Well, bottom line, faster is better. A RAID 0 will help more than a little.
I just use non-RAID 7200 RPM drives, though, because I don't really need realtime playback at Best quality all the time. Preview quality is significantly faster and doesn't look much different from Best.
When you're color-correcting, you're most likely doing it with a still image, so Best quality will be the same no matter what your drives are.
When you're judging the timing of a cut, heck, Draft quality is good enough if it gets you real-time playback.
A time when you probably do want real-time playback at as good a quality as possible is when you're looking at a crossfade or other transition -- and most of the time, you're not going to need to have your color-correction, etc., enabled while you judge it, so you can just bypass those and get better playback.
Remember also that the size of your preview window affects your playback performance. Smaller = faster.
Also, match your timeline to your footage (frame rate, frame size, etc.0 for best performance.
Now, if you want full-screen real-time HD playback at best quality, well, you're going to need as much speed in as many places as possible.
I just use non-RAID 7200 RPM drives, though, because I don't really need realtime playback at Best quality all the time. Preview quality is significantly faster and doesn't look much different from Best.
When you're color-correcting, you're most likely doing it with a still image, so Best quality will be the same no matter what your drives are.
When you're judging the timing of a cut, heck, Draft quality is good enough if it gets you real-time playback.
A time when you probably do want real-time playback at as good a quality as possible is when you're looking at a crossfade or other transition -- and most of the time, you're not going to need to have your color-correction, etc., enabled while you judge it, so you can just bypass those and get better playback.
Remember also that the size of your preview window affects your playback performance. Smaller = faster.
Also, match your timeline to your footage (frame rate, frame size, etc.0 for best performance.
Now, if you want full-screen real-time HD playback at best quality, well, you're going to need as much speed in as many places as possible.