HD footage over Firewire 400?

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dmchord

Active member
I'm thinking that with the E-series, I might be able to pick up a couple of P2 cards. I remember reading somewhere, though, that I might run into problems accessing the HD footage over a Firewire 400 line.

My footage goes into a scratch disc folder on my external drive (I also understand I'll need a separate drive for P2 footage, I can deal with that.) The external drive connects to my iMac with a Firewire 400 cable, where I edit my footage with FCP. I do not have an 800 option. I actually get some slow down (beach ball) every now and then with the SD footage over the 400, so is editing HD footage just going to kill me, or what?
 
Its not that you can't do it. It is just too slow for Final Cut. I've done it before with footage from my DVX, but I have found that the drive cannot respond, find or transfer the footage fast enough, or the drive is not spinning fast enough.

What I do is keep all my files on my computer's hard drive, then once the project is finished, put everything in one folder and transfer that to my external hard drive. If you had a 7200 rpm drive via firewire 800, it might work. But your proposed situation would slow you down way to much.
 
i run dvcpro hd off firewire 400 externals and it works fine - real time playback no problem - sometimes heavily acclerated shos (500 - 1000%) stutter a bit.

i am not convinced that the pipe between the ext and your mac is the problem.
 
I'm thinking that with the E-series, I might be able to pick up a couple of P2 cards. I remember reading somewhere, though, that I might run into problems accessing the HD footage over a Firewire 400 line.
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im not sure where e-series cards (or P2 cards in general) and fw400 have anything to do with each other? can you elaborate on what youre thinking...?

however, as far as fw400 and FCP goes, i did some initial testing with dvcproHD /FCP and fw400 several years back. fw400 does work more or less, but not super well. it wont kill your day but will cripple it pretty badly.

(I also understand I'll need a separate drive for P2 footage, I can deal with that.)
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thats not actually true. not as you present it anyway... generally EVERYTHING i do is on some form of external drive. but you dont need an external drive JUST for P2 footage. for you, since youre on an imac and have little expansion options, youd probably be best advised to dump your P2 source (contents and lastclip - each complete card into its own folder) to the fw400 external then log and capture from that and then work (i.e set your scratch drive) to your internal imac drive. then you can disconnect that fw400 drive and just use it (or them) for source and final project archive

if you want to see a production increase (i know you cant because youre on an imac, but just for conversation sake) - GO eSATA! its pretty cheap and is without a doubt the biggest improvement you'll make in speed. over processor and over added ram.

i went from fw800 to eSATA on an octocore macpro and where moving from a G5 to the mac pro shaved a few seconds from renders, adding 16 gigs of ram shaved a few more. moving to eSATA shaved off several MINUTES.

here are my tools of choice:
http://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-4e.asp

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/PerformanceRAID
be sure to get the QUAD interface model

If you had a 7200 rpm drive via firewire 800, it might work
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not sure what you mean here JCal? i used dvcproHD in FCP via a 7200 fw800 drive for over 2 years with no issues whatsoever...?
 
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