Hi everyone,

I'm very new to the post production game and I am not the most technical person in the world, so please be nice (i'm stupid).

I am buying the new lower spec Mac book Pro with the 128mb graphics card but i'm upgrading the ram to 2gb. Unfortunalty I need to be moblie and I need a mac. I will be doing some basic editing using Z1(HDV or lower) and some standard DV on any camera I get my hands on. My question is, after buying a External Hard drive and Monitor, is their anything else I need to edit on the lastest version of FCP?

I've ben told I need to consider the firewire connections of the camera. What do I need to Know?

I have also been told that Mac Book Pro has only one Firewire port. How do I connect an external firewire hard drive and a camera to a Laptop?

I am capturng straight from the camera, is this a problem?

Sorry for the long post but your help would be very well received.

firstly i dont know much about mac specs/perfromance but 2gb of ram and a mac book pro sounds pretty good to me.

im on a pc and when editing hdv i use the

Cineform Aspect HD codec

http://www.cineform.com

but im not sure if they make something like this for mac...

it makes much larger files (about 3 times the size) but improves render time dramatically... check out dvinfo's cineform showcase:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=76

i used to use an external firewire hard drive and capture to that... luckily firewire has been designed in a daisy chain kind of way so you will be able to plug your camera into your hard drive and your hard drive into your mac

although the last i checked most external hard drives were usb 2.0

hope that helps

good luck :)

Ben -

First off, you're not stupid!! Asking questions is smart!!

Secondly, just curious...why are you going the Mac route? Have you considered a Windows setup?

G'day Ben,

I've got a slightly older MacBook Pro (1.83Ghz Core Duo, 2GB ram) and from my experiements with Final Cut Express it seems more than capable of standing up to things speed wise. The newer Core 2 Duo ones should work even better.

With regard to firewire, the Core 2 Duo versions have added a firewire 800 port, so they now have one of each (400/800).

See http://www.apple.com/au/macbookpro/ for more details.

In my experience, I've found that the 15.4" monitor is a nice size and I haven't needed an extra, but that's all a personal preference thing.