Direct Capture

[Daniel Rigdon]

I'm told this works well, but I'm a bit scared that if I buy a laptop, it won't be able to handle capturing HD footage with FCP. I was planning to get a new MacBook Pro 2GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB Ram, 100GB 5400rpm hard drive. Will that be able to capture HD properly (if I had final cut 5.1 of course)? And what would be the bare minimum laptop I could get (the cheapest) to capture HD from my HVX. Thanks.

 

[jeffyjones]

I have the MacBook you describe, and have been able to capture to the internal drive at the 1080i/24p setting. The second time I tried it, FCP was complaining about dropped frames, but I'm not sure why (I may not have been using the right capture settings, I haven't had time to investigate further). I haven't had a chance to try it with an external drive.

720p at any rate has been no problem, even to an external Seagate 100 gig USB2 5400rpm drive.

 

[Neurodancer]

Spend the extra $90. and get the 7200 RPM drive. It will speed up everything you do on the MBP.

 

[CORUSA Design]

Or just use a PC laptop, and dont worry about dropped frames

We recorded 1080 HD from the HVX for 3 hours directly into Premiere Pro 2.0.

You can even set it up to auto chop the files at 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB

::: Connor

 

[noistar]

...

 

[Cut2muz]

It is just not wise to capture to the internal drive. Dropped frames, potential freezes and as a rule never capture to the OS drive. Inexpensive external FW drives are the way. Do it all the time and I bought a Besco 12v battery to power it, and it and the laptop can run for about 2.5 hours nonstop on battery. Plus, if you need to switch to a desktop computer, plug in, import and edit. Truthfully, an older generation 15" Powerbook works just fine and also has the PCMCIA slot missing on the new 15" MacBooks.

Don Wilson
AmericanaMediaInc.com