[Kathleen Barringer]

Hi Jim – thanks for the information. I definitely need to learn more about the express card slot, and what it can accommodate. David also mentioned this. I was thinking it was just a card reader, but it sounds like it is more than that, and a way to connect peripherals?? I have a fairly generous budget alloted for this purchase, so maybe the RAID drive is the way to go. I will have to look into that.

I will also have to learn about the various options for running windows based apps. Just curious – how large is your hard drive and how much do you have alloted to the windows partition?

thanks for the link to rippletraining. I will definitely check that out and see what they have to offer.

kathleen

[Kathleen Barringer]

Hi David – Thanks so much for your reply.

I think I understand what you are saying. I had been wondering about the single firewire port, but did not anticipate that it would be a problem since that’s all I have on my current machine. I am planning on getting a 17″ Mac Book Pro – but I’m not really sure what the express card slot that you reference is – Is it the card reader that is on the back of the machine? Are you suggesting that I would first copy my source video to a card that would be inserted into this slot, or am I completely misunderstanding?

Is there any type of a splitter that could be used for the Firewire port?

I would be getting a 500 GB hard drive – which is much larger than what I currently have. Video editing is not a daily task in my job, so currently, when I finish a project, I pretty much just delete everything from that project and defrag the hard drive – (since not doing so has caused many problems…..but that’s another story). I am not opposed to continuing to do this, and would suspect that the 500 GB would be enough if I could not incorporate the external HD due to only having a single firewire port. I am also not opposed to plugging and unplugging devices from the firewire port as needed. I understand that the problem will be if I need 2 devices connected via firewire at the same time – but if I were to eliminate the hard drive from the mix, based on your experiences, what other scenarios might find me needing 2 firewire ports at the same time?

I was also wondering if you have a suggestion for a specific I/O device to which I would connect the DVD/VHS combo?

I don’t really have the option to go with a tower, so need to figure out some way for the laptop to work.

Thanks so much for your help. I am so happy to be switching to a software that has so many resources available. I am really looking forward to learning FCP and becoming a Mac fan!!

kathleen