Final Cut Pro or Express? And hard drive?
 

Hey guys-
I am getting back into video (I am a photojournalist) and I don't really have an exciting editing machine. Just my two year old Macbook Pro and an older PC with Adobe Premiere.

I want to get Final Cut for my Macbook Pro and go from there.

With that in mind, I just bought a Canon HV30 and really excited to shoot in 24p. But I thought I read that FC Express will not edit 24p? Is this right?

Also, since I am working from my laptop, what external hard drive do you recommend getting to work exclusively from? I want to dump my entire raw take on there and edit just from that.

Thanks in advance!

FCE4 supports the open formate timeline for mixed formats and timelines, but I don't know for a fact if it supports 24p or not. I haven't seen anything that says it does not.

Regarding hard drives, what is your budget? What are you looking for from a drive? I like the G-Force drives. CalDigit seem pretty nice as well.

As for hard drives, I just want one to store and work off of. Nothing too crazy, just something reliable and fast.

I'd think you'll need FCP if you really want to edit 23.98. But that camera shoots with a pulldown mode that I suspect you can edit at 60i in FCE without any problem. Just not going back out to film easily but I kinda doubt that's your goal at this point. Get a decent sized Firewire 800 drive- G-Tech if you can afford it and you'll be ready to go.

Noah

I dig Fantom Drives, and never had any problems with them. And Final Cut Studio 2 is the way to go--I've tried that and Final Cut Express, but I like FCP best.

heath

I hate to admit it, but when I need another external drive I go to the nearest "big box" store and buy whatever is cheap. Unfortunately the selectrion of firewire 800 drives is a bit limited there, but I've been happy with the ones I've got. Firewire 400 works fine also for capturing and editing, although big file copies (and possibly rendering) will be faster on firewire 800. Also note that on all macs, as soon as you connect your camera to capture the video, your firewire 800 drive will effective slow down to 400 speed anyway.

I probably have about 30 different external drives between work and home. Recently I've bought a number of the Western Digital MyBook series (read the specs carefully on the package, there are many different "flavors") and a handful of ioMega. No problems with any of them.

It probably makes a lot more sense to comparison shop and buy online, but when I need a drive, I usually need it right away. And I also like buying locally for both the instant gratification syndrome and the ease of return/exchange if there's a problem.

If you need it pronto, go to the store! I agree with you there, Boyd. But if you can go online, try MacMall – #1 Mac Store, iPod nano, Mac Intel, Mac Computers & LCD TVs for Fantom Drives; they offer the best prices I've seen.

I need another 1TB drive.

heath