[Mark Aitken]

Ok – so I now know that I need to buy a Macbook Pro with an express card slot.

Two external drives (I hear Western Digital are good) for storage with firewires.

FCP 6.02 or later.

Sony XD CAM software from their site – version 2.7.

Now… I’m not sure what a BPAV folder is – is it the original RAW files and do I store them as well?
When the original files are converted to quicktimes do we lose any quality from HD?
Is Clip Browser part of FCP?
We’re shooting a feature doc over three weeks with two cameras. I know it’s a ‘how long is a piece of string’ affair but do you know how many minutes of HD footage can fit on a 500GB drive? Or should I store the files on DVD as I think you were suggesting…

Thanks,
Mark

[Mark Aitken]

Thanks Michael – that’s really helpful. I was wondering is something had replaced firewire…

Cheers,
Mark

[Mark Aitken]

Thanks for your advice.

Just a couple more details….it looks like I’ll need to buy a Macbook pro with an Express card slot. Can I copy the media via firewire to external drives for storage? (someone told me that you can’t use firewire with HD)

also – do I need to install any specific software in the laptop or my iMac for editing to handle HD files?

Thanks,
Mark