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Workflow Help
Hi everyone,
I’m a college student and am in need of help tweaking/designing my workflow. Currently, I am using a Panasonic HPX170, a Macbook Pro with Final Cut Studio 2, a Gateway 22 inch HD monitor as my viewer, a Blue Snowball for post audio, standard apple keyboard and mighty mouse, and a1TB WD MyBook going into a Sonnet Tempo SATA eSATA ExpressCard. I import DVCPRO HD off the P2 cards through a Dual Adapter and capture onto the MyBook through firewire 400 until I can switch the MyBook back to eSATA when my express port is open. Painful I know. The drive is my biggest problem. So, what can I do?
I will be getting Avid Media Composer soon as well so I need something that will be able to be compatible with both FCP and Avid and I need it to be fast enough to handle DVCPRO HD efficiently. Also, I am thinking that I will need a more reliable express card. I know that Sonnet makes great stuff, but the card that I have is finicky. Keep in mind, it’s not the ‘Tempo SATA Pro’ that costs a cool 150 more (can anyone tell me the difference?). I would need it to have both eSATA and firewire (preferably 800) so that I can continue to import P2 with my Dual adapter and still have a fast write to my scratch disk. Above all, I need reliability of course. I will be getting an internship in NYC this summer as well working on Avid systems so I was thinking that having a portable FW 800 drive with a lot of space would be good to have too in order bring work from my internship to home without having to lug something around. I know that everything really ought to be 7200 rpm. The MyBook works, i guess, but it runs slow at 5400 rpm and the plastic enclosure and no fan make it HOT.
I was thinking about the G-RAID 3, 3TB as my main scratch drive and then a G-Drive mini with 320 gigs and 7200 rpm as a portable. How does this sound? Would it be worth it to fork up the cash and buy a quad interface RAID? Also, what ExpressCard would be a wise choice for this?
Also, when exporting to quicktime or rendering in FCP and connected to my WD by eSATA, i often get the gray mac screen that says that I need to restart but this does not happen when connected through firewire 400 or USB… is this s problem with the drive or eSATA or a bug in the program?
Also, can anyone recommend a good ExpressCard 34 SSD for standard backups and storage? I heard something that most cards actually use the USB bus and not the expresscard bus… is this true? My research came up with a 48 gig FileMate card that uses the expresscard bus and seems to have good speeds. Any thoughts?
Also, if anyone has any general ideas for streamlining everything that I am working with, please let me know, though the hard drives are really the top priorities to me now as I am running into serious issues with the WD.
Thanks everyone! I know this was a lot to read and probably more confusing than I had hoped.
-Matt
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1 Reply
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Sorry, forgot to say that my Macbook Pro is a unibody 2.8 ghz with 4 gigs or ram… if that makes any difference.
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