is USB 2.0 fast enough for FCP work?

JC
Yes I still edit on AVIDs when those jobs come. I will doing such a gig next week. I am a Mac guy through and through but in the field I work in being Mac only would be tantamount to bringing bags of dead puppies to work. You could do it, it ain't against the law, but they're not going to ask you back.

You touch on a few issues that have a grain of truth in them but make unwarranted conclusions. You will loose that bet that there is proof out there that you can tell which software cut what show because, amongst many reasons, software doesn't cut, people do. Are you going to be able to tell us which major motion pictures were cut on an Avid just by looking at it? Good luck.

In another thread Tom W. elucidated one of the reasons why FCP media management is still playing catchup to AVID.

Quote
Tom Wolsky
Which sequence? Any sequence? Lot of people use sequences for clip organization and viewing. All the clips would be used. Any clip or any piece of media?

This is a big problem for FCP because it doesn't track clips only media. For instance, use the Find function to search for unused clips and it won't find any if any piece from any single media file is used, regardless of clips or subclips. It's the old, old problem. There's no project database for clips and media. The problem ripples through the whole application and ends up with issues that Media Manager can't cope with.

Oh yeah, that bit about PC people being in love with knowing how to service the machine, well you're here, getting tons of advice, for free, from people who have learnt how their boxes work and are willingly sharing that info. You're welcome. Back in the day there was a thing called the AVID-L that was identical to this forum in many ways but WAAAAAY bigger.

Enough, the proximity of these arguments to Mac/PC flamewars bores the hell out of me. Think what you want about people who use PCs to edit, just keep it to yourself.

ak

Quote

Sure it is...especially when you are dealing with grafix / animations in your projects.

I bet you're right Joey! Its all a matter of perspective. I should have said: a few dropped frames during editing/playback is no big deal "to me"

I should also clarify that i'm only talking about "a few" not being a problem... that's more than 1 or 2 but less than "several"

cheers
Andy

put it this way. i dont respect the machine. the editors are probly just fine

Quote
joe
Whether you meant it to be a blanket statement or not, it is.

so your rushing out the house and suddenly a your kid runs around the corner and you bump into him. he falls and is a little shocked my the impact.
i guess here you meant to do it also.
sounds kinda gw-bush-ish.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Uh...JC,

We're not going any further than this as this subject is not related to the original post...comparing running into your children & knocking them down to typing a thought-out response on a keyboard & hitting ENTER is totally unrelated.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Quote
andrew
This is a big problem for FCP because it doesn't track clips only media

i will give you that and i am sure is i could stomach using a pc i would find lots of very nice avid features.
like i said it is the machine that i dont respect. it was just a ton of problems with the machine mainly coming from internet viruses screwing the machine up. the pc machine i was using had a max of 2 gig ram which is a problem in itself.
life has just been 95% maintainence free on my mac.

didnt mean to salt the meat too much but i just dont like the pc. i am a slightly bloviated poster and my spell check wouldn't tell me if i spelled that right:-)

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Back On Topic.....

I know a few people who edit on PCs using both Firewire and USB drives. What they say is that USB IS fast enough for many video operations, including capture, but USB relies on the CPU to do a good part of the writing and reading work - which means that it can either slow things way down, OR, if there's software running which has a higher precedence than USB disk operations (there shouldn't be, but you know how it goes), there will be data and/or read/write errors. So in the PC world, it depends on how well-behaved your application is.

Also, it appears that some external USB drive interfaces are better than others.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Blaming PCs because you used an underpowered, poorly spec'ed system doesn't sound like a good idea to you, does it? I hope not.

If you don't respect the machine, isn't that kind of like saying you don't respect people who would choose to edit on one. Because the machine could care less if you respect it or not, it's too busy trying not to be anthropomorphized by us silly humans.

An interesting (to me at least) facet of this discussion is the following observation.
PC's are kind of wild. In that they can be hard to tame, there are a ton of manufacturers, mobos and cards to choose from, there is tons of software, lots of hotrodding tips are out there for your IRQ settings and there is lots of Virii to deal with and spyware to contend with. AVID, while certainly not a PC only package, is often lauded or denigrated for imposing file structures and limitations on media. Some people love it for this, others hate it.

Macs on the other hand are tame. You get what you get, whether from Apple direct or a reseller, there isn't any difference in the product. Yet FCP has a kind of wild, "wherever you want it to go, it will go" attitude to media management.

The bruin is fed
pax
exire

if you buy a new car from ford and it breaks down a lot after 1 year of ownership and timely services, i am willing to bet that the next time you are ready for a new car it wont be a ford, even if they upgrade the engine. if someone ask you about ford you will tell them about the experience you had, even if you are the only one who experienced it.

i didnt have a good experience with the pc, so when i speak about them i can only draw from that. if i am not mistaken a few people here like joe, johan, ruis and jude who all have cut on pc's. i still respect their advice on editing and have seen some remarkable stuff from them and others.

i purchase equipment based on the notion that anything that is gonna slow my productivity at all is useless. virus checks, spyware removal, and disk clean-up are not part of my production. therefore it is a process i must remove from the equation.

i do think that maybe if you have a pc that doesn't interact with the net it would not be as high maintainence . however, i up/down load a lot of stuff so i need the net connect without the worries that it causes on a pc.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I do too re: the Premiere Pro on an HP laptop
And I am using the same lacie 250 gig USB 2. drive on a G4dual running FCP 5 with no problems.