylor 314-CE, Expression System) with onboard pre-amp, cable is 1/4 from guitar to XLR
I have a dynamic mic, with XLR to 1/4 cable
Key issues so far:
(1) lack of a mic pre-amp
Right now I've got a unidirectional dynamic mic from RadioShack that was a gift. I think it cost $50, so I know it wasn't the cheapest one in the store. Of course using it with GB and line in, you have to practically swallow the mic and turn the levels up to get anything. So I don't really know enough about it's quality yet.
(2) difficulty recording guitar
It seems like I either get clipping or not enough input, so I end up with lots of noise relative to a quiet guitar track. To avoid clipping, I have the pre-amp on the guitar set way down, and the track volume way down too. Just doesn't seem that great.
(3) one track a time
So I need a system that will allow me to record two tracks at the same time, mic and guitar (not mic'd), and I am looking for 'better than demo' sound.
Have I got this right:
Behringer UB502 ($30) would work? - since my mic is dynamic, I don't need phantom power (available on UB802 ($40)). Will I need a new mic cable, XLR to XLR, or can I use the XLR to 1/4 cable? Would an XLR to XLR be better?
How is the Behringer connected to iMac? USB? Firewire? I didn't see anything included - Do I need to purchase cabling separately?
Is the sound quality going to be good enough for Home CD quality recording? If not, to what do I have to step up to? Firepod at $600? Its track count is overkill for me, but I need good sound, too, so maybe... Or is there something in between that offers great sound and just a few inputs?
How much of a difference would a condenser mic be? Am I right that with that type of mic, I need phantom power on the (mixer / interface - which is it?) Have seen recommendations for MXL 990 ($60) and Rode NT1000 ($300).
That's about it. Hope you can help.

Nice guitar. Radio Shack mic were made by Shure not sure if they still are. A cheap mixer will just plug into the line in jack just a matter of getting the right plugs an cables. I would use a xlr cable pretty cheap from online music stores. You may want to consider a usb interface they tend to be a little cheaper then firewire check M-Audio. Condenser mic are great but they pick up everything and you should be fine with you mic you have and the fine onboard system taylor uses.

Similar Messages

OS X Server setup advice needed for small business

I work as audio engineer at a recording studio. I'm an experienced Mac user, but I don't have Mac Server experience. I'm my company's default IT guy. Our office consists of four people, currently using PCs, but we are changing to a Mac-based office: each person will get an iMac, and we'll also get a Mac Mini with OS X Server. And a Time Capsule for both the Apple router and Time Machine backups. The machines will be connected with ethernet for Gigabit networking.
The server will be used primarily for two things:
1. Server-based scheduling/contact database program that each user will log-in to for access
2. Hard drive for storing audio files that will be delivered to clients (currently FTP delivery)
I'm learning about OS X Server services - there's some great You Tube tutorials by Todd Olthoff http://www.youtube.com/user/tolthoff.
The office users currently run their computers as independent PC's with all files stored on their local machines. The network lets them share files, as well as share two printers. Note that my plan is for each office user to continue to store their files locally on the iMacs, not on the server.
I'm trying to decide how much of OS X services I can take advantage of.
I have some specific questions I'm hoping to get some advice on. These questions came up after viewing Todd's tutorials:
1. Do I need Open Directory
I think I do, in order to create local network users. Is this a given for me?
2. We do not have a static IP address. Do I need to establish DNS services?
3. Do I need a verified SSL Certificate?
This is what I have for starters. Any additional advice is welcome!

Bob Kirschner wrote:
2. Hard drive for storing audio files that will be delivered to clients (currently FTP delivery)
Remember that ftp is wildly insecure, and a very large ftp credentials dump — reportedly including credentials from the New York Times and some other users — was just posted. ftp is a massive pain in the rump around modern networks; the protocol design predates the uniquitious use of firewalls in modern networks.
Read: I'm not a fan of ftp.
Use sftp or VPNs where you can.
1. Do I need Open Directory
I think I do, in order to create local network users. Is this a given for me?
If you want to start using the same login across different Macs in your office, then you want OD.
2. We do not have a static IP address. Do I need to establish DNS services?
You need local DNS services on your LAN (probably established via OS X Server), and you'll need external DNS to allow external folks to get to your file servers, and you'll need static IP from your ISP. If you get to using your own mail, you'll need a proper DNS configuration — forward and reverse DNS translations and the MX record must all match — for that.
3. Do I need a verified SSL Certificate?
Unless you're serving HTTPS or such, no. You don't even need a certificate and can use a self-signed one, if you're small and not serving much publicly from this server, and not doing something like ecommerce, and if whatever you're doing isn't a target for those that want to spoof or crack web sites; if you're not more of a target than most of the rest of us on the 'net.
Any additional advice is welcome!
I'd probably look to add a VPN-capable firewall router box here, and would use the Time Capsule as a so-called Access Point on the network — not as a NAT-capable gateway router. This if you don't already have a router of some sort. Time Capsule makes a nice home router or low-end SOHO router, but it's fairly limited in its features.
You absolutely need LAN-local DNS, and you need that correct and working and tested before you enable other services on your network.
I'd recommend using a real and registered domain on your internal network, and using a separate (and registered) domain outside your network. You can get away with using a subdomain inside, but that means more typing as it's just longer. I'd avoid a made-up domain, as ICANN is adding all sorts of new domains. I'd also avoid squatting on a domain, and never use the .local top-level domain as your own DNS domain. Leave .local to Bonjour only.

Advice needed for a school presentation method.

Reload the netbooks with a lite version of a Linux distribution. You will get better performance out if them and end up with a considerably safer units for students to use with little to no investment, other than a little time.
I had all student machines in my district running Linux for almost 4 years and I got great performance from the oldest units I had to use. I just loaded a Dell Latitude 510, 1gig RAM, with Zorin 9 and it working pretty well, better than Windows ever could or did on this machine.

Hi everyone,I just need some advice on improving the presentation method used in our classrooms.We have 4 locations with 10+ classrooms, each classroom have got a netbook for presenting the Powerpoint slides.The challenge is the powerpoints update frequently, so that we have to running around to update the powerpoints in each computer with a USB drive or get the slides from our storage server.All of the netbooks are not in our domain so it's hard to map the drive from our storage server. Tried to make a script running at the PC start-up but it's not working very well.I'm thinking of getting a central server which will store all the Powerpoints and offers the virtualization services, by doing this, teaches can just click a application and everything will be there. Also I can just simply update the Powerpoints in the central server.Any...
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

Advice needed for alternative to HH3 adsl

Hi all
I am having problems with my HH3 and need to replace it
I am looking for an alternative such as aTP-link
My needs are quite simple but it must have a good WiFi range I live in a fairly isolated rural spot and am not likely to be able to ever get infinity / cable in the near or even distant future so I am stuck with basic Broadband which I get quite a reasonable dowload speed of aprox 8MBPS
any suggestions ?
IE I want something better than HH3
Regards
Mike

What about this one, its used by othe forum members?
TP-LINK TD-W8960N 300 Mbps Wireless N ADSL2+ Modem Router for BT Connections £26.99 Amazon
Guide is here.
http://forumhelp.dyndns.info/hardware/TP_link/wa8960/adsl/td8960adsl.html
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.

Advice needed for network storage for iMovie files

Hi
I'm after some advice as to what a good solution for a school is to store iMovie files. I don't have a lot of Mac experience, however do manage the schools PC network and have a pretty good understanding of the general issues.
The schools media suite has 7 Macs (3 reasonable G5's). Because some units are better than others they don't want to assign students to certains PCs (which could allow them to work with files locally).
To date they have been storing all the iMovie files on a old G4 server, however this is running out of space and we want to provide a longer term solution for them.
When I say storing the "movie files" I mean the whole iMovie project -- the project file and all the audio and video clips. These are all stored on the network so the students can open them from any mac. Which has been working (more or less) ok from the old G4 just the disk space is the big issue.
We have tried using a Lacie Raid NAS device for the movie files but this had problems with the Mac extended character set in file names and wouldn't always open or allow saves to the device.
We have also tried using the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (using raid) which supports AFP and OS X and seems to work ok and faster in general than the Lacie device. However playback from the Netgear causes the video/audio playback to stop and start. I'm not sure this is the same stutter issue that has been discussed here since if I copy the iMovie file to the local disk it will play back ok. It appears to an issue of bandwidth. The Macs are all 100Mb, the Netgear is 1Gb, which is connected to a Dlink 1Gb switch.
Mostly the students movies are quite short (3-5min) but the project files have lots of clips and range in size from a few Gig to up to around 8Gb.
I can't figure how an old slow G4 can out perform a new 1Gb NAS Raid device.
They are using iMovie06, would upgrading to 08 help?
Any advice would be most appreciated.
Thanks,
Simon

simondg wrote:
... They are using iMovie06, would upgrading to 08 help?
welcome Simon to the  boards ...
definitely NOT.. iM08 has a very different file management concerning projects.. it offers a Library of ALL (=tons of gigs) imports ever ('Events'), and keeps Projects and Events in different locations; to delocate those makes the use of socalled SymLinks neccessairy...
plus, iM08 has high demands on the grafic-card of a Mac, so read the specs carefully before investing...
iMHD6 is a bit 'iffy' concerning drive's format.. as long as you're using 'MacOsFormatted' drives, easy does it ..
so, why not buying an external, firewire-connected housing for 3-4 standard (=cheap) ATA-drives, each 500GB (=cheap), connect that to goo' ol' reliable G4 and done?

Advice needed for buying an AGP card for MEGA 180

Since 1 year I have a MEGA 180 with a SEMPRON 2500 processor, 512 MB DDR RAM, Lite-On DVD-R/W, Hauppauge PVR-150 running MediaPortal 2.0.0.0.-RC4 and it rocks!
I am not so happy though about the TV-output of the integrated GF4MX that came with the nForce2 chipset. I would like to disable this and insert a low profile, passive cooled nVidia-6200 with 128 MB-DDR. I am a bit worried about the power requirements of the card and the juice that the power supply (200W ) can deliver. Is it safe to use this card or should I adjust my demands? I am using the system for media purposes only, e.g. recording and watching recorded TV, watching movies and playing music. MediaPortal requires a DirectX-9 compliant card, DirectX-8 also works but with video artefacts. Gaming is no requirement.
Can anyone please advice what to do ???
Thanks in advance, Leo

Quote from: johnsaunders18 on 21-December-06, 06:08:32
get a nvidea 6200 they are fine, on a mega, i have built 3 machines based on teh mega 651 and they are all fine
hope this helps
john
Now that's what I call a quick answer
Thanks, John.

Urgent: Advice needed for buying my first RAID

Hi,
I am looking to place an order today as I have a pile of editing to get through - so I would love to hear your recommendations!
First of all I am a networking and RAID newbie so don't go all acronym and geek-speek-tastic on me or I won't have a clue what you are talking about. Seriously I don't know my NAS from my elbow!
My requirements are:
1. Suitable for working with HDV
2. 2TB of storage
3. Must work with PowerMac G5 2GHz Dual (later model)
4. Must support RAID 5
5. RAID must be controlled by hardware (on RAID box or via PCIe card)
The following have been suggested - has anyone used them?:
Opt1: http://www.enhance-tech.com/products/desktop/t4_cr.html
(Would probably need to put an eSATA card in my Mac but RAID control is on the box.
Only goes to 80MB/sec - is this good enough for working with ProRes 422? I am looking to convert my HDV to ProRes 422 before output to mpeg2 as I believe this can give better results.)
Opt2: http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-SPEED-eS.cfm
(Would need to put a RAID controller in my Mac so not so good for connecting to other Macs.)
But I found this and was wondering if it was also suitable (as its cheaper!):
Opt3: http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=28&PHPSESSID=091b7808cfa54754 383932fc512ea056
(Would connect by 1Gb/sec ethernet to my Mac. RAID controller on the box. Someone said stay away from ethernet but I don't understand why?).
Any advice gratefully received. I need to make a decision real quick!
Keep it mellow, B.

It appears that you need to step back and rethink your business. Heck, we don’t even know that you have a business. What you’re up to might just be personal editing. So I apologize if what I’m about to say overestimates you or underestimates you.
FORMAT
You say, “suitable for working with HDV”, but you don’t say whether you MUST work with HDV. As others in this thread have pointed out, HDV is a “poor man’s Hi-Def”. It compresses images so diabolically in Long GOP that image quality suffers, and, as Shane points out, “the long GOP format is very complex and takes a LOT of time to do things.”
The other extreme is recording and editing in 1080i/p at 4K. Very few people in this world demand extreme quality. So, the best format overall is DVCPro HD. Today, DVCPro HD cameras cost only about a third more than the next nearest HDV. What’s more important, to me, is that DVCPro allows you to move away from having to use tape at all. It’s the year 2008 (almost). Tape is over. If it’s too late to sell your camera and switch, then so be it.
STORAGE
You say, “2TB of storage”. For HD work, that’s a bare minimum. My recommendation is to get a 4-tray or 5-tray box with room to grow, even though the extra trays will remain empty your first 6-12 months.
Buy an empty enclosure that you can populate with your own drives. That way, you can use 1TB bare drives. (Don’t buy anything smaller.) You can put together a stack of 5 1TB drives in an eSATA RAID box for less than $2,000.
RAID
You say, “PowerMac G5 2GHz Dual...via PCIe card”. You mean PCIx card. PCIe is for Intel Macs.
You write, “I want RAID (esp. RAID 5... If a drive fails I want to simply be able to swap a new drive in, restore, and be under way again.” But several of your comments indicate that you really don’t need in-line failsafe. For that reason, let me recommend mirroring or something even simpler: a backup drive.
JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) treats each drive in your stack as a separate volume. So, what you see on your desktop is Drive_01, Drive_02. If you subtract the cost for the RAID controller (in the box or in your PCI slot), you can afford to buy TWO plain JBOD boxes, and maintain one as redundant. That satisfies your, “If a drive fails I want to simply be able to swap a new drive in, restore, and be under way again.” In fact, you can skip the “restore” part.
Ken Summerall wrote: “If you are shooting HDV then you have the tapes, those are your backups. If a drive goes down you recapture.”
You responded, “that is not the same as having redundancy of data - and simply being able to swap in a new drive and do a restore.”
You make it sound as though you expect this to happen once a week. It won’t. Backup is good enough. That kind of “time saved” once every year or two isn’t worth it.
SATA vs. FIREWIRE
Again, it’s the year 2008 (almost). Why would you want FireWire? Apple is being so stubborn, pretending that eSATA does not exist, because it has so much invested in its FW technology. But even Apple will be forced to come around in its next models.
While we’re talking about it, the claimed 80MB/sec for the Enhance T4 CR probably refers to the FireWire and USB interfaces, not to the SATA.
ENCLOSURE SHARING
You write, “I also wanted to use the same RAID box with a Macbook Pro. So how would two Macs share the same RAID box?
What kind of sharing do you mean? If you mean that you and your partner can access the same video simultaneously in adjoining rooms, then you need FibreChannel. But, as Shane points out, “...a Fibrechannel setup, then an XServe Server...is NOT cheap.”
As Ken writes, “You can get a eSata card for your G5 and an ExpressCard for your MBP and share the box. With this you could get a Kona or Blackmagic card and capture your footage as DVCProHD and also have a way to monitor your HDV footage.”
Amen.
VENDORS
G-SPEED is reliable, with good support. Caldigit has a platinum reputation. Of course, there are MaxxDigital, Sonnet and Dulce Systems.
Enhance is the new kid on the block, and they are significantly less expensive with, in my experience so far, excellent build quality and quick (human) response. They manufacture in Taiwan, but they’re headquartered in -- and ship out of -- Lower California. So they don’t talk to you in Taiwanese as the cheap enclosure sites do.
So there.
Message was edited by: Al Hatch

Advice needed for backup strategy for office

My office is switching from PC to Mac (yay!) and I'm in charge of setting up the system. We'll be using 4 iMacs and a Mac Mini Server with ethernet connections. I'd like to ask what is recommended for backing up these computers.
My thought would be to back up the iMacs separately from the server - is this definitely the way to go?
I'm thinking to get a 3TB Time Capsule for the 4 iMacs so that Time Capsule will do automatic backups.
- Is it OK to have 4 iMacs backup to one Time Capsule like this?
As for the Mac Mini server, I'm not sure how to best back it up.
Since it has two 1TB drives, I'm thinking of using one drive for data and having it automatically backup to the other internal drive. Any thoughts on this idea?
Or, it is possible to connect an external USB drive to the Time Capsule's USB port, and have Time Machine backup the server to the external drive?
Any advice is greatly appreciated!

The TC is really a home solution.
For business I think you should consider something extra.
Although 4 computers and a server is not a big setup, it is worthwhile doing a more professional backup and use something more professional than Time Machine.
For instance..
http://www.retrospect.com/au/products/mac
I have not used it.. but I see it recommended in business / larger installs. It is not cheap but well worth considering.
I would not use the internal disk of the server for backup.
As for the Mac Mini server, I'm not sure how to best back it up.
Since it has two 1TB drives, I'm thinking of using one drive for data and having it automatically backup to the other internal drive. Any thoughts on this idea?
You can raid the two disks if you don't need the capacity.
But backup to a USB drive plugged in.. USB3 drives are cheap and speedy. Much more reliable than using network drives.
Raid for integrity of working data.. backup to separate change over disks.
So weekly you change over the USB drive for backup and store the other one at home.
I'm thinking to get a 3TB Time Capsule for the 4 iMacs so that Time Capsule will do automatic backups.
- Is it OK to have 4 iMacs backup to one Time Capsule like this?
You can do this.. It is fine to have 4 Macs backup to it. But if you are not using the wireless router it is a waste.. you can just backup over network to the server.. TM works fine on network.
You can buy another 3TB USB drive for backup of the clients.. normally though you want all the working data on the server and back that up. You are thinking a more peer to peer model.. once you introduce the server you can work on a more server client model where the current files are held on the server.

Advice needed for 4TB Time Machine Backups

I run a recording studio based around Logic Pro.
I typically have about 7-8 drives online at any given time with around 5TB, but would like to be able to keep more of it active longer. Most of these drives are backed up by Time Machine. But even with 4TB drives I find I quickly run out of space, and have to either delete old TM backups or buy new drives to keep a running TM archive.
While I periodically archive my stuff to optical, and have Backblaze and Dropbox for server space and insurance purposes, neither of those really address the immediacy and convenience of Time Machine for archival retrieval over the course of months or years. And it doesn't help really with boot drive history that doesn't make it to optical archives and isn't kept on backblaze anyway.
So, I have been considering some kind of Raid device, not necessarily for speed or NAS capability (although those might be nice), but mainly to break the 4TB limit and be able to keep my Time Machine growing as a resource for recalling older projects, etc.
It is likely that this will only be used for TM, although I could see potentially partitioning a bit for something else, depending on how big it is. Not sure.
Things which are important:
•Ease of use. Hook up a FW, USB, ethernet, etc. cable, format some drives, and go. I'm not an IT tech.
•$500 or less is preferred
•4 bays would give me room to expand to greater storage, which I think is the only thing that makes sense. might not be enough additional space to justify bothering with a 2-bay, since reliability is at a premium, I'll probably use the most data redundant RAID settings.
•Reliable -- goes without saying
•Hot Swap and Ability to use mixed types of drives - It's not a big deal to keep a spare 3-4TB WD Red on hand, but it would be nice to be able to use whatever I might have handy lying around in case of a failure.
I have heard mixed reviews of Drobo, and better reviews of Synology products, but again, I'm not sure that I really need a NAS--just something simple and reliable--or as simple as something like this can be.
I welcome any advice on what products and brands people prefer for an application like this. Thank you.

Thanks everyone.
These are some good directions to follow.
The issue I think is defining where in the spectum of backup to archival my needs fit.
The thing is, as soon as you go to an array of drives, both the risk and the cost goes up. To my mind, Time Machine is kind of a middle ground between archival and backup. I can make a manual backup quite easily, but TM automates this process elegantly, and gives you date-specific archival up to the point where storage has to recycle. I can also create fixed archives like optical backups of projects and boot clones, which I do every few months. I see those as true archives. But as a result I've accumulated some 3 dozen cheap green HDDs. Many of them archived TM drives. This is a nice safety feature, but it also gets expensive. Being able to go out to double-digit TB in theory with data redundant raids out to 10TB or more by my estimate would give me 2-3 years of instantaneous TM backup. And I've never been able to get more than about 3-4 months of erffective TM for a while now. Meaning I'm buying a new 4TB drive every few weeks to keep up with this.
Maybe I'm just lazy, but having all of my main drives fed into one TM backup is awfully convenient. I don't have to think too much about backups in the heat of my crazy deadlines, libraries and project data constantly changing and being updated, etc.
A Jbod device and a virtual raid as Grant suggested would fill the bill to solve the problem but it makes me nervous, because the possibility of drive failure will be multiplied by the number of drives in use.
What doesn't appeal to me about any multi-drive scenario is that it's putting all the eggs in one basket and making the TM vulnuerable to corruption or being fried because if it gets hosed, I won't have any archived versions other than the array and my sporadic manual archives. I won't be able to go find the single TM archive on the shelf and pop it in anymore to go backwards. Once I become dependent on multiple drive arrays, there is no easy way to rotate backups, and I will have to do other forms of archival more frequently. It's all a risk-benefit equation and there is no such thing as a free lunch, as we know.
The Drobo 5D is beginning to appeal to me because it at least has dual drive failure redundancy and can rebuild even with the loss of 2 drives. I just wish it had more universal approval in the reviews department. Some people love is, some hate it. I would have to really commit to this thing, and fill it to capacity to amortize its cost over a long period of time.
Thanks again for the responses.

Unicode/glyph/font advice needed for porting WinForms app to Macintosh using AIR

I've written an application in WinForms/.NET that I'd like to port to the Macintosh platform. I have never developed for the Mac but it seems as though AIR might be a good choice. I'm totally new to AIR. Some advice and info would be much appreciated!
Can an app be developed in AIR on a PC running Windows and then later be deployed transparently on a Macintosh? Or do I need to be developing on a Mac?
The app is a search interface for use against text-bases comprised of texts composed in ancient European languages. I pre-index the text-base and store it in SQLite as a fully-normalized (1NF) set of relations: TITLES, WORDS, WORDOCCURRENCES. So the app is really nothing more than a (query-only) database application with some specialized glyph-rendering requirements.
In the WinForms app, I used a custom third-party edit control with extensive support for the RTF specification, in combination with some third-party fonts that contain the necessary glyphs for rendering the Unicode characters corresponding to RUNES and to some abbreviations found in medieval manuscripts. BTW, these special non-ASCII characters are represented in the database not as unicode codepoints but as entities that can be represented in standard ASCII (e.g. "þ" ); when rendered to screen, the correct glyph has to be substituted when the Unicode codepoint for the entity supplied -- in this example the codepoint would be [U+00DE] and a thorn glyph ( Þ) should be rendered.
Since it might not be possible to find a single omnibus Unicode font that contains a glyph for every codepoint I need to render (what are the most glyph-rich freeware Unicode fonts for Macintosh, btw?) the text widget must let the programmer "wrap" a Unicode character or series of Unicode characters in whatever font may be required at that point in the text. Is there a rich-text widget for AIR that can do this? A widget that can render HTML and supports CSS stylesheets would be ideal (inline-CSS-only would be OK too). If the widget had CSS stylesheet support, the string of Unicode codepoints could be wrapped with a <span class='rune'>.....</span> and the font-name for the .rune class could be specified in the CSS stylesheet.
Thanks very much if you've taken the time to read through this tedious stuff !

Flash Professional started as an animation tool and was expanded with a programming language that became ActionScript (now ActionScript 3.0). Content creators began using Flash to develop applications rather than just animation, so a lot of developer-centric and application-centric functionality was added to Flash, including pre-built user interface components (written in ActionScript). All that functionality and those components are still available in Flash Pro today. However, many developers who came from a traditional programming background had trouble getting into Flash Pro because it is really an animation design tool -- so it uses a timeline, layers, visual drawing canvas, and it required some figuring out to learn how to structure an application in that type of tool.
In response to this, Macromedia (now Adobe of course) created Flex. Flex uses ActionScript just like Flash Pro. Flex also includes numerous user interface controls, written in ActionScript. Flex also adds advanced, flexible layout control and many utilities for common programming tasks like loading data from or sending data to a server, formatting values, validating user input, and more. With Flex, you can define your user interface using an XML markup language (MXML); the compiler then turns the MXML into ActionScript code before turning it into your compiled application. As far as tooling, an eclipse-based IDE called Flex Builder was created that gives you a code editor, a workable but not designer-oriented design view, and other developer tools like debugging and profiling. (Note that Flex Builder has been renamed to Flash Builder for the next release, which is currently in public beta.)
So to generalize, Flash Pro favors a more visual design and animation type of working style, whereas Flex favors a more text-based, code-centric working style. (But that's just a generalization -- many people, especially people who "grew up" with Flash before Flex, still prefer Flash Pro even though they're heavy coders.)
Also, if you want to write everything in code with no pre-drawn visuals (i.e. Flash Pro) and without using MXML or Flex components, you can create your application entirely in ActionScript code. Flex Builder supports ActionScript-only projects for that purpose.
Here are a few links for getting started with Flex, which I would personally recommend if you haven't used either one and you're building something that's more "application" focused rather than media or animation focused:
Flex "Quick Starts" -- short articles focused on specific tasks in Flex
Flex "Getting Started Experience" -- designed as a set of training courses, intended to take 12+ hours to complete (but you can skip around of course)
"Flex in a week" video training -- a free 5-day video tutorial series on Flex
Flex Developer Center "Learning Paths"
As a side note, the link you included actually goes to the JavaScript version of the documentation, which is what you would want if you are going to use HTML/Ajax to build your app. However, if you're wanting to use Flex you would want to use the Flex version of the documentation:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/mx/controls/HTML.html
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/flash/html/HTMLLoader.html
And if you're wanting to use Flash, you can use the Flash Pro version of the documentation:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS3LCR/Flash_10.0/flash/html/HTMLLoader.html
Yes, it's somewhat confusing and overwhelming. We're definitely working on improving things in that regard.

Advice needed for stable upgrades

I have just come over from Gentoo because of concern over the massive upgrades needed (xorg-7.1 needed 105 packages upgraded), and the instability of some of the upgrades. I thought Arch might be a better choice because of the rolling releases. But now I feel some of the uneasiness I had with Gentoo. I have had Arch up and running for about a month. There have been at least three kernel upgrades with more coming. Fortunately for me they went flawlessly, but that may not happen next time according to some of the posts I've read
I have an AMD FX2800 with an nvidia 6800GT graphics card. No hardware is being changed. The computer runs much faster than it did on Gentoo. Why should I risk the instability of upgrading the core programs: kernel26, nvidia, mkinitcpio, mkinitrd, klib*, grub, udev? My solution has been to enter these programs in IgnorePkg in /etc/pacman.conf.
Am I going to create problems down the road?
I would appreciate any comments on my solution.

I have been in archlinux for years.
The latest upgrades within my computer in arch have performed excellently with no problems introduced.
Some of the problems presented to users with the latest kernels and udev are due to ID changes in the pata/sata area but are not major disruptions.
I must report that I do not have sata devices within my two computers, one has IDE hdd's and the other has no hdd's...runs on Larch boot into ram which is the system I post this from.
If a user modifies his system there is a risk when upgrading via pacman which cannot sync to the changes made.
The rolling relase system reduces the impact of upgrades which cause anomalies by more easily identifying the root cause to the few packages upgraded...rather than hundreds as you experienced in gentoo.
In short, it seems that the rolling release system has merits......no system is perfect....

Advice Needed for Audio and MIDI Controller Software

I am hoping someone may be able to give me advice on how I should approach my problem.
I am currently running a live show with audio backing tracks and a small 12 par lighting system. The light system can be controlled via standard MIDI. I am using iTunes to play back sets of backing tracks, and manually controlling the lighting system using a dedicated foot controller.
What I would like to do, is be able to use software to simultaneously play audio files and perfectly sync the lighting (fades, shots, etc. via midi) with the audio track. Ideally, I would be able to have the audio/lighting paired as discreet entities that could be grouped into sets.
i.e.
Audio-MIDI_1 = Audiotrack1 would always be paired with Lightcontroller_MIDI_events1
Audio-MIDI_2 = Audiotrack2 would always be paired with Lightcontroller_MIDI_events2
Audio-MIDI_3 = Audiotrack3 would always be paired with Lightcontroller_MIDI_events3
I could the create a set of Audio-MIDI_x tracks which could be triggered in any order.
I would like to have to option to be able to activate a single track, or have a complete group of tracks activated sequentially (but be able to stop the and start the group as needed - you never know what will happen in a live situation). It would be nice to have a time-line UI as well.
Now the final requirement: it should be able to run on a PISMO PowerBook. <cringe>
I hope I am not too confusing.
I am thinking MainStage would not be the software for this task as Leo is not an option for the Powerbook.
I have looked at QLab and showcontrolpro, but I don't think theses are right for me either.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
TIA

Gary,
With a Pismo you really are confined. I've been using some software from Alien Apparatus called Solo Performer Show Controller (www.alienapparatus.com) and it has a timeline to sequence lights where you can run 32 channels of midi or dmx lighting. The only setback is it needs at least a 1 GHZ processor. There may be a company like Sonnet that has an upgrade for your processor.
The software is able to run backing tracks, send midi controls to effects units or other software, send hotkeys for apps, synchronize lyrics in a window or on an external monitor, controls a dmx fog machine, and also has a six button usb foot controller which can be configured for many things such as scrolling your songlist to select the next song, change volume of tracks, change a light scene, send a hotkey, trigger samples, etc. It is a bit pricey at just under 600 dollars but the foot control is durable, the company has excellent support and they listen to users to add features to the software.
Hope this helps
Thor

Urgent Advice needed for SAP Training

My Profile :
36 Months of Experience with IT MNC in India.
Have done Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics & Communication.
Moving to USA with family and going for 1 year MBA ( Information Systems) in USA.
Involved in SAP focused Change and Release Management.
Provide management oversight of the change release process, including delegation of responsibilities to all personnel required to ensure successful delivery of the release within the scope of the co-source.
Develops and communicates detailed release plans and sets delivery expectations with key stakeholders. Updates and communicates release status. Escalates issues in a timely manner where required.
Interact extensively with the functional team leads in the estimation cycle, identification of inter-team dependencies, delivery plan validation, impact assessments, issue tracking / resolution, and status reporting.
Ensures user acceptance tests completed, all defects addressed, and all service requests contained in the release were signed off by the requester.
Ensure all required regression testing activities were completed successfully.
Make sure a comprehensive back-out plan exists and was validated.
Make sure the release is deployed according to the release plan.
Responsible for Movement of Transports from Development to Production via Solution Manager Tool (SOLMAN).
Represent the delivery organization during UAT and release gate review.
Defining Maintenance Cycles for various systems and scheduling their batch jobs.
Planning Outages for various SAP systems and distributing the communication of the same.
Question : Post MBA , I want to get back in SAP field with more functional/technical roles , however I am confused with Module selection. For functional ones, I don't have any background . Few of my friends suggested to learn SAP Solution Manager , however I am confused with it's scope. Please advice the module which will be better to take ahead as per my profile.

Honestly there is no answer for that until you do it. A mov will work perfectly fine. But there are variables: The quality and sharpness of the original photos. How they survive being compressed to a mov, how that mov survives being compressed to DVD format. The quality of the DVD player (and no, they are not all the same) and finally the crispness of the screen. If all goes well, yes it will look perfectly good. But you're not going to know until you do it.
Regards
TD

Advice needed for setting up hard drives.

My new editing machine is pretty well complete. Now it's time for configuring everything, so to bring it's performance up to speed.
Starting with hard drives.
Core Components list-
MB- ASUS P9X79-PRO.
CPU- i7-3930k.
Memory- RipjawsZ 8x8 @1600. 64GB.
GPU- GTX 670 4GB.
C: drive- SSD- intel 520s - 180GB (Windows 7 Pro 64 bit OEM is on this drive).
Plus various 7200rpm disks, and more to be added.
I had someone install most of the components for me, as I'm far too ill to handle the heavy lifting. They did a fairly good job, cept for the hard drive setup. So I need to ask some questions to help me get these drives setup correctly, and running at their full potential.
There's some questions in particular that I must ask first-
1/ For some reason they put the SSD on a SATA II port, but put a DVD-ROM drive on a SATA III port. To correct that I just swapped around the SATA data connections between the two. Windows appeared to work ok when I rebooted, but when I gave it a quick test with the WEI, the test failed.
I expected some problem to come as a result.
Here's what it said-
After several reboots the WEI finally ran, and gave the primary disk a higher score than before swapping the connections .
My question is- Should I take the fact that WEI is now able to run the primary disk test as an indication that it's working fine, and setup correctly ?
I also ran several HD Tune tests for that SSD. It's still a bit slower than I expected.
2/ Raid-0 setup. I take it that plugging 2x 7200rpm disk drives into the Marvell ports would be the parsimonious solution, so my question there is- What is the procedure for setting up a 2x disk Raid-0 on those Marvell ports?
The two disks for RAID-0 I chose are the cheap 'n nasty model from Seagate's 2TB range. I know they're not reliable, which is why I'm not relying on them to store such things as project files, or project media (for things like that I have a Seagate Constellation ES.2 2TB) . This RAID-0 volume's sole purpose is to move along high bit rate Uncompressed Intermediatory video at an acceptable speed.
If the data is lost to disk failure it's not a huge problem. The videos can be rendered again.
I tested both of these (see images below) Seagate Barracuda's multiple times in HD Tune. Are their speeds close enough to each other to be paired together in a RAID-0 ?
Barracuda A-
Barracuda B-
3/ So far I have four 7200rpm drives, but wish to add two more.
The model I'm considering is the Seagate ST2000NC000 Constellation CS.2 2TB .On the surface they seem like good value, and faster than my Constellation ES.2, but what's the catch? Are they suitable, and reliable enough to hold such things as project files?

Non-recoverable read errors per bits read:
Value line CS: 1 in 10**14 (1.065% annualized failure rate)
See http://www.seagate.com/em/en/internal-hard-drives/enterprise-hard-drives/hdd/enterprise-va lue-hdd/
Constellation ES2: 1 in 10**15 (0.73% annualized failure rate)
See http://www.seagate.com/em/en/internal-hard-drives/enterprise-hard-drives/hdd/enterprise-ca pacity-3-5-hdd/
For testing whether everything works as it should, try the Passmark benchmark and Prime95 stress-test.

New Time Capsule: Ideal Configuration Advice needed for dual band

I am updating/changing my wireless network to incorporate a 2TB Time Capsule instead of an Airport Extreme (not dual band but 80211.n). I have 2 old Airport Expresses (80211.g) that I will replace with newer 80211.n versions for AirTunes and wireless printing. My Airport Extreme still works and can also be used to extend the network.
I want to set up the new version of the network to use the dual band wisely given the items in my household that will be using it. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what the ideal setup would be and hesitate to dismantle my currently working system before I’ve mapped out what I ought to do for the new one.
The wireless items that need to use the network:
MacBook Pro (circa 2007, Intel)
(needs to be backed up on Time Capsule daily, holds the large iTunes Library & large iPhoto library)
iBook (circa 2004)
iPhone 3GS
Wii
LG blu ray player
(n compatible... not currently in my network but will be added once the new network is up and running... hoping to use it to wirelessly download HD movies at 720p at least)
AirTunes (2 systems, using Airport Express units)
Canon printers (2... not wireless themselves but using Airport Expresses... I have 2 old Expresses or I can use the Extreme or the TC or piggy back on one of the Expresses that is supplying AirTunes)
TiVo series 2 DVR wireless connection (I do not know if this is n or g compatible. It’s several years old so I suspect g.)
Can someone point me to documentation that will help me understand my choices and possibilities, not just the technical how-to? Is there an ideal setup that's obvious to those of you with experience?

Hello KristenLC. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
There are a number of things to take into consideration when "designing" a network. One of them is the bandwidth requirements of the network clients. Staying with this topic and based on your hardware: the MacBook Pro (Time Machine backups), LG player (Video streaming), & TiVo (Video streaming) will all require the most bandwidth. Streaming audio to the AirPort Express Base Stations (AXn) would most likely be the next in line for bandwidth. The iPhone, Wii, and iBook would probably require the least.
As such, you want to place your networking clients on the appropriate network infrastructure that would provide them with the best bandwidth possible for their needs. Ethernet will provide the best bandwidth, followed by 5 GHz 802.11n, 2.4 GHz 802.11n, and then, 2.4 GHz 802.11g.
So with not knowing where the desired location of your hardware, I can only recommend the following:
1) Connect the MBP, either by Ethernet or 5 GHz 802.11n, to the Time Capsule (TC).
2) Connect the 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn), by Ethernet, to the TC.
3) Connect the LG, either by Ethernet or 5 GHz 802.11n, to either the TC or AEBSn.
4) Similarly, connect the TiVo, either by Ethernet or 5 GHz 802.11n, to either the TC or AEBSn.
5) Join both AXn to either the TC or AEBSn by 5 GHz 802.11n.
6) Connect the iBook, either by Ethernet or 2.4 GHz 802.11g to the TC.
7) Connect the iPhone by 2.4 GHz 802.11g to the TC.
8) Connect the Wii, either by Ethernet or 5 GHz 802.11n, to either the TC or AEBSn.
Can someone point me to documentation that will help me understand my choices and possibilities, not just the technical how-to?
One excellent source would be from the Take Control series of guides. In particular, I would recommend that you check out: "Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network" by Glenn Fleishman.

Hardware setup advice needed for 2 track 'better than demo' sound recording

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for