[fabs]

I've just inherited a G4 quicksilver 800mhz double processor. I want to install final cut pro on it and edit my short film, shot in 16mm. I've used fcp when I was in school, and I have a pc for my other purposes, so I don't know much about apple lingos or hardware issues and stuff. I'm trying to get myself up to speed with mac knowledge, but I'ld like to get some feed back from people who's already using the system in a similar situation, to try understand what upgrades and additional hardware I would need to work this system with film.
Anyone out there who could help?

[Brad]

First of all, welcome to AppleNova. Feel free to ask a million questions, as I'm sure you have them. The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked!

Now, I'll cut the small talk and get down to business.

First of all, you want to be sure you have the latest system installed on that computer. Go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac. If it says anything less than Mac OS X 10.3, you should seriously consider upgrading. In fact, Final Cut Pro HD requires 10.3.2 or higher. It's $129 retail from Apple, but other retailers probably have it a little cheaper.

Secondly, if you're going to be editing video, you want two things: lots of RAM and a big, fast hard drive! Get as much of both as you can afford. 512 MB of RAM would be a bare minimum.

In that same "About This Mac" window it should tell you how much memory is installed. I believe your model has three slots, each of which can take a 512MB PC133 module, giving you a maximum of 1.5 GB of RAM. The best place, in my opinion, to get RAM is Crucial.

Your Mac has a single internal ATA interface; so, you can put two drives inside on that. Any ATA drive will work up to 127GB. I can't remember if that model support >130 GB drives; someone else will have to answer that. Your Mac also has two FireWire 400 ports to which you can connect an array of external drives. You can also buy a SCSI card or SATA card to add more internal and/or external drives.

How much hard drive space do you need? Well, if you're serious about video editing, you can never have enough. DV video uses about 3.6 MB per second of footage. HD is much more. You can find a more complete table of formats and file sizes on Apple's FCP page. Do the math for the length of your video, accounting for render files and additional tracks, and you'll see that it can add up quickly!

Hope this helps!

[fabs]

thanks, it does help, a lot
fabs

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Brad Your Mac has a single internal ATA interface; so, you can put two drives inside on that. Any ATA drive will work up to 127GB. I can't remember if that model support >130 GB drives; someone else will have to answer that.

It depends on which motherboard revision he's got. My motherboard doesn't support it, but I've heard that later revisions will work if the drive's already formatted.