need advice on hard drive
- Thread starter powerdog
- Start date
J_Barnes
Veteran
Re: need advice on hard drive
[quote author=powerdog link=board=FCP;num=1092477905;start=0#0 date=08/14/04 at 03:05:04]I've seen a Lacie 250GB mentioned by a few people. I know "bigger is better," but typically, how many GB should I allow to capture and edit footage in FCP 4.5 for a 20-min video, with sound and titles? Software's on my internal drive.[/quote]
Well that depends on your shooting ratio. If you're shooting three to one, then you probably have closer to 60 minutes of footage for a 20 minute video. If you're shooting extensive interviews for a documentary video, you might be at an 8 to 1 ratio of source footage vs. edited footage.
How much space is roughly determined by how many tapes you have.
That being said, I'd endeavor to say that a 250 gig drive should hold all the footage, audio, render files, and titles you need to create a 20 minute video.
[quote author=powerdog link=board=FCP;num=1092477905;start=0#0 date=08/14/04 at 03:05:04]I've seen a Lacie 250GB mentioned by a few people. I know "bigger is better," but typically, how many GB should I allow to capture and edit footage in FCP 4.5 for a 20-min video, with sound and titles? Software's on my internal drive.[/quote]
Well that depends on your shooting ratio. If you're shooting three to one, then you probably have closer to 60 minutes of footage for a 20 minute video. If you're shooting extensive interviews for a documentary video, you might be at an 8 to 1 ratio of source footage vs. edited footage.
How much space is roughly determined by how many tapes you have.
That being said, I'd endeavor to say that a 250 gig drive should hold all the footage, audio, render files, and titles you need to create a 20 minute video.
Re: need advice on hard drive
In my experience, a very rough rule-of-thumb for measuring DV file sizes is approximately 250 MB per minute of footage. By this estimate, twenty minutes is only 5 GB of storage space.
Keep in mind, however, that you may have alternate takes, B-roll, and additional files and footage that will take up many times that much space. And don't forget about render files and scratch space! At any rate, a 250 GB drive should be plenty; you can't really ever have "too much" space.
You mention a LaCie drive -- be aware that capturing from a FireWire device to a FireWire drive on the same bus is likely to cause dropouts and capture problems. I only say this from my own experience (with a 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4 only). Otherwise, though, I find that my LaCie drive is excellent in form and function.
In my experience, a very rough rule-of-thumb for measuring DV file sizes is approximately 250 MB per minute of footage. By this estimate, twenty minutes is only 5 GB of storage space.
Keep in mind, however, that you may have alternate takes, B-roll, and additional files and footage that will take up many times that much space. And don't forget about render files and scratch space! At any rate, a 250 GB drive should be plenty; you can't really ever have "too much" space.
You mention a LaCie drive -- be aware that capturing from a FireWire device to a FireWire drive on the same bus is likely to cause dropouts and capture problems. I only say this from my own experience (with a 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4 only). Otherwise, though, I find that my LaCie drive is excellent in form and function.
Re: need advice on hard drive
Just read that all FW ports in a G5 are on the same bus. :-[
And that some people have even had problems capturing to a FW 800 with a PCI card. AND that others have used internal SATA drives instead, but the drives have disappeared from their desktops!!
Nothing's guaranteed, I know, but is there anything that most likely to work for capture and not cause dropouts?
Just read that all FW ports in a G5 are on the same bus. :-[
And that some people have even had problems capturing to a FW 800 with a PCI card. AND that others have used internal SATA drives instead, but the drives have disappeared from their desktops!!
Nothing's guaranteed, I know, but is there anything that most likely to work for capture and not cause dropouts?
Re: need advice on hard drive
I haven't had any problems capturing to my internal drive, personally, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. It's just a matter of bus saturation during capture -- apparently, one FireWire bus (even FW800) isn't enough to reliably sustain DV in and write it back to a disk at the same time.
So ... you should be fine if you just capture to your primary drive. It's not as cool as a direct-to-external-disk capture, but it seems to be pretty foolproof. Heaven forbid your boot volume from disappearing off your desktop!
I haven't had any problems capturing to my internal drive, personally, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. It's just a matter of bus saturation during capture -- apparently, one FireWire bus (even FW800) isn't enough to reliably sustain DV in and write it back to a disk at the same time.
So ... you should be fine if you just capture to your primary drive. It's not as cool as a direct-to-external-disk capture, but it seems to be pretty foolproof. Heaven forbid your boot volume from disappearing off your desktop!
Michael Summers
Well-known member
Re: need advice on hard drive
i have a LaCie, and i love it, ive dropped it countless times walking from house to house, runnin' n' gunnin', it does have battle marks
i highly reccomend atleast 120 for editing, thats what i use, took me a year to fill it up, and by then, i could delete stuff i didn't need.
i have a LaCie, and i love it, ive dropped it countless times walking from house to house, runnin' n' gunnin', it does have battle marks
i highly reccomend atleast 120 for editing, thats what i use, took me a year to fill it up, and by then, i could delete stuff i didn't need.
S
silverfish
Guest
Re: need advice on hard drive
External HDs with fire wire are a great way to archive your data.
'What is the 'most likely to work for capture and cause dropouts' --my answer to this one is this:
20-40gig internal IDE drive for the OS
1 or 2 SATAs in raid 0 for speed and reliability. The KEY here is to treat this setup as your 'production' or working environment. THEN, you can start stacking external firewire HDs for your archives. Honestly, a well thought out system will contain ONLY a project in production. Once you're done, Media Manage it and get it off the drive. This is where firewire is great, copying to drives with 800 bus is a heck of alot faster than DVD!
Even if you're working on a HUGE project, how much footage can you honestly work on in a sitting? Chances are you can dump stuff from your internal drives to archive.
But of course, never, never, never write to the boot disk.
-silverfish
External HDs with fire wire are a great way to archive your data.
'What is the 'most likely to work for capture and cause dropouts' --my answer to this one is this:
20-40gig internal IDE drive for the OS
1 or 2 SATAs in raid 0 for speed and reliability. The KEY here is to treat this setup as your 'production' or working environment. THEN, you can start stacking external firewire HDs for your archives. Honestly, a well thought out system will contain ONLY a project in production. Once you're done, Media Manage it and get it off the drive. This is where firewire is great, copying to drives with 800 bus is a heck of alot faster than DVD!
Even if you're working on a HUGE project, how much footage can you honestly work on in a sitting? Chances are you can dump stuff from your internal drives to archive.
But of course, never, never, never write to the boot disk.
-silverfish