On Mon, 4 Sep 2000 02:19:56 -0700, "Michael Penney" wrote:

>Actually, if you are using ATA/EIDE drives with DV/D1 and premiere, it is
>about drive space (and RAM, video card, and processor speed). ATA drives
>slow down as they fill up, and Premiere (on my machine with Maxtor 7500 rpm
>drives on a ATA 66 card) starts to have trouble when they get about 1/2
>full, w/as my SCSI machine (IBM LVDs on a Adaptec 2940) can go to a full
>drive with very little speed or stability loss.

I have not experienced this. I have been using various-size
(16-45gigs) 5400rpm IBM drives, and a 60-gig 7200rpm Maxtor
(all ATA/IEDE) with no problems, even when the drives are
very nearly full (100-megs of space or so left). I am careful
not to fragment the drives by either never removing
files added, or by removing them in reverse order of
addition (only from the last...). This is with Mini-DV with
Spark and Raptor FireWire cards, though. (I have even
successfully used the older 8-gig EIDE IBM program drive
for programs, preview files, and source files that nearly
filled the drive - this does not require SCSI, RAID, etc.
to work well...)

>Also adding lots of RAM and
>a faster processor will lead to much less frustration.

Simply saving the project will prevent most P-5.1 crashes.
If I save every 1-4 changes, it is weeks between crashes
(and if I get carried away with operations and forget, it
WILL crash JUST as I remember I should save...! ;-).

>That being said,
>there are other apps. that are more stable than Premiere on inexpensive
>equipment, such as Final Cut Pro, EditDV, etc.

Premiere offers a lot of flexibility, and coupled with
Raptor, a medium-speed CPU, 128-megs of RAM, and good
set-up and technique, it is stable, fast, and easy to
use (which is not to say that I do not often curse
Adobe software writers...! ;-).