[Steve Eisen]

You can never, never, never judge the color on a computer monitor. No 2 are alike. I can suggest a capture i/o such as the Matrox MXO2 or AJA i/o express for monitoring.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Too late now but you should always clone your current drive before you upgrade.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a great program.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Bottlenecks and long rendering can be avoided by using the correct editing workflow. Not excluding FCP friendly codecs and 7200rpm hard drives (FW 800 minimum, RAID recommended).

Using hardware based capture i/o devices are not only great capturing devices but are also very good at monitoring the output of your timeline. With that in mind, I can’t say that any of the i/o devices will eliminate your bottlenecks.

Following this great tutorial so wonderfully supplied by Shane Ross may help eliminate your bottlenecks.
https://library.creativecow.net/ross_shane/tapeless-workflow_fcp-7/1

Adding an eSata card into your PCIe slot and adding a RAID 5 can also help.

Matrox just introduced the Matrox Majito Max card. It offers a lot of bang for the buck.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Try installing a newer version of FX Factory. If all else fails, email Noise Industries.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Instead of recording the output from her laptop, why not get the video files from her computer and convert it to a codec FCP likes.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Midwest Media Group in Chicago.

Good luck on your project.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

When was the last time you checked HD prices?

Going rate for a 2TB Hitachi 7200 drive is $230-$250. I used to pay around $80-100.

I paid $109 for a 3TB Hitachi 7200 drive a month ago. Today, $530.

I would consider that prices have “skyrocketed”

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

[Jim Watt] “7200 rpm drives are relatively cheap from OWC”

Prices on drives have skyrocketed and will not go down for possibly a year because of the floods in Thailand.

This is from OWC Larry:
First WesternDigital’s main production complex in
Thailand, one that produces about 60% of WD’s output + roughly 18% of the
overall world drive supply, was first inaccessible and then literally
under water from the flooding.

While there are plenty of various drive sub-component manufacturers also impacted by the flooding – the one most critical to the HD industry would be be Nidec. Nidec happens to supply
effectively 100% of the drive motors to Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba, Etc..
in addition to WD. Roughly 90% of the Nidec production was in this same
region with multiple facilities either offline due to inaccessibility or
under water. Alternate production facilities are being fired back up
and/or production increased at those unaffected… but this single
source/single geo supplier impact made what was already bad – beyond worst
expectations.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

You need Pro Maintenance Tools from Digital Rebellion!!!

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Steve Eisen]

Bold means that it will play back in real time. Non bold you will need to render. Overall you will need to render.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group