G4 Laptop Drive Speed fast enough to edit?
 

I plan on buying a G4 1.25 ghz laptop as soon as my tax refund shows up and hoped to use it to edit video, among other things.

Currently editing using Premiere and After Effects on a G3 tower...slow but works O.K.

Of course the laptop processor speed is much faster, but I'm wondering about the drive speed. It looks like it comes with a 4200 drive but a 5400 one is optional for $125. Is the standard drive fast enough? Seems like the G3 is 7200...not sure.

Would I be better off editing with to an external firewire drive vs. the built-in drive?

Interested in anyone's experience editing on Mac laptops. Also, would like to know if it's possible to add an auxiliary monitor like I use with the G-3. Wasn't clear if a loptop would support dual monitors or not.

thanks!!!!

used to use FCP with my 550mhz... ran fine. The limitation is SD editing. You really do need those PCI cards but a 550/firewire 7200/JVC GR-Camcorder was a very functional rig.

you can hook via s-video a monitor and a dual display as well. You NEED external 7200 drives. Internals will NOT work at all... remember to move all files (audio files as well)...

Hi John,

I have the 17" Powerbook (1.33Ghz) with the 5400rpm drive. I use a LaCie d2 200gb, FW800 external drive for video. I daisy chain my Xl1s into my LaCie, then the LaCie into my FW800 port on the PB.

This setup works great, audio & video sync perfectly, with no dropped frames. Whenever editing video, I would always recommend using a dedicated video drive. FCP is on my internal drive, with all video/audio files going to the external.

I'm sure since only your program will be running on the internal drive, a 4200rpm drive would suffice. For me, $125 was not a major issue so I went with it. Both Apple personnel, and two dealers of digital video equipment, told me that a 4200 would do.

As for the external monitor, check out Apple's DVI to ADC adapter. This device will allow you to hook up one of their Cinema Displays. Here's a link -

http://www.apple.com/displays/adapter.html

As for hooking up to a CRT, you'll have to ask around.

Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions.

G4 1.25 Ghz 15" PB
 

I have a Aluminum PB model 5,2 with a MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-816 HD and have had no problems with RT - I have not used my external firewire harddrive and with the small playing around I have done with Final Cut 4 Pro since I got it, it has been easy to do effects in RT on the PB.

Anyone else want to chime in on Powerbook performance with Final Cut 4?

pb
 

i too have the G4/1.25 15-inch and that's all i use for editing. i have used the internal drive in a pinch and it was fine, but my regular setup is LaCie 160 into the FW800 and DV deck into the FW400. haven't had an issue yet.

( knock knock )

The internal drive will work but as others have mentioned, having a good 7200 RPM firewire drive is much preferable.

I use an iBook 800 and it works fine with Final Cut Express 1.01.

The internal on my 667mhz PB works fine for FCP3, but it is only 30GB...really only good for short-form "happy face" or promo videos (which I do a lot of). For the bigger chores I plug in either a Samsung 160 or a Western Digital 120 (both pretty small and can be crammed into a briefcase.) Of course, to use these I need to be close enough to a 120v AC outlet (or a car inverter)...can't use'em on the plane.

I cannot render from my internal powerbook drive without dropped frames... as far as I can tell it is a function of the speed of the hard drive. Only as of Monday did I notice a 5400 drive - others were 4200... neither fast enough for a compressed dv file>?

you know what...
I will attempt another project on the HD... I am referring to running FCP in classic on my 550... and specifically a noticable audio chirp that went along with any print to video options...

at one point i attempting editing on my old iBook 600 ( with FCP 3 ) and i noticed that Print to Tape was horrible. Dropped frames, out of sync, really bad. I was pulling the clips off an external drive and hitting back out to the deck through the same port, so I assumed that was the problem. maybe it had something to do with the FW chipset? i think that iBook was circa Apr '02...

I actually ran a playback mirrored to a monitor recording to tape to get around a "print to video" failure... worked but barely...