[Popcornflix]

Thank you both for your replies. Unfortunately, you did not answer my question.

I’m fully aware of the superiority of FW over USB. My rig has all FW drives, no USB. It was not my choice to use USB drives on this project. I just work here.

The issue I’d like help with is about system performance.
It seems very counterintuitive that a G5 2.5 Quad with more memory and a faster video card would have inferior performance to a G5 Dual Quad.
The only differences we could find was in OS and FCP. The Dual runs 10.4.5 and FCP 5.0.4, while the Quad runs 10.4.6 and FCP 5.11.

Is it possible that this has something to do with the P2 importing bug in FCP 5.0.4? Could the footage be out of whack, and only 5.0.4 can play it back properly?

I took the drive back to the Dual yesterday, and spent hours cutting without incident. It would be very nice if I could work on this project on my own rig, so please offer what help you can.

(And please concentrate on helping me solve the problem with the Quad G5. That is the point of my inquiry. Thank you! ;-D )