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Is a G5 OK for FCP editing?

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Power Mac G5 Dual, Powermac G5 Quad, Mac Book, Powerbook, eMac, and a PC.
I need advice from experienced FCP users regarding hardware. My computer (PowerPC G5, 2 GHz, 512 KB L2 cache) lacks grunt for capturing HDV. It drops frames.
I am considering spending a small fortune and buying the latest Mac... about AU$5,000.
But then I thought... hey, maybe I should just up the ram on my existing Mac. It only has 2.5 GB ram at the moment, and it can take 8 GB.
My question is... will this much Ram make a notice-able difference? Will it be able to handle HDV capture without dropping frames?
 
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ALWAYS state your software version when asking a question. I'm going to assume FCP Suite 6 for my response.

How do you know you have dropped frames? Have you analyzed the clips in FCP? This is a very old post at the LAFCPUG site and may not apply, but search for the word 'dropped' and review that paragraph.

I believe HDV is now captured and edited natively in FCP so you should have the bandwidth to grab it. As I recall my brother who also has a G5 tower hasn't reported any serious issues with his HDV camera, but he has only used iMovie HD.

I'd look at other bottlenecks before blowing 5Gs. For instance; are you connecting the camera directly to the Mac or through a firewire chain of devices that includes the capture drive, are you capturing the content to your primary drive or a secondary drive, have you got some other CPU intensive application running or some high network activity, have you got other applications open that are using a lot of RAM?

P.S.
This link might be of interest to you.
 
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Not more than 6 months ago i was working at another production company and i was using their G5, pretty much same specs as you, and i was editing DVCPRO-HD on FCS 6 with no concerning problems. I remember i also edited some HDV projects, and i also don't recall having important issues with it. Of course, in both cases, editing was slower in that G5 than it was on any Intel Mac, but i was able to edit just fine.
Now, i don't know what kind of work you'll be doing, but if you just want to edit HDV on FCP 6, and are concerned about budget, i would recommend you get a new iMac rather than spending 5k on a Mac Pro. Of course, if you'll later be using Motion, or After Effects, or move up on media format, then i would say you should go for the Mac Pro.
 

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