FCP & Mac

J

jibadajaba

Member
I've read that hard drives have to have a certain rpm. I don't recall the rpms off the top of my head, it was 1,700 or something like that.

My question is, do all G5 macss have hard drives with rpm speed that is FCP capable. I'm not familiar with macs. I know that regular PC's would require a SCSI hard drive to reach the appropriate rpms. Any info in regard to this is helpful.

Tim
 
7200rpm would be my guess. I think that's the speed of my internal drive in the iMac, and it's definitely the speed of my two externals, both of which I've edited from. You might be able to work with 5400rpm also, but I don't know for a fact. Any stock drive that comes in a G5 is going to be fine for editing. If you're looking to buy a new system though, and can hold off for a while, I'd definitely wait for the new Intel-based systems rather than the G5s. The new iMac with an Intel processor is 2-3x faster than the same G5-based model and goes for the same price.
 
I edited a 20 min. documentary with FCP on a G4 (1ghz) powerbook with a 4200 rpm drive.

Your hard drive speeds come into play if you're working with either HD or uncompressed video media. The FCP dv-codec (for mini-dv, and dvcpro) requires something like 1.8 m/bytes of bandwith per second. As long as your HD's can go that fast you won't have that problem.

And as far as the iMac with an intel processor going 2-3x faster than the same G5-based model.. well thats just apple's clever marketing. Read the fine print before you make any significant investments in Revision A products. Most all software currently will have its issues running on the new intel processors and we may see a few years before all the software manufactures catch up - like when apple made the switch from OS 9 to the Unix based OS X.

To answer your question, yes. All drives that come in a mac that was made to run OS x will run compatable versions of FCP fine.
 
jibadajaba said:
I know that regular PC's would require a SCSI hard drive to reach the appropriate rpms. Any info in regard to this is helpful.

Tim
Click to expand...

That's not correct. A 7200 RPM IDE drive is typical in most PCs, both of the IBM-clone and Mac varieties. SCSI is largely outmoded and in any case unnecessary for DV editing.
 
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