FCP & New System

[Zane Barker]

[Tarik Sykes] “I’m editing Canon 5D clips converted into XDCAM”

I would recommend converting to ProRe.

[Tarik Sykes] “I’m having stuttering/dropped frame play back issues”

What are you using for your media drive?
Are you editing from your system drive?
How is your media drive connected?

Most drop frame issues are ether from using a non editing codec or from not using proper media drives, specifically ones that are not fast enough.

Hindsight is always 1080p

[Tarik Sykes]

That is the thing. I’m editing using system drive right now due to the ordering mistake. Waiting for a media drive to come now. It was sit and not edit and wait or edit and get some things done until it comes.

Make Vids. 🙂 All Day and All Night

Billet Video Studios(my production company)
theWEBcentric (Freelance Video work)
Sole Collector (SOLECOLLECTOR.COM)
I love Nike Shoes

[Zane Barker]

[Tarik Sykes] “I’m editing using system drive right now “

And that would be the problem.

It is NEVER recommended to edit from the system drive, as it has plenty to do running the OS and Applications.

It sounds like you also are only planning to use one drive as your media drive, you will get much better performance if you use a raid. I would recommend running out to best buy and picking up a couple of 1TB internal SATA drives (make sure they are the same model and brand for best performance) and put them in the your MacPro and then use Disk Utility to raid the two together.

Two or more drives working as one is much faster then one lonely drive.

Hindsight is always 1080p

[Michael Sacci]

Better yet get a matching 2TB drive and a 500GB drive

Make the 500GB drive the system drive and then stripe the (2)-2TB drives together for media. A 2TB system drive is a waste of space to you will always be tempted to capture to it.

[Tarik Sykes]

Thanks. You guys have helped

Make Vids. 🙂 All Day and All Night

Billet Video Studios(my production company)
theWEBcentric (Freelance Video work)
Sole Collector (SOLECOLLECTOR.COM)
I love Nike Shoes

[Tarik Sykes]

What is your take on external 800FW Drives? Was thinking about going that route too!

Make Vids. 🙂 All Day and All Night

Billet Video Studios(my production company)
theWEBcentric (Freelance Video work)
Sole Collector (SOLECOLLECTOR.COM)
I love Nike Shoes

[John Fishback]

A single external drive will choke sooner than an external RAID – similar to what was mentioned above. Look to the right and left and you’ll see ads by various companies selling excellent external raids that connect with FW800. If your company is willing, it’s even better to go with a SAS or eSATA card to an external RAID. It’ll be faster, more robust and offer more flexibility for a variety of HD formats.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Michael Sacci]

They are fine for straight forward ProResHD editing, if you do a lot of multicam or compositing they can through down your system. You are paying a lot of the boxes but if you are editing on several system (Work and Home or Road) they work just fine.

[Tarik Sykes]

Thanks guys for the help!

Make Vids. 🙂 All Day and All Night

Billet Video Studios(my production company)
theWEBcentric (Freelance Video work)
Sole Collector (SOLECOLLECTOR.COM)
I love Nike Shoes

[Jason Porthouse]

I’ll throw my 2 cents in for the option of getting a 500gig for your system drive, and another 2tb for a RAID. The internal Raid 0 option on the mac is the cheapest way of getting a decent performance (for 90% of real-world needs) there is – with one caveat. Make sure you have a backup in place, else your data will be at the whim of drives failing, and with 4tb of RAID 0 that could be a lot of data to loose.

Altenately, and possibly more cheaply, you could (assuming you don’t need 4tb of media storage) get a 500g for the system, 2 1Tb for an internal raid (can then expand with another 1 if needed) and use your 2tb drive in an enclosure for backup.

Whatever you do, I’d bite the bullet and ditch the 2tb as system drive. You really don’t need that much, it’ll fill up with cr*p and just give you problems later on…

Jason

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Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*