Applications :: Best Way To Capture Video Using Final Cut Express On IMac?

I want to capture about 30 hours of DV tapes from my camcorder using Final Cut Express on my new iMac and was hoping to find the optimum configuration for doing so.

I'm using the Firewire port to connect to the camcorder. So then the question is: which hard disk to use for the capture scratch? Since the iMac has only one Firewire port, and that's used for the camcorder, the only choices are the internal Serial ATA 7200 rpm drive and an external drive connected via USB 2.0.

I wanted to avoid using the internal drive because it's the system drive and especially to avoid the significant internal heat build-up, but when I connect a 7200 rpm Seagate FreeAgent disk via USB, I'm consistently getting dropped frames.

So I've resorted to using the internal drive for now, and when I'm done, I may copy/move them off to the external drive, but I still would prefer to capture directly to the external drive (without the dropped frames though).