G-tech at DVinfo.net
DV Info Net

Go Back   DV Info Net > Apple / Mac Post Production Solutions > Final Cut Suite

Final Cut Suite
Discussing the editing of all formats with FCS, FCP, FCE

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old May 24th, 2006, 10:53 AM   #1
Regular Crew
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
Posts: 105
G-tech

Has anyone used the G-tech firewire drive to edit in HDV w/FCP5.1 Just trying to find out which is the best to purchase. Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian
Brian Chow is offline   Reply With Quote
Old May 24th, 2006, 01:04 PM   #2
Major Player
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Basel area, Switzerland
Posts: 285
Don't know particularly about G-tech, but it's hard to go wrong these days. Almost all vendors use the same ATA/S-ATA-to-FireWire bridge silicon (Oxford Semiconductor, mostly). The only brand I'd be suspicious about it Maxtor - they have a long track record of Firmware incompatibilities with the Mac OS. If you want something that definitely plays well with the Mac, you may want to take a look at the FW-drive offerings at http://www.macsales.com/ - solid performance for a very fair price.

HTH,

Ron
__________________
Ronald P. Pfister
halimedia - digital solutions and services
www.halimedia.com
Ron Pfister is offline   Reply With Quote
Old May 24th, 2006, 04:13 PM   #3
Trustee
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Houma, La.
Posts: 1,400
Images: 5
We've had a FW 800 G-raid that has been running here for over a year. It's been rock solid. We edit DVCProHD with it. I'm sure someone out there has had bad experiences with G-Tech. I can only speak for ours. Before the G-Raid we had a Maxtor external and a Lacie Big Disc that both went bad.
Ethan Cooper is offline   Reply With Quote
Old May 25th, 2006, 10:26 PM   #4
Major Player
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
Posts: 286
I have a G-Drive FW800 250GB. It has been solid so far and I would buy another one. Editing 1080i60 from an FX1.
__________________
Matt Trubac
Matt Trubac is offline   Reply With Quote
Old May 27th, 2006, 06:02 PM   #5
Regular Crew
 
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Chicago, Il.
Posts: 85
I'm still on my old G4. I normally edit DV, but if I had a G5 I'd fill all those drive bays with 500gb drives. This may be better than external drives. This is just based on my experience. I have a Maxtor and a Seagate internal and soon I plan to purchase my first 300 or 500gb internal drive. But keep in mind I do everything inhouse so I don't really travel with my drives obviously. If I were working with a laptop I think things would be different. I hope to have G5 17 inch Mac Book Pro by next year and an HDV camera probably either a Canon or JVC. I am still looking the at Panasonic but I'm leaning more toward the others. But I am looking at G-Tech for storage in the future with the MacBook Pro.

-Nate

Last edited by Nathan Brendan Masters; May 27th, 2006 at 06:04 PM. Reason: I left out information...
Nathan Brendan Masters is offline   Reply With Quote
Old May 27th, 2006, 06:45 PM   #6
Kino-Eye
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 457
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Chow
Has anyone used the G-tech firewire drive to edit in HDV w/FCP5.1
G-Tech makes a variety of good hard drives as well as enclosures you can populate with your own drives. The G-Tech enclosures have fans, which not all enclosures have, I like the idea of fans to help with cooling.

Are you on a laptop or PowerMac?

I would consider SATA if your on a PowerMac. FireWire 800 offers more flexibility in terms of easily moving to other machines and can used with laptops with FireWire interfaces without the need for a SATA Cardbus card or PCI card, on the other hand, SATA offers a high perfomance option, especially when you start adding additional drives that end up sharing a single FireWire bus, which begins to slow things down, whereas with a SATA controller card and SATA drives when you configure one drive per channel you get the best performance short of a hardware RAID solution.

I've been using the The Sonnet's Tempo-X 4+4 (4 internal and 4 external channels) along with SoftRAID to configure RAID-0 and RAID-1 disk sets. Right now I have the disks mounted internally with Sonnet's G5 Jam but I've been looking a the G-Tech enclosures for additing additional drives external to the Mac. Another option is Sonnet's Tempo-X eSATA 8 PCI-X card that gives you 8 dedicated channels for connecting external drives to the Mac.

I chose SoftRAID over Apple's Disk Utility becuase of better error reporting, a friendlier interface, and the simplicty of rebuilding failed mirrors. Check out the SoftRAID web site for the details.
__________________
David Tames { blog: http://Kino-Eye.com twitter: @cinemakinoeye }
David Tamés is offline   Reply
Reply

DV Info Net refers all where-to-buy and where-to-rent questions exclusively to these trusted full line dealers and rental houses...

B&H Photo Video
(866) 521-7381
New York, NY USA

Scan Computers Int. Ltd.
+44 0871-472-4747
Bolton, Lancashire UK


DV Info Net also encourages you to support local businesses and buy from an authorized dealer in your neighborhood.
  You are here: DV Info Net > Apple / Mac Post Production Solutions > Final Cut Suite

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

 



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 10:51 AM.


DV Info Net -- Real Names, Real People, Real Info!
1998-2024 The Digital Video Information Network