Concerned with editing HDV with Mac Pro

[Mark Chafe]

Hi All.

A friend of mine recently upgraded from an Imac to a Dual Processor Xeon mac pro with 6GB of ram and 1 TB hard drive for working with FCP projects. The hard drive is not using a RAID, as the raid card was $800 and another drive about $200, so justifying an extra $1000 atleast wasnt there.

He is fairly happy with the machine so far, however he would like to output his timeline realtime to a monitor as he is editing, via HDMI. Capture HDV footage via a Canon 40. Only recently have i discovered that you cannot output HDV over firewire in realtime when trying to set it up.

Wondering what the options are? Will a Blackmagic Intensity Pro get the realtime output via HDMI? Would it help with rendering? Would he need a RAID system for the card? Could he capture via firewire with HV40, and only use the blackmagic as an output card?


Also, what other codecs are available for me? I am new to setting up Final Cut Pro for HD. I have only used it for SD footage without really customizing it. I run FCP on imac with DVCAM with no external monitor. Are there any other settings or tweaks that I should become familiar with that would help get the best out of the computer? I also tried outputting realtime editing to my second monitor out of my video card and it became choppy with RT errors. Could using a new codec such as ProRes 422 makes things smoother?

I have searched for info on this site, but really don't what my issues are to define my search.



Sorry for so many questions but i'm a newbiee and a little concerned.

Thanks