[ndirish3017]

Just got a MacBook Pro 15":

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB RAM
250 GB 5200-rpm hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
1 TB external LaCie HD currently running off USB

the questions:
I will be frequently running FCP. The last couple weeks I've been using it, its stalled quite a bit running even Safe RT, which angers me. It isn't HD video even, just stuff off my ass-quality camcorder. Everything was running off of my external drive, limited of course by the USB. I will be storing all my video projects on that drive. So... to improve my FCP performance, what would be best? Increase my RAM to 4GB or get an eSATA express/34 card to run the external drive off of? I was thinking the expresscard but i didn't know what would be best.

Secondly, importing the video has become quite a predicament. Mr. Jobs and his crack team of engineers decided the best thing for this laptop was to not include the firewire 400 ports like everything else in the world and to opt instead for the firewire 800 that virtually nothing uses. My camera imports off of f400 and usb but i haven't really tried that yet... what would be the best thing to do at this point?

Thanks for any help.

[Simon]

Having only FW800 is what they should have done a long time ago. The point is that FW800 can also act as FW400, but not the other way around. So by including FW800 Apple is essentially giving you more options.

What you want is a simple FW400 (6 pins) to FW800 (9 pins) cable. There are adapters too, but instead of using an adapter plus a cable, getting the right cable is the easiest solution.

Here's one for $4.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by ndirish3017 

Just got a MacBook Pro 15":
I will be frequently running FCP... everything was running off of my external drive, limited of course by the USB. I will be storing all my video projects on that drive. So... to improve my FCP performance, what would be best? Increase my RAM to 4GB or get an eSATA express/34 card to run the external drive off of?

You are attempting heavy graphics/video work with a laptop so just do both.

Mr. Jobs and his crack team of engineers decided the best thing for this laptop was to not include the firewire 400 ports like everything else in the world and to opt instead for the firewire 800 that virtually nothing uses.

Prior to dissing a pretty competent design engineering team you should know that FW800 adapts to FW400 really easily if for some reason you prefer half speed.

My camera imports off of f400 and usb but i haven't really tried that yet... what would be the best thing to do at this point?

Use eSATA, which rocks; max out RAM; avoid USB like the plague. One should never import direct camera-to-computer; instead Finder copy from CF card to hard drive, ideally using a fast FW card reader but USB works OK just more slowly.

-Allen Wicks