Our faulty church Apple MacBook Laptop for video editing has now been repaired after a 2 week visit to the Apple repairs workshop in Brent Cross London.
I'm hoping that this is the last time that we have to be without this laptop as it was really difficult running the media department without it. No video playback during worship, annoucements or sermons, and I had to borrow a colleagues MacBook to complete the valentines day church video production which was a rush.
The other thing we couldn't do was record our wednesday services onto a backup system via logic express.
It is a good thing our pastor did not ignore the advice to buy the applecare extended warranty, as the motherboard had to be replaced at a cost of over £700 (we of course didn't have to pay).
I can now start to work on our Easter production.
Friday, 26 February 2010
Monday, 15 February 2010
Valentines day Church video production
On Valentines day Feb 2010 which fell on a sunday, a few men from my church took the opportunity of the media department's offering a video production for anyone wanting to share a love message with their wife, fiancee or loved one.
Here is my little video clip which was one of those shown on the church IMAG screen during the service.
The video editing was done on one of the department member's Apple MacBook since the normal church video editing laptop was in for repairs.
Here is my little video clip which was one of those shown on the church IMAG screen during the service.
The video editing was done on one of the department member's Apple MacBook since the normal church video editing laptop was in for repairs.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Unreliable Apple MacBook Pro Laptop for our Church
In Febuary 08, our Pastor bought our church video production department a brand new Apple MacBook Pro laptop to fullfil our video editing needs, and we were pretty excited about this piece of equipment, mainly because even though it only had Final Cut Express it was more versatile than Adobe Premier Elements that we had been using previously on the bug ridden/virus attacked windows operating system and we were looking forward to using a different interface as well as joining the ranks of those using premier graphics equipment for our productions.
For the first year our MacBook pro performed flawlessly on a weekly basis, production after production, video podcast after podcast and then last year we had our first Apple hardware failure on the eve of a very important church theatrical production that involved playing back some video clips we had shot and edited specifically for the event!
During the full clothes rehearsals, the Apple MacBook laptop had been used to playback these clips without any problems, but on the day, we couldn't get any sound on the main house audio system! We didn't immediately suspect the MacBook, because we had hired in additional audio equipment which meant a different XLR cable run between the laptop and a new mixer desk so we thought it was either an interfacing problem or cable issue, we finally replaced the laptop with a different audio resource, and bingo problem solved. What made the diagnosis so hard was the fact that we had sound on the laptop, but when the jack was plugged in, nothing arrived at the audio console!
Luckly we had purchased a 3 year Applecare warranty, as the MacBook was now about 18 months old, so we were able to take it to Apple and had to be over a week without it (very hard since we were now used to having it perform various functions like church video announcements, sermon illustrations, even backup audio sermon recordings using Logic express).
Our MacBook came back and we thought that we would have seen the last of hardware problems, but last week, after using it perfectly during the sunday morning service, I tried booting it up in the evening to upload the weekly podcast, but the screen was dead, the keyboard worked, and I could hear the disks spin up, and the backlight on the keys were also functional, but a black screen stared at me!
Our MacBook pro is back with Apple now, and it is another week before we will get it back due to a graphics board failure, it might be that we are just unfortunate with our laptop batch, but when an important piece of church video equipment like this fail, you are mostly likely to be upset and brand it unreliable. Having said all that, I wonder how long a PC would have lasted, had we been using it on a weekly basis for video editing software, playback as our Apple laptop?
More Reading
Multi-camera video mixing software for Mac.
For the first year our MacBook pro performed flawlessly on a weekly basis, production after production, video podcast after podcast and then last year we had our first Apple hardware failure on the eve of a very important church theatrical production that involved playing back some video clips we had shot and edited specifically for the event!
During the full clothes rehearsals, the Apple MacBook laptop had been used to playback these clips without any problems, but on the day, we couldn't get any sound on the main house audio system! We didn't immediately suspect the MacBook, because we had hired in additional audio equipment which meant a different XLR cable run between the laptop and a new mixer desk so we thought it was either an interfacing problem or cable issue, we finally replaced the laptop with a different audio resource, and bingo problem solved. What made the diagnosis so hard was the fact that we had sound on the laptop, but when the jack was plugged in, nothing arrived at the audio console!
Luckly we had purchased a 3 year Applecare warranty, as the MacBook was now about 18 months old, so we were able to take it to Apple and had to be over a week without it (very hard since we were now used to having it perform various functions like church video announcements, sermon illustrations, even backup audio sermon recordings using Logic express).
Our MacBook came back and we thought that we would have seen the last of hardware problems, but last week, after using it perfectly during the sunday morning service, I tried booting it up in the evening to upload the weekly podcast, but the screen was dead, the keyboard worked, and I could hear the disks spin up, and the backlight on the keys were also functional, but a black screen stared at me!
Our MacBook pro is back with Apple now, and it is another week before we will get it back due to a graphics board failure, it might be that we are just unfortunate with our laptop batch, but when an important piece of church video equipment like this fail, you are mostly likely to be upset and brand it unreliable. Having said all that, I wonder how long a PC would have lasted, had we been using it on a weekly basis for video editing software, playback as our Apple laptop?
More Reading
Multi-camera video mixing software for Mac.
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