Apple Final Cut Express 4 - Manual (Page 161)

Chapter 12 Determining Your Hard Disk Storage Options 161
III
Serial ATA Disks
Serial ATA (SATA) disks are newer than parallel ATA disk drives. The disk drive
mechanisms may be similar, but the interface is significantly different. The serial ATA
interface has the following characteristics:
 Serial data transfer (one bit at a time)
 150 MB/sec. theoretical data throughput limit
 7-pin data connection, with cable limit of 1 meter
 Operates with 250 mV
 Only one disk drive allowed per serial ATA controller chip on a computer
motherboard, so disk drives do not have to share data bandwidth
FireWire Disk Drives
While not recommended for all systems, FireWire disk drives can be effectively used to
capture and edit projects using low data rate video clips, such as those captured using
the DV codec. However, most FireWire disk drives lack the performance of internal Ultra
ATA disk drives, or of internal or external SCSI disk drives. For example, a FireWire disk
drive may not be able to support real-time playback with as many simultaneous audio
and video tracks as an internal Ultra ATA disk drive can. This can also affect the number
of simultaneous real-time effects that can be played back.
Important Information About FireWire Drives
 FireWire disk drives are not recommended for capturing high data rate material such
as uncompressed standard definition or high definition video.
 Certain DV camcorders cannot be connected to a computer while a FireWire disk
drive is connected simultaneously. In many cases, you can improve performance by
installing a separate FireWire PCI card to connect your FireWire drive.
 You may be able to improve performance by reducing the real-time video playback
data rate and the number of real-time audio tracks in the General tab of the User
Preferences window.
 You should never disconnect a FireWire disk drive prior to unmounting it from
the desktop.
SCSI Disk Drives
SCSI disk drives are among the fastest drives available. SCSI (Small Computer Systems
Interface) technology has been implemented in various ways over the years, with each
successive generation achieving better performance. Currently, the two fastest SCSI
standards for video capture and playback are:
 Ultra2 LVD (Low Voltage Differential) SCSI: Ultra2 LVD SCSI disk drives offer fast enough
performance to capture and output video at high data rates when a single disk is
formatted as a single volume (as opposed to formatting several disks together as a
disk array).
 Ultra320 and Ultra160 SCSI: These are faster than Ultra2 LVD SCSI disks.