Justus Beckmann: Casting director and editor in Hamburg, Germany.

first, we all have macs so, apparently, we were all using mac formatted hard drives. that clears up the 4GB question. second, I do not know how they connected their cameras to the laptops, but they did and got great footage - definitely not 480. next, I never said anything about DSLRs. I don't use one so, why does that matter to me? my cam has firewire and hooks directly to a computer via firewire, which allows me to use the OnLocation or Firestore solutions just fine. I will probably switch to thunderbolt and/or USB3 eventually. firewire was awesome, but thunderbolt is killer. it has it's problems, as do all the different connection possibilities. but, it much faster than USB3 or firewire. until then, the system I'm using now, with the discontinued OnLocation software, or the first generation firestore system (the FS-100), and FCP 7, is working just fine. I wondered what others were doing. I'm amazed more people aren't going this route. if you're doing a lot of hand-held, it can be cumbersome, and cards may be the best way to go. but, if you're on sticks, this gives you a nice monitor, and allows you to shoot for a long, long time, without having to change cards, mark cards, document what takes are on the cards, and then load the cards before importing to your NLE. you just shoot, import to the NLE and start editing. a much simpler process. I'd like someone to tell me about the systems that are out there and their experiences with them. then, if they want to add some info on DSLRs, that's ok. but, that is not my main concern.

Do not use a spinning hard drive. You'd want to look into something like a Hyperdeck Shuttle with SSDs. Movement on spinning hard-drive platters is a recipe for disaster. The SSDs may be more expensive (now) but they are far far far more robust.

I agree, solid state is the way to go.