Editing HD Video on FCP. Need advise on Video Card and External hard Drive

[lebeau3d]

I am going to be editing HD video using Final Cut Pro. I will also be using the Multi Camera Mode and I will have up to 8 HD video clips potentially running at the same time so I can edit in multi camera mode in Final Cut.

The footage will probably be on a eSATA external hard drive.

I have 3 questions:

1. Should I upgrade my video card? If so, to what?
2. Is an eSATA drive fast enough to handle the HD video
3. My system info is below - any thoughts on what else I may need to upgrade?

Thanks Sooooo Much for your time and thoughts!

This is what i have:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB

(I have 2 of these)
SyncMaster:
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported

 

[MovieCutter]

A graphics card update won't do you any good right now, not until Final Cut Pro supports Snow Leopard's Open CL.

You can take a number of steps to edit 8 streams of HD video smoothly, including knocking down your playback resolution in the timeline. You'll still end up with full res video, but during editing with a multiclip sequence, your Mac won't choke so much.

Other than that, eSata should be good for what you're doing. I edit a multicam sequence with 3 streams of 1080i footage on my MBP hard drive every week in full res and never have a problem.