New Apple iMacs good for Final Cut Studio?

[13]

[Kerry Brown] “The new iMac has 2 firewire ports. “Peripheral connections
One FireWire 400 and one FireWire 800 port;””

Kerry multiple ports do not make multiple bus’s on a computer.

The best way I can describe a bus on a compute is to compare it to a pipe that can only let a set amount of water flow through it at any one time. The ports on the computer are like connections to the pipe. If the connections on your pipe are trying to push more water through the pipe at one time then the pipe can hold, some of that water gets spit out and never makes it across. The same thing can happen with data. A good example of this is dropped frames with video. And if these dropped frames happen during capture, then the video on the computer will always have dropped frame until you recapture.

Even a MacPro only has one firewire bus on the computer, the difference with a MacPro is are not limited only using the firewire bus. Your media drives can ether be connected via the internal drive connections, or you can add a second firewire bus by adding a firewire card to the computer via an open expansion slot.

With a MacBook Pro you have an express slot that you can add ether a firewire card to (thus adding a second firewire bus), or better yet adding a eSata card giving even better performance then firewire for drives.

No offense I know a lot of people do not understand how a computer bus works, but I always recommend that people who do video learn the basics of computer hardware. This knowledge is invaluable when it comes to trouble shooting, potential problems as you edit.

[Walter Biscardi]

[zrb123] “Kerry multiple ports do not make multiple bus’s on a computer.”

Funny thing is, I’ve never had an issue using multiple firewire ports on any of my machines (laptop, MacMini, G5, MacPro, G4) for multiple devices. I’ve had DV decks and drives connected at the same time or even daisy chained together. We use our DVCPro HD deck all the time via Firewire using FW800 drives.

It’s never been an issue for us to run a video device and multiple harddrives simultaneously using the firewire ports on any of my Mac machines. I know I see reports of people having all sorts of issues seemingly related to this, but I’ve never seen it.

So connect your video device via FW400 and the harddrive via FW800 and I honestly don’t see any Firewire issue with the iMac.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Mitch Ives]

[walter biscardi] “So connect your video device via FW400 and the harddrive via FW800 and I honestly don’t see any Firewire issue with the iMac.”

That’s true, but unless they’ve changed the design, they still share one controller chip. While it’s true many of us have seen it work, it’s still overall slower than say a second firewire card or cardbus version…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com

Apple Certified Trainer: Final Cut Pro 5

[Zak Mussig]

I’m with Walter on this one. You aren’t going to connect the maximum amount of firewire devices and make it work, but a deck and a drive will be just fine.

I think the new iMac is a dream for editing on a budget or for student labs. With gigabit ethernet you could even use a shared iSCSI storage solution with a lab of them.

I love my Mac Pro, but I would be much more excited about building and maintaining a lab of editing machines now than a few years back… which is when I actually did that.

Zak

Zak

[Jeremy Garchow]

A co worker of mine refuses to believe that his out of sync clips that he captures over firewire 800 and his DVCPro HD deck he captures using fw400 are caused by not separating the bus, until I bought a fw800 card for him and the sync problem went away.

Jeremy

[Brandon5]

Thank you everyone for your feedback. It has been extremely valuable. Thank you. I am seriously looking into purchasing an iMac. Thanks again.

[Vince Debart]

So I will but in. I’m looking at a 20″ imac 2.0 intel a 2008 model 4gigs of ram 1 fw400 1 fw800 so can I capture via 400 and send it directly out the 800 to an external H/D and edit with FCP or FCExp.

I think I will also be working with some AVCHD down the road

Thanks FTH

Vince