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xpress pro, mojo, firewire and am I insane
OK here is the scoop.
I would like to get a laptop to edit long form corporate meeting re-cap videos on, but is seems that there are some hitches.1) if we get a laptop we’ll lose the ability to store captured video on an external firewire drive. only one firewire port, and the pc bus can’t handle more than one firewire device? is this true? also, 120 gigs (according to avid specs for laptops) ain’t gonna cut it when there are lots of hours of tape, and only so much drive space on a laptop at dv 25. I figure at most maybe 10 hours of media at dv 25.
2) if we still go this route, how real is the possibility of using usb 2.0 drives as media storage and playback.
3) should I go the xpress pro tower route, and scrub the laptop.
4) am I insane
5) should I just go back to med school like dad wanted and screw this video stuff.
darwin
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6 Replies
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You’ll be pleased to know you can edit on a suitably qualified laptop with an external firewire drive and mojo. We’ve been doing exactly that with a DELL M70 and Lacie ‘Big’ drive. The drive plugs into the onboard firewire controller and the camera into a Pyro firewire PCMCIA card via the mojo.
Just make sure you stick to the AVid specs for the laptop and you shouldn’t have any problems.
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3) To me personally, going with a certified tower-based system for XPro+Mojo & storage is the best bet. Problem is, you lose your portability. Good thing: you gain more power over a laptop.
4) No, you’re not insane. Crazy, but not insane. 🙂
5) You’ll make more money as a doctor than an editor…unless you make it BIG as an editor. The question is, which would you rather do? Which is more enjoyable for you and which would you rather make a living with?
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I vote for a tower. Laptop editing is for the birds.
We have built a nifty little HPxw8000 with an internal 4 drive SATA array. So, no external drives to deal with. Sure it is a bit heavier, but the performance is great. And you can go dual monitors if you wish. Plus you get the man sized keyboard and mouse. I can work much faster and much more accurate this way.
We are also building our own custom monitor “bridge”, which will contain three 17″ inch LCD monitors. Two for the CPU, one for video. This should fit nicely inside a custom case.
So for hauling around two packages, you get a lot of horsepower, options and “cool factor”
Chris Magid
RTVF -
I agree the tower version is far preferable for a true edit box and is far more expandable.
For those stuck with a laptop and who would like a multi-monitor display, Matrox may well have the ultimate solution, and indeed for those who’s system doesn’t have a multi-monitor capable graphics card. Matrox DualHead2Go.
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darwin1941
a tower is great and all, but I like the space savings with a laptop. I can put my whole system in a backpack. I have a Apple powerbook g4 17″, 1gig ram, mojo, ext hard drive 200 gig. fw for the mojo, and a 3port fw card for the ext hard drive. I use an apple bluetooth keyboard. It runs just as well if not better that the ones at my job.what do you think????
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To all youz Avid Guru’s:
We have made a decission, and its a tower we will go.
We really need a multi-monitor capability and there is rumble-ings of using firestore drives with tape back ups.
Laptop would have been nice, cool even, but we felt that the tower had mondo more advantages than just a laptop.
I really appreciate all the responses from everyone!
Kudos and thanks again
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