100B and Firewire Question

C

Christopher Feder

Member
Can the firewire connection on the 100B work for using to download from the MiniDV tape to an external hard drive if the hard drive has a firewire connection? Can I just purchase a Terabyte external hard drive with a firewire connection and use that to bakc up my tapes? Do they make hard drives for this prupose that are within a budget of a person and not a TV station? Any suggestions, ideas etc???

Chris
 
even if you could hook up the hard drive to the camera, how are you going to setup the protocol for the hard drive to receive and record the signal? that's where a computer comes into play. I think there are recorders specifically for it, but they may be expensive.
 
No. The firewire on the DVX100 is for streaming video only.

You have to have a computer between the camera and the drive.
 
So then I can firewire from the DVX through the Computer to the external hard drive as long as both have the fire wire connections? Or do I have to save it first on my computer and then transfew it to a hard drive?

Chris

(PS) How much faster is firewire then usb 2.0?
 
You can go through your computer strait to that external drive, but you have to have a NLE such as Final Cut Pro or Premiere running to actually capture the footage and convert it to something that can be stored on the hard drive.

You can also you a program such as Windows Media Encoder to do this.

That external drive better be pretty quick though. I always ran into that problem when trying to use external drives. Get the fastest RPM drive you can afford and firewire 800 if that is an option for you.

You can always capture to the computers main hard drive and then move it over to the external drive when you are done.
 
It's better to have the camera and the drive not share a firewire bus. Put the camera on firewire and the drive on USB (or eSATA). Or, get a firewire PCMCIA or firewire ExpressCard expansion card, and put the drive on that firewire bus. But don't share the drive on the same bus as the camera, that's just asking for dropped frames.
 
Ok, What about this. Is the an easier way to do this? Can I back up my MiniDV onto DVD's instead? Do they make an affordable device for whatI need to do?

Chris
 
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Just so I've got this straight:
Do you want to film and record directly to a hard disk as you film the subject? Or... do you want to back up your DV tapes after you have finished recording?

For the former - you'll need to have a PC/notebook inbetween your camera and a HDD (as everyone has said already) You'll need to run software that you use to capture your footage to edit (most NLE's will do this) or you can use something like Adobe OnLocation

If you want to simply back your tapes (for easy file access) up after you have shot them then Dual Layer DVD's will be able to hold most of a tape's worth of footage - you'll need to capture it all to your PC, weed out anything that is totally unusable and burn the remaining files to disc (or discs)
 
Don't use the DVX instead of a deck. Get a real deck or use a cheap minidv sd consumer camera with a IEEE 1394. That's what I use and I would rather destroy that than my DVX.
 
Well, I want to back up ALL of my tapes. Since I am filming a doc in Afghanistan I want to back it all up in case something happenes to the tapes in transit back home. I was considering backing it up to DVD but was not sure if; 1. There was a simple way to just record onto a DVD recorded from the camera or a MiniDV to DVD system or 2. If I could back it up on DVD would I be able to use the DVD's for professional editing in case something did happen to the tapes?

Will editing studios uses DVD in lieu of tapes? Am I making this complicated?!? Whats the best, simple and effective way?

Chris
 
Barry_Green said:
It's better to have the camera and the drive not share a firewire bus. Put the camera on firewire and the drive on USB (or eSATA). Or, get a firewire PCMCIA or firewire ExpressCard expansion card, and put the drive on that firewire bus. But don't share the drive on the same bus as the camera, that's just asking for dropped frames.
Click to expand...

I have a DVX100B and want to get a new Macbook Pro to run FCP 7 and capture directly from the camera. My intention would be to have a 500 gig 7200 rpm drive in the macbook pro to capture location "dailies" with it and then off load those to my Mac Pro octo for editing in FCP 7. I'm assuming I can load only my FCP 7 on the Studio 3 install disc to the Macbook Pro hard drive.

Reading other threads from my search it seems that many people recommend an external drive over the internal Macbook Pro drive, but I wonder if this was before 500 gig 7200 rpm drives available now? I can see the merit of using an external drive, however it's one more piece of gear to lug around and if your just capturing location "dailies" and transfering them each night to the Mac Pro 1TB scratch drive why not use the internal drive? I always thought external drives were a little slower than internal drives because the data path is longer, etc.

Please let me know if my thinking about using the MBP internal drive is OK in this work flow.

Ken
 
The biggest problem with using the internal drive is that the os is using the same drive. Any time the OS and programs need something they are interrupting the work flow and likely to cause dropped frames. I am speaking form a pc background, but there is no reason I can think of that the hardware would preform differently with mac OS. Another option not mentioned yet is using a firestore. You can record in read time tot he firestore. You can play back the taped into the firestore. It will also act as an external hard drive when you eventually want the footage. They can be found used on ebay for around 300 bucks. In sd they can hold a few hours of footage.
 
RVE,

Thanks for the response!

I do understand that the OS is working at the same time as any drive operation. (I/O). What I don't know is whether or not the Intel Core i7 (which I understand is dual core AND hyper-threading with another 2 virtual cores (I think) in the MBP-17 I'm considering will basically make the OS functions other than capture "transparent" or not. I haven't got that deep into the details to understand that yet.

I have been looking at the Fire Store FS-H200 and recognize that it will completely off load all disc activity from the Macbook Pro, but I'll still have to log the clips & set I/O clip markers when I import them to FCP 7 and to my way of thinking, the best time to do that is while it is still fresh in your mind.

My hangup is if I'm going to spend another $2K for the new Macbook Pro, I want it to provide all of the answers to the maiden's prayer and just not a part of it, which include monitoring & focus pulling, plus the logging features so I only do them once and do them while I'm fresh about them.

Ken
 
the i7 cpu has 4 cores and pretends to have 8 with hyper threading. The os can reside on a different core then your editing, but it is still getting data off the same drive. The os is still interrupting the digitization and could cause dropped frames. A firestore would work great. if you don't want a firestore, get a USB or ESATA external drive so it is not sharing the firewire port that you are digitizing from.
 
Just got your message & wanted to say I'll be going with an esata drive off the bus-link port (I forgot the real name- sorry). Just received the Mac Book Pro i7 with 8 gig & 7200 rpm, I bought and it's a very cool machine! Coupled with my Mac Pro Octo, I'll be all set for good & quick shot setup, Capture & logging plus pulling focus on location (& eliminating tape transfer & capture), & easy transfer to the MAC Pro for the heavy lifting editing. Interesting enough I spent as much for the MAc book Pro as I did the Mac Pro Octo. go figure. Yes I still intend to run tape while I shoot, but it will now be relegated to a back up media only. (Loading FCP studio As I type this).

Ken
 
sounds good...good luck getting your new work flow to run smoothly. Just an FYI that mac book pro (really any laptops with i7's) runs a little hot. For best stability i recommend picking up one of those laptop cooling pads for 30 bucks. Also makign the preview monitor smaller will not make the GFX heat up so much. I was digitizing with my laptop once and placed it on a carpet floor int he threader. Apparently that just enough to block the airflow.
 
I am currently selling a Firestore FS-4 hard drive if you are interested. This one allows you to record directly from the camera to the drive. You can import to it, or record to it. Can store up to 366 minutes at a time with its 80 GB drive.
 
RVE,

Thanks for the reply!

Thanks for the tip on the cooling pad, I'll definitely look into it.

I have also decided to run a 2 drive bus powered eSata Raid off the Express card port to reduce internal drive activity which should also help it run cooler.

I looked at the the Apple blurb on the i7 processor again and came away with the impression that it does have only 2 physical cores but will run 4 hyper threads at one time. I may be reading it wrong or interpreting it wrong but no matter, it is what it is.

Ken
 
which I7 is under the hood? I just checked intell's page and your probably right. not all the i7's are 4 core, only some of them. I think Mac may be offering the 2 core i7's. Still they are pretty powerful for a laptop and since it can handle 4 threads it will still multitask very nicely. Those external raids are nice and will give you some pretty fast data access. you should be all ready to go now.
 
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