What Piece of Hardware Affects What, Exactly?

Hi,
I haven't been able to find out a definitive, reliable answer for this stuff anywhere. It seems like there's plenty of pseudo-science and marketing hype telling me I need to just spend a lot of money.
SO: When editing in Final Cut Pro, what do the various pieces of hardware directly affect?
1.) RAM
2.) CPU / Cores
3.) Hard Drive Transfer Rate
4.) Video Cards
For instance, if I increase or decrease the amount of RAM, what will happen while editing?
How about a faster or slower CPU? More or less cores? Do extra cores even get used by Final Cut Pro?
If I use USB 2.0 vs. Firewire 800 or eSATA, what will I notice?
What will a more expensive video card actually do? Anything?
Do each of these four components affect my workflow in different ways, or all in the same way? Will one cause Chugging, while another will cause Dropped Frames?
Which one is most related to Effects, like Color Correction or Masks? Motion keyframes?
Which one is most related to the number of videos I can play on the screen / Canvas at once?
Which one determines how fast the files will Export when I'm done with them?
The specifics of my situation are this: I am editing 3 layers / tracks of AVCHD footage (transcoded as AIC). It's from 3 cameras, each one showing a different angle of the same subject. I'm masking two of the angles (and using them as Picture-In-Picture), and adding a few motion keyframes here and there of the third one. I use the basic "Color Corrector" filter on each. The occasional layer of text for a title.
Currently on a Mac Mini 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo / 2 GB RAM / 10.6.5 using USB 2.0 drives (I already plan to upgrade to FW 800). With this setup, the timeline goes Orange and the playback chokes. Bad.
What component, more than anything else, is causing this? The drive?
Which Mac model would be the best fit for this specific workload? New iMac? New iMac Quad-Core? Mac Pro?
Is it possible to pull-off this workflow with a RAM or Drive upgrade on my Mac Mini?
Would love to hear some facts. Thanks!
Message was edited by: CarlKingCreative

The problem Carl, is whether you want to buy a machine that's absolutely no more than you might possibly need for just running the current incarnation of the Final Cut Pro NLE application alone, or whether you'd want to buy a machine that would be capable of running other apps (including but not limited to the other apps in the Final Cut Studio suite) to their best advantage too ...
1) RAM is the computers working memory. More RAM is better as it means more working memory, but that is with the caveat that not all apps can necessarily access all the available RAM ... FCP in its current incarnation is one of those apps that can't. But if you have multiple applications open (perhaps Photoshop open in the background etc) then obviously its beneficial to have more RAM available than just the maximum needed for any single app. Note that your computer will also use your hard disc as virtual RAM when you don't have enough physical RAM ... this means it has to read data from RAM and write it to the hard disc and visa versa (called a "page out") and this kind of operation obviouly slows down your system.
2) CPU is the brain, the bigger the better, and multiple cores means multiple brains (two heads are better than one). But multiple brains is no good if the app you are running is not aware that there are multiple brains available right? ... And again, FCP in its current incarnation is one of those apps that is not aware, but again, FCP is not necessarily the only app in your arsenal nor the only app you might be using simultaneously. Compressor is also an app in the Final Cut Studio suite of apps, one that goes hand in hand with FCP, and it will gladly use your multiple cores.
3) Hard Drive Transfer Rate is crucial ... the base nature of dealing with digital video manipulation is the constant read and write access to of massive amounts of data. Hard drives are the virtual parking lots for your media, and the sustained transfer rate is the speed limit on the road(s) leading to that parking lot. Note that the speed can decrease when the drives are too full ... as a general rule, never fill your drives more than 80%.
4) Video Cards ... Don't know how to answer definitively as it depends on what you mean:
If your mean the Graphics card then this can increasingly be seen as secondary brain ... a secondary brain that's awesomely powerful for a subset of particular tasks, but useless for others ... a secondary brain that will only kick in if the host application knows the right way to talk to that brain ... FCP does know how to talk to this brain but currently only for specific operations, those being Effects that are coded using the FxPlug architecture, older built-in plugins, like the 3-Way Color Corrector do not use FxPlug.
If you mean third party Video I/O card, then these do not affect your operation within FCP or other apps other than a means to provide an interface to video equipment for input and output/monitoring purposes.
Currently on a Mac Mini 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo / 2 GB RAM / 10.6.5 using USB 2.0 drives (I already plan to upgrade to FW 800). With this setup, the timeline goes Orange and the playback chokes. Bad.
+What component, more than anything else, is causing this? The drive?+ Yes. Get rid of that USB2.0 drive and use a *CalDigit AV Drive* (2TB) instead ... thats going to make a huge difference. Then upgrade your RAM to 6GB (or 8GB for extra breathing room). Beyond that there's not a lot you can do with that system. If you're considering a more aggressive upgrade then get a Mac Pro.

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Hi
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Field Symbols
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check the below links u will get the answers for your questions
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/fc/eb3860358411d1829f0000e829fbfe/content.htm
http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/teaching/sap_r3/ABAP4/field_sy.htm
http://searchsap.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid21_gci920484,00.html
Syntax Diagram
FIELD-SYMBOLS
Basic form
FIELD-SYMBOLS <fs>.
Extras:
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2. ... TYPE REF TO cif
3. ... TYPE REF TO DATA
4. ... TYPE LINE OF type
5. ... LIKE s
6. ... LIKE LINE OF s
7. ... TYPE tabkind
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Effect
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DATA SFLIGHT_WA TYPE SFLIGHT.
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Addition 1
... TYPE type
Addition 2
... TYPE REF TO cif
Addition 3
... TYPE REF TO DATA
Addition 4
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Addition 5
... LIKE s
Addition 6
... LIKE LINE OF s
Addition 7
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Solved!
Go to Solution.

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I've been learning tomcat and jsp's. I have a few
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you add to each and every app you have? What exactly
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is that different then the tomcat apps I've been
running there? I just don't get it. What is thebasic
file structure of a j2ee app? I know all the little
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Message was edited by: RickyGray

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