Advice needed regarding HD editing on G5 Quad

Hi everyone,
I am currently in production on an independent movie shot using the Panasonic HVX at 1080i, 29.97. Playback in FCP is stuttered and does not play in realtime due, I imagin, to the immense size of the files and it has been suggested to me that we purchase an add on card, like a Blackmagic or a Kona. I'm very new to the world of HD and a bit lost (!) I would appreciate a recommendation from someone as to what hardware would be suitable for our purpose. My system configuartion is as follows:

G5 Quad
4GB DDR2
Mac OSX 10.4.11
2. Hitachi 500GB
2 Externals (1TB G-Drive / 1TB WD )
FCP 6.0.4
FCStudio 2 (all updated)

Thanks to all,
Jeremy

>Panasonic HVX at 1080i, 29.97

That would be DvcproHD 1080i (100mb/s). And it's likely the externals aren't really giving you the required speeds to playback the codecs in real time.

[www.lafcpug.org]

The Aja speed test should tell you if your drives are fast enough.

[edu.moviola.com]

Are the drives daisy-chained? And are you running off FW800?

Also, a side note, make sure your timeline is set to DvcproHD 1080 60i, and footage doesn't need a render when you insert it into the timeline.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks I'll give it a go. The main drive is connected via FW800. I'll let you know how the test speed runs.
Jeremy

Hmmm...I have a less powerful machine and can play back DVCPRO HD 1080i and 720p without issue. Even uncompressed HD. It all amounts to the hard drives you are using to play back this footage. I find that firewire 800 is good for 720p, but isn't so reliable for 1080i. Might work, but might not.

eSATA solutions are much better.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

>The main drive is connected via FW800.

Hmm... Any FW400 drives in there? If you have only 1 firewire bus on the mac (default configuration), and you have a Firewire 400 drive connected, the data speed on all ports will slow down to that of the slowest firewire device, which in this case will be Firewire 400, and that certainly won't keep up with Dvcpro100.



www.strypesinpost.com

I guarantee it's the G-Drive not sustaining throughput to handle 1080i. It's not even FW800.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thank you all very much for your input. Oddly enough I did two things. I made sure that only the WD1TB drive was connected via Fw800 and I ran Final Cut Rescue. Presto when I created a new project the playback is silky smooth!
I may get an eSATA PCIe card to connect both those drives to a fast route. Is that wise?

Again, many thanks for taking the time.
Jeremy