A Laptop for Dumping

[Mike Yonts]

Hello Everybody,

I'm trying to figure out what laptop to get for backing up my Red footage during the shoot. (I'm a Mac/FCP guy.) My ideal setup would have two FireWire ports, one for the RedDrive and one for an external disk. But, as most people know, none of the currently shipping MacBooks or MacBook Pros have two firewire ports, and the new aluminum MacBooks don't have any.

I tried plugging a RedDrive into my ancient G3 PowerBook, which has two FireWire 400 drives, but it didn't recognize the RedDrive and offered to reformat it! (I'm curious to know if newer system software would change this-–this laptop is running Panther.)

I don't think I'll have a need to edit or color correct on a laptop, since I have an 8-core for that. Mostly I need this laptop to dump shots to backup drives quickly and reliably, and playback the proxies. The cheaper white MacBook, the only one that still has a FireWire port, looks as if it would do the job, but it's hard to resist the pull of the Pros!

I'd appreciate an opinion anyone has on this topic.

Thanks for your help--I've spent a lot of time reading this forum and have learned a great deal from it.

Mike Yonts
RedOne #5398

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you are looking to offload the drives quickly, you will definitely want a system with Firewire 800. Firewire 400 and USB 2 are a bit slower than the top read speed of the drive, which seems to be about 74MB/s. You will need an Intel Mac to playback proxies, so that old G3 is definitely out for that. Not sure why it didn't recognize the RED Drive, possibly because of the large capacity, so you may need a system update for that to work. IMO, I wouldn't spend a dime to upgrade anything on a G3.

The entire industry is puzzled over Apple's choice to eliminate firewire ports on the new Macbook. It makes very little sense for them to do this. Combine that with the lack of any sort of expansion and, IMO, the new Macbook is completely worthless for anyone doing more than simple photo work, web browsing, office use... The cheaper white Macbook is a nice little system, but has its limitations. Still only FW400, no expresscard...


Your best bet is a Macbook Pro. You can add a second Firewire 800 bus via the expresscard slot. You can also add an eSATA adapter too and I highly recommend that. It would be a wonderful thing if someone would start offering a single Expresscard adapter that supplied both FW800 and eSATA ports.

 

[Mike Yonts]

Great, thank you--I hadn't even considered the expresscard angle, so that about clinches it.

 

[Chris Parker]

yep. i like the sonnet e-sata express cards myself, but there are plenty of choices out there.......

 

[Dave Cox]

after a lot of research, it seems that you can put a reliable loading/playback station inside a pelican 1500 case. You'll need:

a macbook pro (17" high res screen preferred if you'll be checking focus etc)
a two-port esata express card
two esata drives (backups!)
a lexar professional fw800 card reader
UPS if you'll be working from unreliable power (may not fit in the pelican)

the main advantage of the macbook other than allowing red alert (which is nice to have but I find I don't use it often) is that you get firewire 800 on the machine, which you just can't find on a pc laptop. If you don't mind slightly slower loading speeds you could get a quad core pc and some esata disks and enjoy smoother playback.

The sonnet pro cards are expensive. The standard 35-50$ cards should do the trick, but watch out for incompatibilities in sil3132 based cards in os x..

 

[J. Eric Camp]

The new MacBook pro has 1 Fw800 port. Combine that with a express card for either 3 Fw800 ports or 1 800 and 2 eSATA ports and you could be fine. Personally, I have the MBP from 1 generation ago with a FW800 and 1 FW400 plus the express port expansion and I am not trading up anytime soon.

Don't even think of touching those USB ports unless you are a very patient person.

You could buy one of those for cheaper too.

 

[Dave Cox]

yeah you can get them for about 1,000 off at the refurb section, which is actually my plan as I build a loading station. They are very similar except in battery life and a few additional smaller features, and I hear the matte screens on the old 17 are nicer, though I haven't experienced one first hand myself.

 

[Mike Yonts]

Great, thanks for the help, everyone.