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g drive mini for portable video editing.
- Thread starter zyr123
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How big are the files you are editing? The Mini's, like all small form factor drives, are going to be relatively slow and get very hot (which could lead to an early death). I use portable drives to shuttle files around but I'd never edit off one for a prolonged period of time.
the majority are an minute or so. But the rest are 45-50 minutes of no stopping because the event was a baseball game.
I do it sometimes. It's good if you must be portable for example I used it today because I had to go into the office and didn't want to lug my raid ones. It does run hot so you might need to stop for a while and let it cool down. I also find isn't as fast as compared tony raid. It's do-able if you need the small size and your project isn't big.
I wouldn't worry too much.
Of course a single hard drive isn't going to be fast as a RAID.
With portable drives you are paying for the miniaturization compared to a 3.5" drive which requires wall power or a more significant RAID setup (you can get 2.5" RAID setups).
It will work fine for a project for camp and plenty of other things as well. I agree with LethalWolfe, that I wouldn't use one as my primary scratch disk all the time, but if it's what you have, it's what you have and it'll get the job done.
Of course a single hard drive isn't going to be fast as a RAID.
With portable drives you are paying for the miniaturization compared to a 3.5" drive which requires wall power or a more significant RAID setup (you can get 2.5" RAID setups).
It will work fine for a project for camp and plenty of other things as well. I agree with LethalWolfe, that I wouldn't use one as my primary scratch disk all the time, but if it's what you have, it's what you have and it'll get the job done.
agreed, if your not doing anything too crazy it should be fine... it will be better then using your internal drive
I cut a 10 min story on it with about 3 hours worth of video and it was fine
Should be ok if its fw800. I would use 422 proxy on a portable external 422 will drop frames pretty often.
I am trying out a Sandisk ultra 240gb ssd (cheaper on) with the goflex thunderbolt adapter and I get 245 MBs reads and writes which is good for 7 multicam clips at 422.
I recommend turning on report when frames dropped in the playback preferences.
I am trying out a Sandisk ultra 240gb ssd (cheaper on) with the goflex thunderbolt adapter and I get 245 MBs reads and writes which is good for 7 multicam clips at 422.
I recommend turning on report when frames dropped in the playback preferences.
To the OP, while I agree with what LethalWolfe said I can give some real world feed back about that drive. I have used mine which has the 7200rpm drive in it for recording live video streaming events, doing editing of those events and then off loading that footage to another work station over the course of two (2) years and it has been fine.
The load which I had, might not be as heavy as your's but it is as follows:
Record a weekend event seminar, hours of recording were 14+ hrs. at 1.5-2 hr. intervals and if a Friday night was included that would add 3 hrs. broken in half of course.
After each day we would go through and edit where needed, add titles, dates and so on then off load each night to another drive. This would add time for editing as well on that drive.
I used FW800 because they didn't invest in an Esata card but no big deal, to me any way. I would say over the course of the two (2) years the drive had logged around 500+ hrs. of streaming alone, then add in the edit times and it is still running fine.
I made sure that if a small clip fan could be used it was or one of those laptop fan trays to place the hard drive on to add a cooling method but to be honest, most of the time except at night, it had only the case to keep it cool.
Again like Lethal said, it will run warm to your definition of hot. The one I used would get hot per se but still holdable so the heat sink did it's job. I think for a small little unit those are built like tanks and the only thing better in a small form factor if cost is no concern would be an SSD unit using TB or the Esata/FW800.
I know one IT guy mentioned bringing a small piece of marble (think like the flooring stuff) the size of the drive to place under to help draw the excess heat away from the drive. He said every little bit could help, not sure if this does but he uses a small piece when he does the events
If you don't mind a slightly bigger case, I have the OWC mini Al case for an extra drive and I think that does a better job of cooling the small drive as I use one for personal travel. Keep that in mind as a backup to the G-Drive if need be
The load which I had, might not be as heavy as your's but it is as follows:
Record a weekend event seminar, hours of recording were 14+ hrs. at 1.5-2 hr. intervals and if a Friday night was included that would add 3 hrs. broken in half of course.
After each day we would go through and edit where needed, add titles, dates and so on then off load each night to another drive. This would add time for editing as well on that drive.
I used FW800 because they didn't invest in an Esata card but no big deal, to me any way. I would say over the course of the two (2) years the drive had logged around 500+ hrs. of streaming alone, then add in the edit times and it is still running fine.
I made sure that if a small clip fan could be used it was or one of those laptop fan trays to place the hard drive on to add a cooling method but to be honest, most of the time except at night, it had only the case to keep it cool.
Again like Lethal said, it will run warm to your definition of hot. The one I used would get hot per se but still holdable so the heat sink did it's job. I think for a small little unit those are built like tanks and the only thing better in a small form factor if cost is no concern would be an SSD unit using TB or the Esata/FW800.
I know one IT guy mentioned bringing a small piece of marble (think like the flooring stuff) the size of the drive to place under to help draw the excess heat away from the drive. He said every little bit could help, not sure if this does but he uses a small piece when he does the events
If you don't mind a slightly bigger case, I have the OWC mini Al case for an extra drive and I think that does a better job of cooling the small drive as I use one for personal travel. Keep that in mind as a backup to the G-Drive if need be
Wow I'm impressed with this little hard drive.
It is connected to my mac from fw800
pt 1 of this project is a two hour baseball game. If you have not used fcp x, play around with the multi cam it makes live so much easier. It runs basically flawlessly, dropped frames are basically non existent. The footage was filmed in 1080 p, then converted to proxy media proress422 from fcp x.
Part 2 is just highlights. It runs really well even with effects.
The drive doesn't run hot if its placed on a non wood matariel.
If you need a portable editing drive get this. I will check out how it handles 60 fps from the go pro footage I have lying around
It is connected to my mac from fw800
pt 1 of this project is a two hour baseball game. If you have not used fcp x, play around with the multi cam it makes live so much easier. It runs basically flawlessly, dropped frames are basically non existent. The footage was filmed in 1080 p, then converted to proxy media proress422 from fcp x.
Part 2 is just highlights. It runs really well even with effects.
The drive doesn't run hot if its placed on a non wood matariel.
If you need a portable editing drive get this. I will check out how it handles 60 fps from the go pro footage I have lying around