Hey guys I picked up the new 17' Macbook Pro. I was going to start doin work on it when I heard that it is better to have all your videos and whatnot running off an external harddrive or any other drive other than what final cut pro is on, is there a reason for this?

also what are things I can do with my Macbook Pro to ensure the highest performance, or lowest rendering times?

Thanks in Advance!

Hey guys I picked up the new 17' Macbook Pro. I was going to start doin work on it when I heard that it is better to have all your videos and whatnot running off an external harddrive or any other drive other than what final cut pro is on, is there a reason for this?

also what are things I can do with my Macbook Pro to ensure the highest performance, or lowest rendering times?

Thanks in Advance!

For best results, don't use the USB for external. Use firewire or maybe it's possible to run a hdd through the express card.

I hope I am not breaking the forum rules by endorsing something, but here it goes:
The Lynda.com has online tutorials on various softwares and the Larry Jordan on Final Cut is really damn good. There is a monthly fee but well worth it. It clarifies all or most of your concerns.

An external hard disk keeps your captured data off your system drive. Having large chunks of video data on your system drive increases seek times on the system hdd, which increases load times for all your apps, which slows down your computer.

Also, if you need to do a system wide re-install of your computer, you risk losing footage by having it on your system drive. Keeping it on external drives specially designated for footage means you should never have to delete any footage for any reason other than you don't want it anymore, meaning less chance of accidental render times.

Keeping render times down is a large kettle of fish - which render times are you talking about, render times on the FCP timeline (in which case a mixture of ensuring your laptop has good cooling, the system is running smoothly, and good practices in terms of file management can all be of assistance) or out of compressor (in which case some other good practices, such as using QT reference files where appropriate, and using qMaster to allocate cores, although that may be a bit unnecessary on only a duel core machine.)

Also a laptop is never going to approach the speed of a Mac Pro for render times. If that's something you need, it might be time to look into a different sort of system.

Noah

I agree with what Craig Parkes said, and to expand on that...

There are a number of advantages to having a separate disk for footage.

Space
It doesn't take much to fill up a HDD with videos, especially with HD footage. An external drive is easy to change to a newer bigger and better one than an onboard laptop one, and mean you don't have to re-install OS X and all your apps.

Speed
My understanding is that it will be faster, because...... the HDD does not have to write as much data, instead it is spread over 2 HDDs - one for OS X and all the stuff happening there and one for the capture / render

In My Shoes:
I would look for probably a 500+ gb HDD, with Firewire 800, maybe eSata but I don't think the Macbook have any eSata ports, and maybe Firewire 400 / USB2 for compatibility with other computers. Format it to whatever the mac system is um HFS+ I think? If you are going nuts for it I would recommend a Raid on the HDD to protect data and speed read / write times.

Ryan