1)Is the Draco Casablanca a good editing system used in conjucntion with the XL1? 2)When I bought my Casablanca, the firewire option was not yet available, but the salesman told me it wasn't worth waiting since I would not be able to tell the quailty difference if I went from digital (XL1) to analog back to digital (Casablanca) as opposed to digital to digital (firewire). Was the salesman a liar? 3)Is the Casablanca/XL1 both Y2K compliant? 4) Does anyone know which mike is good to use as a boom mike with the XL1?

-- Charles Yang (charlesyang@juno.com), April 01, 1999

Answers

answers

1) Don't know. 2) He lied. Oh boy did he! 3) Huh? I don't see how Y2k could possibly be an issue with an editing system. 4) Senheisser 416 or 816. Don't forget to add a mixer.

Phil

-- Phil Glau (circusredk@aol.com), April 03, 1999.

(1) No particularly. There are a lot of better DV-native editing systems to choose from (MotoDV, DV Master Pro, ProMax, etc.) that offer a lot more editing flexibility, better upgrade potential, and zero generation or codec loss.

(2) I suspect you'll be able to tell a noticable difference / generation loss between the signal transfer and additional encoding. The only time you might make an argument that there's no significant or noticable generation loss going from digital to analog is with fairly high end editing hardware that offers very-near 1:1 compression (like the Matrox Digisuite LE).

(3) Um, yes... unless a mob crazed with millenium-fear runs through your home and tramples the equipment.

(4) I use a Sennheiser k6/me66 medium-length shotgun mic--used either camera or boom mount--and have been extremely happy with it. The k6 is a nice system since you can end up saving some serious money if you need multiple mic options.

-- John Windmueller (jwind@cais.com), April 22, 1999.

Hey,

Casablanca is fine, but it is a closed system, for the money, you'd be better off with a Media 100 or Apple/FCP set up...hope it is not too late. As far as going from digital to analog and back again, that is probably the worst thing you could do to your picture quality. If you shoot in digital, stay there all the way until you get to dub off the master....this and only this will insure you best quality. I don't know the technical explanation but going from digital to analog and back again or some hybrid of such looks like crap... For the microphone, as said before Seinheiser 416 with mixer (Shure FP-32a or 33) but that set up with breakaway cable will set you back a couple grand minimum (with mic support, etc). I would go with the Seinheiser ME-66 for camera shotgun and a wireless lav (UHF or VHF if you can't afford it) for close up interviews, dialogue, etc. Just make sure the microphones can go into the balanced inputs of the MA100.... good luck, and call up that salesman and complain,,,

scott

-- Scott (Foundry4ge@aol.com), December 02, 1999.