Help Building an Editing Sytem

[screenwriting99]

Hey guys. I'm a new Mac User and Seasoned Video Editor who is switching from the PC world. Please be gentle on me. I just pulled the trigger on the new 2.66 Octo Mac Pro this morning. I need to figure out a couple of things that have been causing me major confusion.

1) How fast can I get the throughput on 4 1TB Hard Drives using OSX Leopard software Raid 0? Fast enough for 2 or more Streams of 35mbs a second HD XDCAM Footage at 60i? Link to camera here http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101851&feature_id=01

(The reason for going OSX softraid is everyone keeps telling me internal crds are now incompatible because of the new drive tray design. The 4 Drives I am going to be using are the WD RE3 1TB Drives)

2) Would 12gbs (2gb x 6 via OWC) of Ram be enough for Editing this kind of Footage in Final Cut Pro or Avid 3.5 in near real time?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I have been living on the boards for the last two weeks trying to figure this out. Trying to get the most bang for the buck without taking out a loan. Unless necessary. I am Editing a Long form Documentary for a Non Profit group. Thanks.

 

[LethalWolfe]

35Mbps is tiny so no need for a RAID at all. By comparison DV is 25Mbps and a 100Mbps codec like DVCPro HD can easily have a couple of streams from an off the shelf FW400 HDD. If down the line you work w/formats that do need RAIDs don't go w/the software RAID. Go w/an external solution. It will be faster and more reliable (if OS X gets fouled up your software RAID go w/it).

12gigs of RAM just for running FCP is overkill as FCP can't see more than 3 or 4 gigs. More RAM will help if you run w/multiple apps open at the same time though. How much you can do in real time depends mainly on your CPU speed and how you want to manipulate the footage. Some filters in FCP are Real Time (meaning they'll play back w/o needing to be rendered) such as the 3-way color corrector. Other filters will always have to be rendered to be seen.


Lethal

 

[arjen92]

which graphics card do you have. Because motion (which you probably won't use) renders live, and needs the graphics card.