Whats needed for a editing on a powerbook

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DVX100Shooter

Veteran
A friend of mine is getting a powerbook. What is the biggest hard drive you can put into a laptop? He wants to edit on it. I was telling him to get the production bundle of FCP HD, Motion and DVD Studio Pro. Since I have a Power MAC G5, I have no idea of what is needed to run all that in a laptop. I did tell him to get the biggest hard drive internally he could get and beef up the ram. I told him to get an external FW drive as well.
 
Re: Whats needed for a editing on a powerbook

That's about all you can do really, is beef up the internals and use external storage. The new powerbooks can handle up to 100gigs internal (but only 5400rpm), but they have a firewire 800 port. Perfect for adding an external drive to use as the footage drive. I wouldn't store footage on the system drive... it's really not fast enough, plus you're bogging down your drive the system is running on. If he's just doing DV on it, a fast powerbook with lots of ram, and an external firewire800 drive would be a mean lil portable system.
 
Re: Whats needed for a editing on a powerbook

Kai is right. The newer PowerBooks, have 100gb hard drives, but 80 is pretty much the standard. A fast external firewire hard drive is the best bet. Especially the 800. I have a year old aluminum 15" PowerBook, which I totally love, and its worked fine for me on FCP, but I mostly do smaller 3-5 min projects. I have a G5 for bigger projects, but theres nothing better than sitting back, feet up, and doing all your computing wirelessly.
 
Re: Whats needed for a editing on a powerbook

Even though there is both a FW 400 and a FW 800 port on the Powerbooks, there is only one bus to control them both.

Therefore it is widely recommended that you get a PCMCIA FW card to use while capturing to prevent dropped frames.

People using older versions of FCP (3 and below) didn't seem to have this problem, but when using current versions, it evidently becomes one.

I use the separate FW card all the time (for capturing DV) and never have had a problem.

Joe Kras
 
Re: Whats needed for a editing on a powerbook

is there a difference in the memory consumption between Final Cut Pro 4 and Final Cut Express?
 
Re: Whats needed for a editing on a powerbook

Hey. I have been editing all of my projects on a Powerbook 12 inch, 1.33 GHz with 768 MB of RAM. It has a 80 GB HD but I only use that for my OS and applications. All of my footage is captured via firewire on 3 LACIE drives I own. I have a 120GB, a 160GB and a 250GB Porsche Drive. They are fast, have great cache, and are 7200 RPM which is what is necessary for editing on the go. I can run and am running FCP HD with very fast rendering time and most Real time previews, as well as Photoshop at a very fast rate.. The only program that I can run but that is considerably slower is MOTION. I have tried Motion on a Dual G5 2.5 with 2GB of RAM and it is still slow. Hopefully they'll fix that in the next update.

Back 2 Business:
When I want to edit somwhere else than in my home or studio, I can bring only the Porsche Drive which is pretty small and connect it to my laptop and away I go.. with less clutter than most studios.

I have edited full TV shows on this system and it has worked wonders for me. My next purchase will be a G5 for a stronger and faster studio, but I will still be using my powerbook for portability.

Hope this helps.

Sebastian Gomez - www.sebastiangomez.com
 
kai said:
I wouldn't store footage on the system drive... it's really not fast enough, plus you're bogging down your drive the system is running on.
Click to expand...

I've posted my experience elsewhere, so pardon the repetitiveness. While I'd never discourage external drives, they are not essential. I believe that in the early days of computer based editing (I started with Premiere 4.2 in 1999 - G3 Blue and White), when the Mac could barely do the job of full frame video, processors were not as fast and system software was not tuned for video, etc. Now, everything is better. I've edited over 27 multicam videos (i.e., 3-5 camera angles going at once in my NLE) using Premiere, Final Cut Pro 1.2 and now 4.5 HD, and Final Cut Express 1.0 (because my old Blue and White can't do FCP). I've used a Powerbook (the one just replaced), iBook, and G3 Blue and White (first without, then with a G4 card) to edit video. I HAVE NEVER HAD AN ISSUE USING THE SYSTEM DRIVE FOR CAPTURE, STORAGE, AND EDITING VIDEO! I think the advice to use a separate drive is old advice. However, if your goal is massive storage, then yes, get an external drive. My 80GB 5400 rpm Powerbook drive has edited 50 minute wedding/event videos using 3-4 cameras in FCP 4.5. I've never hooked up an external HD to that computer. Yet since I got it last spring, I've been churning out videos like mad. So, only buy and external HD for space. I've you don't need the space (i.e., you limit yourself in the number of projects you have on the HD at one time), then you shouldn't spend the money just because advice floating out there says keep video off the system drive.

Now with that said, I feel bad saying something that contradicts Kai's comment because I've read dozens of his posts and believe he really knows his stuff and does great work. I'm only "balancing out" his comment for those budget minded types who may not really need an extra HD right away. Make sure you get a 5400 rpm drive in your Powerbook, not the 4500.
 
Speaking of Kai, how come you are listed as a Junior Member with over 1,700 posts while PPTPHOTO who posted below you is considered a Senior Member with barely over 100 posts? I wonder if in the process of porting to the new format, something got lost in the shuffle.
 
By the way, DVXShooter, this issue of using a Powerbook for FCP 4.5 HD is treated in other threads deeper in this section. You may want to look back to get more information for your friend. The consensus seems to be that the most recent Powerbooks (i.e., the last 2 years) are plenty powerful to do the job. When I go places with my DVX100A and Powerbook, all in a large camera bag, I feel like I'm carrying the capability of a TV station with me. It's an awesome combination.
 
editing video on powerbook

editing video on powerbook

My Powerbook was OK for DV editing but now I'm working exclusively with HDV, even for exporting to standard DVD. In fact I love the practical workflow of DV, but I came to hate it for everything else. HDV is really much better. I had the Porsche drives which I'm selling and got a larger FW800 500Gb from Lacie. HDV footage is large and requires space. The system is OK for basic editing, but for more complex work a G5 is certainly a lot better.
 
While I have edited material on my system drive, I MUCH prefer keeping program content on external drives and keeping the main internal drive for OS & apps only. It is no longer a financial hardship to do so. I use a pair of Wiebetech FW800 ComboDocks ($169 ea.) in various configurations with either my DPG4 tower or my 15" PBook. To add extra utility to my PBook set up, I bought a LaCie FW800 CardBus card ($70) so I have two completely independent FW buses (the stock PB FW ports share the same bus).

I actually use raw hard drives as my archival media for important projects. A 200GB Seagate 7200rpm/8MB drive is about $120, and that price will most certainly continue to fall over time. Once I am finished with a project, I unplug the drive from the ComboDock (30 seconds, max) and put the drive in a magnetically-safe area. If I ever need to return to that project, I snap the drive back into the ComboDock and my project is EXACTLY as I left it--no recovering from DVD or recapturing from tapes. With "CD rot" a possibility for optical archiving, not to mention the errant scratch or smudge, I am more confident with the overengineering of sealed hard drives.

For live events, I use my PBook to record a high-def (192k/24bit) 5.1 surround audio mix--a MOTU 896HD into the PBook's stock FW400 port, and out to an external drive via the CardBus FW800 card. There is a possibility that the FW bus on the laptop alone could handle the throughput, but seeing that I run the sound AND a four-camera shoot for events by myself, I can't babysit any data flow hiccups.

What I haven't done, and may experiment with in the coming months, is using OfflineRT to do the bulk of my editing on the PBook, and then use my tower to go back to full resolution and rerender everything overnight. Almost everything besides fine color correction could probably be done this way. It might cut down on post hours on my projects, as well as allow me to edit pretty much anywhere.
 
Sounds like you've really gotten your set up down. I don't want my previous post to be misunderstood. External drives are a great investment and provide so much flexibility. My point is that too many new Powerbook and iBook owners feel compelled to spend money on a hard drive because they've heard that putting video on the system drive will mess things up, which (I believe) is not true. If you want or need an external drive - go for it. Be compelled the need for space, not the need to keep system and data on separate drives. Unless you have to keep thing divided up in your life as some sort of ingrained behavior pattern as a result of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder - but I think there's a pill for that. :)
 
Oh, and for all I know, the idea of keeping video on a different drive from your systems may still be good advice in the PC world. I'm only addressing my experience with doing Firewire based video with Premiere, Final Cut Pro 1.2 and 4.5, Final Cut Express, iMovie, System 9, System X, a G3 tower, a G3 iBook, a G4 tower, and a 2004 Powerbook. No problems with any of these combinations.
 
1 gig of RAM and basic editing (with some magic bullet filters) should be ok for Final Cut. Might be able to playback a 15 minute movie from the timeline. But anything more than that, don't be surprised if the capture pings out due to RT limitations.

Not sure how motion would perform... but I would imagine... pretty annoying on a G4. As it is recommended to have a G5 dongle and MIN of 2gigs RAM.
 
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