holy cow, Creative Cow? Why so hostile to a newcomer?

Dear Ron:  (and for my web-savvy friends whom I have bcc:d on this, let me know if I am out of line here, since I am gasping in disbelief at the acrimony arising from my using my email address that says "temp1@****.com"): Holy cow!  I  can't believe the acrimony arising from my using my email address that says "temp1@****.com".  So, here's my explanation.  I have three addresses that I use a lot.  spam@****.com is one of them.  It happens to be an email address that I give out to friends and which I use for personal correspondence and for things like forums,  Amazon, etc.  I sometimes travel for weeks at a time.  I have a Blackberry that can cost me a lot of money to get emails when I am in, for instance, Indonesia.  So, for urgent work-related emails, I have an address that my office and business uses.  I check those when I am overseas.   My "spam@****.com" email address is for personal stuff that is not usually urgent.  The name is something I chose waggishly since it is one that I give to friends.  I usually don't have those emails forwarded to my Blackberry.  That's the background behind the "spam@****.com" email.   Emails coming to any addresses that are spam are filtered out anyway before they reach me, largely.  Now, I do use email addresses beyond those.  Anyone who is worried about spam and values their email privacy would do so.  My "temp1@****.com" address forwards into my "spam@****.com" address.  Using a "temp1@****.com" address doesn't filter emails for spam any more or less than my office and work emails might.  It actually is a permanent email that just happens to be named "temp1".  I am shocked that doing something as simple as this would irritate a forum manager to the point where he sends a irate message to a new member.  You are making a ton of assumptions about me based on something as innocuous as the email address I used to register on your site.  Wow.  It's almost like being labelled a nerd just because my name is Norbert and I am Chinese in descent.  Holy cow again! 

--   Norb 

On 4/17/10 7:04 PM, Ron Lindeboom wrote:

Norman, Yes, I work hard and I wrestle with high blood pressure and so sometimes I get bitchie. But as I said: we take offense at "temp" addresses that are used in our site. You take offense that someone MIGHT send you something from here and so you use it. If you don't like our site, don't use it. I will gladly turn off your account as I am always ready to cull the herd, even when it's someone whom we own one of their books in our library. (Your Antarctica title.) You DID say our work was spam, by using the temp address -- you even admitted it was used to avoid spam. We got the message.

Dear Ron: Wow.  Maybe you have been working too hard.  I have that problem often, but I try not to flame new clients or new contacts.   Sorry for the email that voiced my concerns, but perhaps you can take it as constructive criticism rather than bringing in the three irrelevant responses you gave: 1.  We spent over 8 million dollars building this and we do it our way. How much you've spent on the site was not relevant to my email to you.  I am actually impressed by the site, but obviously it is not welcoming to new members. 2.  We weren't impressed by you, either. How could you have been impressed or unimpressed by a brand-new member of your site? 3.  we are offended by people who think all our work and effort is spam. Now, where did I ever say this? Holy crap, creative cow.  And Ron.

On 4/17/10 12:41 PM, Ron Lindeboom wrote:

We get lots of these temporary email account sign-ups, Norbert, and we turn them off. Yes, we are indeed autocratic and we also don't apologize for it. We spent over 8 million dollars building this and we do it our way. Weren't impressed by us? We weren't impressed by you, either. This site isn't on auto-pilot. And just as you are offended by autocratic site admins, we are offended by people who think all our work and effort is spam. Please don't feel the need to contribute if you don't want to, we have over 2 million people a month that do. We keep the serious ones who sign up for real and we toss the others. We call it "culling the herd."

What? What kind of message is this to send to a new user? Has an email sent to temp2@****.com bounced yet? Is there a reason to give a new user this negative feeling of having joined some kind of autocratic organization? I am a 25-year veteran of photography and filmmaking.  I have multiple email addresses to avoid spam. I have a lot to contribute to a forum, but this message, and the incredible amount of administrative governance that I've encountered so far make me far less inclined to contribute to this forum or to even visit it.   Just posting my first thread and getting a warning every time I posted a reply that it would be monitored, as well as the arrogance exhibited by one of your "experts", has left a very bad taste in my mouth. Wow.  I am not impressed with Creative Cow. Norb

On 4/17/10 11:16 AM, Ron Lindeboom wrote: Hello Norbert, I wanted to point out that the account using temp2@****.com will be deactivated the first time that the email bounces. That is our policy. Best regards, The COW Team ********************* Parts of my original post to the forum and a surprisingly hostile reply: For the full thread, read: http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1081667 Note that each time Norb posted to the forum, he got a warning message that his message was being moderated for quality or substance before being released.  digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by Norbert Wu on Apr 5, 2010 at 1:06:47 pm Hi folks: I am hoping that I can get some suggestions from folks here. Thanks in advance. I have a library of about 250 HDCAM tapes that I hope to digitize to the ProRes422HQ format. Here is my plan, and I wonder if anyone sees any glaring errors in it or has suggestions to go this more efficiently or cheaply. Am I missing anything? 1. I will buy a used Sony J-H3 HDCAM deck to play back the tapes. This will give me an SDI output. I plan to sell the J-H3 deck after digitizing my tapes. I could also buy a J-H1 deck which outputs component HD, but I’ve heard that SDI will give a cleaner signal. It does seem that J-H3 decks sell more quickly and there is more demand for them than the J-H1 decks. 2. I’ll take the SDI output from the J-H3 deck and feed it into a Matrox MXO2 LE box. 3. My Mac tower will do most of the computing work. I will take the output from the Matrox box and convert it using Final Cut Pro version 6 (the latest I have), I will convert the footage to ProRes422HQ. My Mac is a 2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon with 3Gb RAM. 4. I have a MacGurus Burly Firewire 800 enclosure. My Mac will feed the ProRes422HQ footage into a Hitachi 2Tb hard drive using Firewire 800. I have heard that I should use RAID to avoid dropped frames, but I am not sure what flavor of RAID to use. Instead, I plan to capture footage to a drive, then clone the drive as backup. I’ve heard that Firewire 800 will be just fine to capture my footage. I’ve heard this statement: “You can capture ProRes to a single drive, but it may be safer to capture to a RAID to ensure there are no dropped frames.” Can anyone tell me what flavor of RAID I should use and how that would avoid dropped frames? My enclosure will allow me to set various RAID settings (software and hardware based, but I am told that the software based RAID is superior: Performace is superior using software RAID with OSX Disk Utility … and not the firmware RAID configured using the bridge RAID configurations). 5. Most of my tapes were shot in 1080i, but about 25 tapes were shot in 23.98. I shoot with an older F900 camera and after digitizing all existing tapes, I hope to sell the deck, and to use the camera to digitize any new tapes. Since the Matrox box has component HD as an input, I believe that I can simply feed my footage using the F900 camera to the Matrox box and use the procedure outlined above. Am I correct? 6. I’ve heard this statement: The only other issue needing research is monitoring the video levels for capture. I don't know if the signal can get messed up during capture. If anyone can explain the above and how I can solve any possible problem thereby, I’d greatly appreciate it. Many thanks in advance for any suggestions on the above. I am looking for a used J-H3 deck and a Matrox box to buy if anyone has one. Norbert Wu Norb ---------------------------------------- Norbert Wu Productions Pacific Grove, CA 93950 USA ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by Shane Ross on Apr 5, 2010 at 1:31:19 pm HQ is overkill. HDCAM is an 8-bit 3:1:1 format. IF it was HDCAM SR, you might choose HQ. But all that does for HDCAM is take up more space. That is a LOT of footage. 75GB per hour, so I hope those tapes aren't 1 hour tapes. Even if they are 30 min tapes, that is about 9.6TB of space. 14.1 TB at HQ. Shane GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD...don't miss it. Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by David Roth Weiss on Apr 5, 2010 at 1:45:07 pm [Shane Ross] "75GB per hour" Interesting, my Digital Heaven VideoSpace widget said 62.04 per hour. Must be because it defaults to 2-channels of audio, when HDCAM actually has 4-channels. David Roth Weiss Director/Editor/Colorist David Weiss Productions, Inc. Los Angeles POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™ EPK Colorist - UP IN THE AIR - nominated for six academy awards A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums. ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by Shane Ross on Apr 5, 2010 at 2:39:17 pm According to my AJA iPhone App, it is 75.3GB, with 2 CH of audio. Shane GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD...don't miss it. Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by Arnie Schlissel on Apr 5, 2010 at 3:45:54 pm [Shane Ross] "According to my AJA iPhone App, it is 75.3GB, with 2 CH of audio." Yes, but what does your iPad say? BTW, did you see Stephen Colbert chop salad with his? Arnie Post production is not an afterthought! http://www.arniepix.com/ ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by Norbert Wu on Apr 5, 2010 at 1:45:55 pm Thanks for the speedy replies regarding hard drive space. Hitachi 2Tb drives are $150 or so -- so I am not concerned about buying up to ten hard drives, and I believe my library of about 170 hours should only fill up 6 to 8 Tb, or 3 to 4 drives. That is a tiny amount of money compared to the cost of buying or renting a deck. Anyone see any glaring errors in this process otherwise? Thanks. Norb ---------------------------------------- Norbert Wu Productions ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by David Roth Weiss on Apr 5, 2010 at 2:01:47 pm [Norbert Wu] "Anyone see any glaring errors in this process otherwise? " Norbert, two of the forum leaders have already given you the same answer. What additional info could you really need? David Roth Weiss Director/Editor/Colorist David Weiss Productions, Inc. Los Angeles POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™ EPK Colorist - UP IN THE AIR - nominated for six academy awards A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums. ******* Re: digitizing HDCAM library to ProRes422HQ process by Norbert Wu on Apr 5, 2010 at 2:12:06 pm Well, I did have some other, perhaps more difficult questions in my post other than the hard drive space required. I do appreciate any answers to those questions, and I thank the two experts for their answers about hard drive space. Norb ---------------------------------------- Norbert Wu Productions Pacific Grove, CA 93950 USA there's more to the forum thread, all of which was helpful.  David Roth Weiss, Creative Cow: why so hostile?  We're all just out here trying to get along.