Capturing Live and downloading P2's to Mac Powerbook G4?

Ralph nixon

Well-known member
Probably a stupid question but can you also use your powerbook as a second monitor during editing along with a 23" HD? Also is any of the powerbooks fast enough and have enough memory for working with the HVX200?

Thanks

R.N.
 
A powerbook is plenty fast for editing. Although rendering takes a bit of time to do. I use an external firewire enclosure with 4 drives in it for storage. I'm not sure what you mean by second monitor while editing. I use the main display for the timeline and a 19" LCD for the viewer and canvas. It works well.

I've used it to playback the footage in DVCproHD from the internet without trouble, after matching the frame rate of the clip to the frame rate of the sequence.
 
tak1108 said:
A powerbook is plenty fast for editing. Although rendering takes a bit of time to do. I use an external firewire enclosure with 4 drives in it for storage. I'm not sure what you mean by second monitor while editing. I use the main display for the timeline and a 19" LCD for the viewer and canvas. It works well.

I've used it to playback the footage in DVCproHD from the internet without trouble, after matching the frame rate of the clip to the frame rate of the sequence.

Sorry I'm new to this but a powerbook is not fast enough to edit high def is it? Does it have a sharp enough screen and enough memory? Is it cheaper to go that route and daisy chain hardrives when needed for bigger projects than going with the 2.5 Dual or say even a Quad?
 
It's fast enough to edit DVCProHD. It probably would strain on HDV though. Scrubs is edited that way on Powerbooks and G5 towers. They dump down to DVCProHD and edit on powerbooks then conform the D5 or whatever it is on the G5 towers.

Remember DVCProHD is only 13MB/S or so and doesn't require a lot of power to decompress.

No, it's probably NOT cheaper and it's not as fast or robust as a G5.
a G5 tower is cheaper than a powerbook and a lot mor powerful. But, if you need to edit on the road, such as that I do, it works for me.

Eventually, I will be investing in a G5 or intel mac tower for editing. But right now this works for all my workflows.

I edited my feature on a G4 733mhz computer tower with an external drive. Why would it be different than a 1.67ghz g4 with exteral drive?

When I go to edit HD, I'll be upgrading my second LCD to an HD capable display such as the Dell or the apple 23" monitor for my main playback window.
 
Would a 12" powerbook with 8ogb harddrive and 512mb ram be good enough to capture live from the HVX200 or to download P2 cards?

R.N.
 
Unfortunately there is no card slot for downloading the P2 card on the 12" Powerbook. Only on the 15" and 17".
 
You need an external 7200 RPM Firewire HDD, preferable FW800 because the internal drive is 5400 RPM. I'm using the G-drive mini. Bus powered and 7200 RPM works like a charm.
 
evinsky said:
You need an external 7200 RPM Firewire HDD, preferable FW800 because the internal drive is 5400 RPM. I'm using the G-drive mini. Bus powered and 7200 RPM works like a charm.

Is there a card slot on the G5 Quad 2.5 or Dual 2.3? And I gather you have your mini hooked up to a monitor when you do that? Or could you shoot just using the viewfinder and dump what's on the mini into the Quad? That would sure be cheaper than a 15" powerbook.
 
Ralph nixon said:
Is there a card slot on the G5 Quad 2.5 or Dual 2.3?
There's no card slot on the desktop computers, no. You can get a PCI adapter that would give you card loading capability, but it would be a rear-mounted card slot (can't get a front-mounted one; the cable has to be very short in order to keep the transfer rate high AFAIK).
 
Back
Top