Firewire 800?

renegadewill

renegadewill

Well-known member
Could I edit footage on an external harddrive if I went with firewire 800? I know it won't be as fast as a raid, but will it run faster than cutting tons of footage on the launch drive?

thanks
Will
 
Footage in what format? In general, yes Firewire 800 is fine for DV, HDV, DVCPROHD.

-Noah
 
Considering I edit 1920x1080 Pro Res HQ off fw 800 drives, you shouldn't have any problem whatsoever.
 
Really. That's really cool. I'm sold. I was worried because I remember back when I used to capture 60i sd through usb 2.0 I would only be able to capture 2.5 minutes before the stream caught up with itself and caused an error stopping the capture. what terabyte firewire 800 external harddrives would you guys recommend?
 
People will say otherwise, and I've heard many horror stories about them, but I have to say that from my 3 to 4 years experience with tons of these drives, I would have to recommend Lacie D2 drives. The only problem I had with a Lacie D2 drive was with a faulty AC adapter.
 
renegadewill said:
Really. That's really cool. I'm sold. I was worried because I remember back when I used to capture 60i sd through usb 2.0 I would only be able to capture 2.5 minutes before the stream caught up with itself and caused an error stopping the capture. what terabyte firewire 800 external harddrives would you guys recommend?
Click to expand...

USB is different from firewire because the data has to go through the processor first, which can slow down a transfer. I'd get as many terabytes as you can afford. No matter how many I buy, I always seem to need more. Also, Esata is technically better than Firewire 800, but in my tests, unless you are using a raid array, the speed differences between the two are negligible.
 
Batutta said:
USB is different from firewire because the data has to go through the processor first, which can slow down a transfer. I'd get as many terabytes as you can afford. No matter how many I buy, I always seem to need more. Also, Esata is technically better than Firewire 800, but in my tests, unless you are using a raid array, the speed differences between the two are negligible.
Click to expand...
USB is also designed to work by sending bursts of data packets as opposed to sending a continuing stream of data like FW. While bursts can be fine for moving around data it doesn't work so well when you need move a continuos, uninterrupted stream of video.


-A
 
ihatedv said:
What about editing on a FW400 drive?
Click to expand...

For SD material (DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO25 and 50), no problem. Considering that FW400 was the life-blood of DV-based editing for years...

And HDV should work as well. That came out before FW800, and HDV cameras have FW400 connections. If you're going to go to a higher codec than that (like DVCPRO HD), you'll need a faster connection.
 
C2V said:
For SD material (DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO25 and 50), no problem. Considering that FW400 was the life-blood of DV-based editing for years...

And HDV should work as well. That came out before FW800, and HDV cameras have FW400 connections. If you're going to go to a higher codec than that (like DVCPRO HD), you'll need a faster connection.
Click to expand...

While a fatter pipe will get your more streams of DVCPro HD in realtime FW400 will be fine unless you need to pull multiple streams a lot. For editing Cold Mountain Walter Murch and his team chose DVCpro HD to use as the offline codec because it was the highest quality codec that could be used w/G4 laptops.


-A
 
Nice reference to Murch & crew, adkimery. They're awesome.

Regarding FW800 and RAID, I usually get great HD playback... even with the RAID set up to be redundant instead of "fast".

-andrew
 
AwakenedFilms said:
I didn't know shi* was quick...


J
Click to expand...

Depends what you ate for dinner.


I have a chain of a few WD MyBooks all going through FireWire 800. Biggest problem is turning them all on in the right order to make sure my Mac sees them all.

I've been wanting to get a FireWire 800 hub, heard some people talking about them, but haven't really seen many for sale.
 
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