FCE newbie hard drive configuration conundrum

[gregbrosnan]

hi there,

i have a set up of a Sony HDV Z1U, imac 20 inch 2.4 GHZ, a GTech 500 gig external hard drive and running Final Cut Express.

I'm a little confused as to how it should all be connected.

I was hoping to do all my capturing via FW 800, but then found that my imac only has one such port, although the GTech drive has two.

When i capture from the camera straight into the computer with a cable leading from the camera into the mac's FW 800 socket, it's super fast, real time capturing, no lag, but when i involve the external hard drive and mark that as my scratch disk, everything slows down.

the only way i can have physically have everything attached by FW 800 cables at the moment is one cable from mac to hard drive, then another cable from hard drive to the camera. But this way the signal has to pass through the hard drive before reaching the mac and final cut express won't recognize the camera.

Would it be better to attach the camera to the mac via fw 800 and the hard drive to the mac via fw 400

or

attach the camera to the mac via the fw 400 connection then attach the hard drive to the mac via the fw 800 cable

any other suggestions or configurations?

Thanks very much

Greg

 

[NoahK]

Cam to FW400 and hard drive to 800.

-Noah

 

[ullanta]

I find it hard to believe you see a speed difference... what does "slows down" mean? Are you unable to capture without dropouts? I don't know what "lag" means... either you can capture properly or not...

The iMac has only one FW bus, so if you plug in any fw400 device, ALL attached devices will run at 400mbps. I don't know about the Z1U, but some cameras operate as 100mbps devices, which may slow everything down to that speed.

In my experience, and by numerical analysis, FW400 is far more than enough for capture with an external drive and camera... but some folks (especially on non-Mac systems) have problems with such a combination. I have had trouble in the past with GTech drives being finicky about firewire connections... that might be part of it.