FCP System Set Up HELP

My company is putting together it's first system to run Final Cut Studio.
Were are starting with a Mac Pro 8-Core running Mac OS X v10.5.6 Leopard
with dual Apple monitors. My question is with this as the base of the system
what video card and hard drive set up would you recommend? I was planning to get 4 internal, 1TB Seagate 7200.12 hard drives that I could RAID 0 in some combination like, 2 for the Startup and 2 for the storage/scratch. I?d buy external hard drives for back up. Is there an optimal combination that I am missing?

The video card on the system is a ATI Radeon HD 4870. Would that be strong enough to run a 30 and a 23? monitor?

We will be getting our footage at first from a Canon D5 MarkII to begin with but will
most likely expand to a pro HDV camera some time in the future.

Thanks for your input,

Phil in Palo Alto

The ATI 4870 is a very new card and will certainly be able to handle your monitors. It's also highly optimized for Motion.

As far as drives, it's hard to say without knowing what your company is going to be using the system for. Not everyone needs 6TB of fibre RAID storage, but if you'll be working in HD, you should at least have some kind of RAID storage. RAID 0, as I understand it, doesn't give you media protection, it only increases access speed. Lose one drive, lose everything.

A RAID 5 in an external enclosure is probably a more sensible solution. Lot's of companies specialize in building media storage. Cal Digit is an LAFCPUG here. I've never used them, but have chatted with reps and seen their products and they look good.

Beware the D5. It doesn't shoot standard frame rates.

IMO, "pro HDV" is an oxymoron. :-)

Andy

If protection of your data is important to you, and you don't want to use an external enclosure for your drives, apple does sell a raid card that will allow you to use the internal bays for a RAID 5. I don't have one, but am considering it for my next system. You must use at least 3 drives to get RAID 5 protection.

-V