Laptop/HD config for EX Series XDCAM

[Olof Ekbergh]

We use the new Macbook pro’s (unibody) 2.55GHZ 4GBram. It has the Xpress 34 slot the SxS cards fit in built right in.

FCP Studio 2 update to 6.0.5.

Any FW 800 works really well, we use both Lacie rugged and WD drives.

We have 2 of these and they work really well.

It also works fine on a 2.4 GHZ MBP previous generation.

Olof Ekbergh

[Stephen Lovett]

It all depends on what you need to accomplish.

Powerbooks haven’t been make in a LOOONG time, so I assume you mean Macbook.

For simple stuff firewire 800 is OK. I wouldn’t use FW 400. Most vendors are offering a “quad” solution: USB FW400, FW800, e-sata. I think that’s the way to go.

While FW800 will do for simple editing, if you want to transfer your footage to other systems USB is ubiquitous, and FW is being eliminated from Apple’s consumer level laptops, so e-sata is IMHO a necessity at this point.

I’ve had good luck with the sonnet express card 34 based e-sata cards.

If you want to do mulitclip, have a lot of audio streams or work in a 10 bit color space for correction, you are going to need e-sata and a two disk raid as a minimum.

These systems vary a great deal in performance. I’d stick with a vendor that specializes in video storage. Cladigit, Gtech, Sonnet etc.

I’ve had a gRaid mini from Gtech, and it’s a great little box.

These can be spendy however.

LaCIe has been a mixed bag of tricks for me. I’ve had a couple of slow noisy drives from them, however I’ve a got a quad interface tower (it doesn’t have a model number on it sorry) that’s been great.

I prefer to work in ProResHQ off the HDSDI port via an IOHD, and subsequently have built a cool little portable striped array with two fast notebook drives that is e-sata based but is powered off the firewire 800 port. It’s quite good for a small footprint in field solution.

I can elaborate if anybody is interested.

Steve

[Rafael Amador]

Im using a couple of LaCie LittleBigDisk.
With the quad interface you can use them for downloading with the MBP through FW800 then for editing through eSATA. If in FW mode can be powered by the FW bus, with no much consume because they are 5.400 RPM (2×250 in Raid 0).
In eSATA read/write some 85 MBps.
You can put them in your pocket. I think they are great.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

(and here some clips for the friends: https://www.vimeo.com/2694745 )

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[Bruno Perosa]

Hi Stephen, do you use less than 2 GB Ram with the sonnet express card 34? It’s just that in thir site they say that is not working with greater than that

[Stephen Lovett]

Hello Bruno,

No, that’s news to me.

I have an early ’08 MacBook Pro, 10.5.6, and 4 GB of ram. I’m using the Tempo Sata Pro express card 34.

The only issue I’ve had is that you have to be careful not to move the computer or drive as moving the cable can cause the connection to the drive to break.

Other than that, it’s worked fine for me, even with a homebrew striped raid setup powered off the FW bus.

Steve

[Bruno Perosa]

thanks Steve!