I have Media Composer and am running it on a Mac Book Pro lap top.  Does anyone have any ideas regarding the best drives / set up etc?  USB? firewire 800? connections?  Partioning? Striping etc?  I am ideally looking to work at 2:1 res.  Will this be possible?

Couple of side issues also...

Does anyone know if I can get a video out signal to a seperate flat screen monitor?  What cables etc are needed for this? and also is there any easy way of getting a vo mic to work with this system?  I have garageband software on the lap top.  Have and idea that could record straight files to it then import them.  Is this an option?

Any ideas would be hugely appreciated.

Many thanks

 If you want to do anything better than DV25, you don't want to use any USB or FireWire.  I would go with SATA-II  RAID 0 (if you're only using it for media storage)

For client monitoring, there are many options and variables.  Do you have a Mojo?

Hey Andy,

I have a MacBook Pro running a 1tb G-Drive via a SIIG firewire 800 expresscard.  Works great!  You should be able to run video out of the DVI output on your Macbook Pro.  I have a 23 inch cinema display (plugs into my DVI, no additional cables needed) as my primary monitor and my Macbook monitor works as my bins display. 

 The short answer would be an external case holding 4 to 8 drives in a raid 5 config connected to your mac book through the pci-e external slot it has. For the long answer read my notes and explanations on harddrives  in this thread

http://community.avid.com/forums/p/62084/350237.aspx#350237

Sounds fab, does it work at higher res storage (2:1)?  If so... How do I go about getting it / setting it up?  Do I have to install a card in the lap top? (expresscard?) What connections and cables does it envolve?   Do I have to partion the drive in some way etc?  Sorry if some of these questions seem bit basic.   

If you've never done anything like that I'd hire someone to set it up for you. Raid setup can be frustrating. If you are pretty handy with storage, I apologize but if not, best not make your first one one you're putting valuable stuff on.

One question, rinz, is there an external eSATA box that has the raid controller in it? All the ones I know have the controller to do raid 5 in the card. If there's a raid 5 Expresscard, let me know. I would love to be able to use that on mobile rigs.

If there's no raid5, you can use a raid0 (but only for media that has a tape backup - google it to find out why) and that should be fast enough for 2:1 and maybe a stream or two of 1:1 SD. But be careful, drive speed is all about your compuer too, not just the raid/drives.

hidefcowboy:

One question, rinz, is there an external eSATA box that has the raid controller in it?

http://www.usb-ware.com/esata-hardware-raid-enclosure.htm

I found this one, but didnt have the time to look at it in detail. At second glance its no good... I'll look some more. The problem is that whatever speed the raidcontroller or the disks can provide, it will be hampered by the pci-e x1 external connection of the notebook, only allowing 250 MB/s, and that is theoretical speed. But it should be enough for a couple of layers of 2:1 SD. For more info on speeds and disks click the aforementioned link to the answer i wrote to another thread. It deals with those issues in more detail.

Hi Editorchops,

one question, siig seems to have a couple of fw 800 expresscards available, do you know the model # or the specs?   I just got burned with another card from a different maker and I just want to make sure I get this one right. 

Thanks in advance

Max

pa, also if someone else has a card they are using and it plays well with Mojo, please let me know!  Thanks

m

FWIW, in response to using firewire, I did a job on site wth my macpro 2.6 laptop running 2.8 (before 3.0 was released) pushing DVCpro HD 1080i, 59.94 off a OWC merc elite RAID-0 fw 800 drive off the native bus (no express card).  Didn't even blink once in 25 days of editing.  It seemed to be much more stable than the esata card by apiotek and the esata RAID-0 drive by sans digital I was using which was so unreliable I was forced to switch to fw800.  I have since purchased a sonnet express esata II and haven't been all that impressed.