Setting up FCP system

[Arnie Schlissel]

[kate churchill] “PowerMac G5
Dual 2.5 GHz
3GB RAM
Mac OSX 10.5.5 “

Your best bet for this machine will be a used Kona 2. You can often find them on eBay for $400-500. The K2 will do up and down converts very well, and can add 2:3 pulldown on output.

For the laptops, take a look at either the Aja Io HD or the Matrox MXO2. The IoHD can up, down & cross convert.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Kate Churchill]

Thanks Arnie!

Another question: The Kona 2 suggests that one use an external fibre wire RAID drive. Would it be unheard of to use Firewire?

[Arnie Schlissel]

[kate churchill] “The Kona 2 suggests that one use an external fibre wire RAID drive.”

I take it that you meant fiber channel? You don’t need fiber anymore. For a lot less you can now buy or build a SATA array that will be fast enough to do uncompressed 1080 in RAID 5.

If you want to stay with firewire for the near term, then a FW800 drive should be fast enough for 8 bit uncompressed SD, and more than fast enough for DVCPro HD.

I’m assuming that you’re likely to replace your G5 in the next 12 months, so you may not want to pour a lot of money into that machine unless you have the gigs to pay for it. FW drives or a SATA array will help you stretch your $$ until then. And you can probably use a SATA array with the Mac Pro that replaces the G5.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/