Starting a new project, a series for cable, and I didn't know if it was possible to edit HD (DVC PRO HD) using firewire storage or if the system won't be fast enough. Or should we just get a few internal drives or something else? I'm worried about the system being sluggish. The equipment will all be brand new, so figure the best hardware.

If you want to stay with firewire then use FW800 (look at G-Raid). Plenty fast enough for DVCProHD, either 720 or 1080. You'll need a good capture card for playback and external monitoring (Blackmagic or AJA), and a broadcast quality monitor (look at Panasonic, JVC, or Sony) if you're doing the final mastering in-house.

A Raid (have a look at Sonnet) will give you better performance in terms of more realtime streams. We use one for editing and mastering, then backup to FWG-Raid for longer term storage.

Clay

Are raided internal drives faster than FW800 or a Sonnet Raid and therefore preferred?

No, internal raided drives will give you pretty good performance, I think something like up to 8 Bit uncompressed SD, but a FW800 G-Raid will give you 10Bit. A Sonnent or similar is a substantial jump, and will give you up to uncomressed HD. For working on a series, well worth the extra bucks because its going to save you considerable time over the long haul.

Clay

For any flavor of HD I'd recommend SATA, not FireWire. Think of it, all new Pro towers contain 4 drive caddies, three of which can be loaded with 1 TB drives-- and then striped for triple bandwidth. THAT will work decently with multiple streams of HD 720 0r 1080.

Firewire will not be part of any HD solution on my desktop. It's way too funky-- even turning on a cellphone nearby can dismount the drives.

For external SATA, vendors like CalDigit, etc.

- Loren
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You can ABSOLUTELY cut DVCPRO HD on FW800 drives. I use & recommend G-RAID2 drives (you can edit up to 3 streams of DVCPRO HD) because they are solid & affordable:

[www.g-technology.com]

Anything bigger than 720p DVCPRO HD, I would go with a SATA RAID as well.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

>Firewire will not be part of any HD solution on my desktop. It's way too funky-- even
>turning on a cellphone nearby can dismount the drives.

Wow. What kinda phone are you using? Hmm... is that something to do with the bus powered drive you mentioned in another post?

No issues with cutting dvcprohd 720 on fw800. SATAs lag less, though.