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Laptop and FCP
I am sure this has come up before so please excuse the repeat.
I purchased a Power Book G4 1.7ghz and would like to know how well FCP 5 could run on that, what external firewirearray would be best for it, how much Ram is suggested etc.
Also I am curious if FCP5 is finally capable of producing professional looking titles without adding additional videohardware. (I use M100 and have always somewhat triumphed qualitywise over the FCPro’s titles/effects).
Any advice on adding a Kona IO box and possibly improving graphics quality with other codecs?Thanks!
Helmut -
21 Replies
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I use my laptop when I need to be mobile, but it’s not my main editing system. Therefore I can’t answer your I/O or array questions.
I will tell you one thing, though. I did a test not too long ago. A 5 minute multilayered project that took 8 minutes to render on my dual 2 GHz G5 took 32 minutes to render on my 1.5 GHz Powerbook. I have 3 GB RAM in the G5 and 1 GB RAM in the PB. Both are currently running FCP 4.5 and OS 10.3.9.
A Powerbook is great for run and gun stuff, but if you do any kind of layering, including titles, and lots of them, you’ll likely find the render speeds on the G4 Powerbook lacking.
If you must stick with the PB, I highly recommend a FireWire Bus card to get yourself an additional FW bus. It makes all the difference in the world for pesky dropped frame issues. (However, it doesn’t solve all of them. There are some inherent issues with using FW for storage, which is why FW isn’t sanctioned for media drive use by Apple)
As for your titling issues, it’s not so much a FCP issue as it is the nature of DV compression issue. If you work in DV compression, you’ll always take a hit on text quality. If you work in higher resolutions, you don’t have the same problems. I’d almost put money on one not being able to tell the difference on titles on the output of an uncompressed FCP system versus an Avid or M100. It’s the nature of DV, not FCP that is the limitation.
With a PB, you are limited to DV, unless you can output some other way, I think. Anyone correct me if I’m wrong, but I know there’s no way to add an internal card, but is there an external BOB solution for a PB to get higher than DV resolution in and out of a PB? If you can export an uncompressed QT and run to tape form another machine, that could be a way, but I’m fairly certain you can’t get to tape other than by going out FW, which limits you to DV quality.
But I’m always ready to be corrected! Anyone?
debe
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I use a Powerbook G4 17″ 1.5ghz with 1.5 Gigs of ram. Works well with FCP 5, though it can take some time to do renders, etc. I have Studio loaded but haven’t done much with the others apps yet. The complete Studio package eats a ton of space on my hard drive. I have several Lacie drives, some just for backing up data, others I use to contain project media.
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Thank you very much for the responses!
I spoke to a rep at Kona regarding the IO box. He says I can edit any SD quality with that box by using firewire only. The box I assume has analog in and outs which should enable me to play out to tape any format I would like and digitise any format, I assume.
I just wonder how well the PB processor will handle playback speeds when dealing with codecs other than DV
As was mentioned before… the array thing, he says I would need the PCM card which will give me a Firewire 800 port.
If anybody has tried such a combo, I would be very interested in hearing about it.Thanks again,
Helmut -
I have the PCMCIA card, the aforementioned “FireWire bus card”.
I’ve not used it with any resolution other than DV, but it’s been a champ! A real workhorse! I have one that has (2) FW 400 and (1) FW 800. Both work great. (knock on wood!)
I ordered mine from weibetech.com (or if that’s no good, try wiebetech.com…sheesh, “i” before “e” except after “w”?). There are other vendors out there, obviously, This is just one I’ve had good experiences with.
Again, the render times will be loooong, and using FW for storage does open you up to inherent problems with the nature of FW. I have not had too many issues, especially since I started working with the PCMCIA FW bus card. I do have some playback issues that I attribute to throughput problems, but I’ve come up with enough workarounds that have so far been able to get me through any situation. One big tip, ALWAYS make a self-contained movie of your final product before trying to print to video or edit to tape. Saving the system from having to hunt for the media really makes a difference!
I also limit what I expect of FCP when I’m using FW drives and my laptop. I don’t expect to get the same performance from the laptop that I get from the G5 tower, and I’ve yet to really be disappointed. If I expected the same performance, however, I would be VERY disappointed!
debe
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Thanks debe for your input!
The PCM… card is next on my list, supposedly there is a brandspankin new one out which has some cool new feautures.
I will call around and see who has this “new”one.Thanks,
Helmut -
How about an SATA card with SATA drives enclosure, would that fix the FW storage problems?
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Can u digitize on your FW drive on a G5 Tower, put that drive on a PB, rough edit, put back the drive on the tower for finishing and render/output to tape?
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Helmut,
I have a G4 17″ 1.5ghz PB with 1gb ram. FCP5 studio package. I am running an AJA Io LA on the FW400 port and because the FW400 & FW800 ports on the PB use the same bus, you cant run anything else on that bus (even on the FW800 port)) as the AJA uses up a lot of the bandwdth. So I have a Lacie PCMCIA FW800 card for the card bus slot. Then I have a G-Raid 320gb hard drive running off the card. So far it has worked great and I was even able to do a component out layback, to a Beta SP deck, of a 30 min, 10 bit 4:2:2 uncompressed NTSC sequence with 4 video and 6 audio tracks -
There are no SATA PCMCIA cards. I wonder if the current PCMCIA standards would really support access for SATA drives. There have been rumors of SATA PCMCIA cards, but to the best of my knowledge, none have emerged.
debe
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Technically, yes you can work that way. You’ll have to do a lot of reconnecting media, but it should work.
I usually use Media Manger to move whole projects from my G5 tower to the PB. MM makes a new project, copies the media, and eliminates a lot of the mucking about. There still is reconnecting, but you really only have to guide it to the drive and that’s about it. I’ve successfully moved projects to and fro 3 or so times, with no lost media or lost data. You have to spend the time having FCP copy the footage, but for my short projects, Media Managing didn’t turn into a huge amount of additional time. In your case, it may. Especially if you plan move between systems several times and if it’s a large project.
However, I’ve not used this method with FCP 5 yet, and there are reports of Media Manager being somewhat more broken in 5 than in 4.5.
Anyone working in 5 have anything to add?
debe
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