WD My Book for Mac & FCP

[Shane Ross]

The MyBook drive is really meant for backup. You won’t see this drive in ANY sort of professional video editing environment. This is a consumer drive, as I said, for Backup. BUT…a few people have used it and it has been “acceptable.”

Firewire connection. USB is NOT good for video.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
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[David Roth weiss]

USB does not have the sustained throughput necessary for video playback, period, end of story. It’s fine for doing backup and file transfers, but that’s all. So, commit that to memory and store away all your ideas of using USB as a scratch disk.

Firewire 400 is adequate for DV and HDV, but not a wonderful choice. Firewire 800 has twice throughput, and it is the best choice if you’re limiting yourself to firewire. An even better choice is a firewire 800 drive with two drives striped together is a Raid-0 configuration.

Beyond firewire there are SATA drives, which have more than twice the throughput of firewire 800 drives. Raid configurations with SATA drives are what most of us use who work professionally.

Hope this helps.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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[Kevin Monahan]

worst_drive_ever

Kevin Monahan
60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Steve Connor]

Don’t buy, WD MyBooks are not great for editing

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Daniel Hornberger]

Thanks for your quick responses. Since I’m now in the market for another external drive, do you have any recommendations? I’m interested in learning what you would do if you had only one firewire connector (as I do on my MacBook Pro). If you’re connecting your camera via firewire, how do you set up your external drive as the scratch disk?
Again, thanks for the info.
DH

[Daniel Hornberger]

Okay, I think I answered my own question: buy a hub.

[Alan Okey]

[Daniel Hornberger] “Since I’m now in the market for another external drive, do you have any recommendations?”

https://www.caldigit.com/CalDigit_VR/

https://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid.cfm

https://eshop.macsales.com/Customized_Pages/Framework.cfm?page=mepal_splash_raid.html

[Daniel Hornberger]

Once again, thanks to all of you.

[Kevin Monahan]

Don’t use a hub. Daisy chain if you must.

Kevin Monahan
60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Nigel Beaumont]

Bearing in mind I’m currently editing only DVcam or HDV – I sometimes use a Macbookpro with 2 firewire 800 Hard drives daisy-chained. I have a firewire express card to connect the deck when required but if your Mac is a recent one and doesn’t have the express slot you can daisy-chain the deck/camera as well while you digitize.
There’s a difference between what will work if that’s all you’ve got and what we’d recommend as best practice. (If you see a WD drive in my suite, it’s just a personal one, I’m sure I never used it to edit with….)

Nigel Beaumont

MBP 2.53 FCS 2 FCP 6.0.6 Aja IO black cables, shiny firewire drives

“Ofcourse it’ll be finished in time for tx”