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Improving Final Cut Performance Speed
What is the single most important factor in improving the speed of a mac’s ability to handle basic editing
I have a dual 1.25 G4 with 1gb sdram
i do some feature editing, but mostly straightforward stuff, no heavy motion graphics, no complicated editing techniques, mostly DV (no HD yet). My mac stalls a lot in playing back footage when I have a large timeline with a lot of clips. Also do work in Soundtrack pro and that is slow, especially with FCP open.
I’m pretty sure my RAM is overtaxed judging by the activity monitor, but if I’m want to upgrade the process, am I best served by
a) adding RAM
b) better processors (is this even possible?)
c) better graphics card
d) some combo of the abovethanks
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3 Replies
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A fast RAID array will aid in this as well. More RAM, faster processor and still limiting yourself to a firewire drive will inhibit you.
eSATA Raids are great and hugely impact performance.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
To go along with Shane. A fast raid is a large determining factor of how much Real Time performance FCP will give you. This goes hand in hand with the computer’s clock speed. FCP does not use the GPU to process images, but many apps in the suite do.
Currently I think FCP only can access 2 gig of system ram. If youwant fast FCP, get fast drives.
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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if you’re sticking with DV, a firewire drive will be fine if you add a Firewire 800 PCI card. if you are thinking of moving up to HD with your G4, then eSATA is a great idea. i would recommend adding more RAM. FCP is fighting with OSX and all the other open applications for only 1GB. this isnt enough, especially if you are going to move beyond DV. also, if you are currently using your Boot Drive for your Capture Scratch, this will be the biggest limiting factor. at minimum you should have 2 drives, one for the system and one for Media. if the media drive is a RAID with a fast connection, all the better.
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