External HD for Video

[Trout74]

I have a friend who is Film major and and was connecting his Video Camera to his computer and downloading the vdeo to his HD. His HD is 160Gigs. His Hour of Video filled up the entire HD and said could finish due to space.

For those of you in FILM Etc. what size External HD does he need? Im surprised it filled up the 160Gigs?

any thoughts
Trout

 

[djkny]

I have a friend who is Film major and and was connecting his Video Camera to his computer and downloading the vdeo to his HD. His HD is 160Gigs. His Hour of Video filled up the entire HD and said could finish due to space.

For those of you in FILM Etc. what size External HD does he need? Im surprised it filled up the 160Gigs?

any thoughts
Trout

Well, rather than download an indiscriminate amount of footage, he should've done some prep work and find out which shots to capture via FCP, which shots were wasteful to capture, determine, esp. with offline editing, what resolution to caputure in, etc.

then the obvious question is --- how much (minutes wise) DV footage does he have?

A 160GB HD may be plenty for a 10 minute DV short, but hardly useful for a full feature.

Tell him to get at least another 160GB-200GB HD, if that's in his budget, and then list his shots, takes, etc. and see what he wants captured before overwhelming the drives...

 

[Trout74]

Well, rather than download an indiscriminate amount of footage, he should've done some prep work and find out which shots to capture via FCP, which shots were wasteful to capture, determine, esp. with offline editing, what resolution to caputure in, etc.

then the obvious question is --- how much (minutes wise) DV footage does he have?

A 160GB HD may be plenty for a 10 minute DV short, but hardly useful for a full feature.

Tell him to get at least another 160GB-200GB HD, if that's in his budget, and then list his shots, takes, etc. and see what he wants captured before overwhelming the drives...

Good info thank!

if its full length feature, what size drive does he need, and money is not an issue here. can you even get a terabyte external HD? would 500gigs be enough?

thanks
trout

 

[WinterMute]

What format is he using? Standard DV stream footage comes in at around 1Gb per 4 mins of footage, so it shouldn't have taken up more than 15Gb.

If he's using DVCpro or an HD camera, then it's going to be a lot more, and there's your answer.

I'd suggest he gets the biggest HD he can afford I have a 250Gb LaCie FW800 drive for audio and video, and I have to be careful to archive projects and clear the space once I'm done, otherwise I run out of room pretty quickly.

LaCie's 500Gb drive looks good...

 

[djkny]

Good info thank!

if its full length feature, what size drive does he need, and money is not an issue here. can you even get a terabyte external HD? would 500gigs be enough?

thanks
trout

T,
Winter Mute gave a good rule of thumb for SD DV -- 4 minutes/1GB ratio.
With a feature, I think he should get a set of Lacie Drives -- maybe in the 200-250GB range. They're going for only $180-$200 nowadways.

Lacie makes TB drives, too, but I tend to resist putting all my footage "in one basket." I think the 500GB drives run in the $350-$400 range, now? A TB drive, probably double that.

I remember when I bought my 40GB Ez Quest HD for $260! (seems like only yesterday).

Users will recommend a ton of other brands (including building a HD yourself, etc.) so feel free to make the best judgment. But I know Lacie's are solid for video editing --- I'm a ny based filmmaker and many of my colleagues use Lacie's with their G5's to cut their shorts.

peace.

 

[Trout74]

ok more info.

The software he is using is Avid Express Pro. He is running on a PeCee, but the meat of the issue is the same.

is there a setting in the software that compresses or something?

according to him he has 5 minutes of DV downloaded and it is taking up over 100gigs, is that even possible?? I really dont know anything about this, im just trying to help him, and know there are film guys on this site.

p.s. I told him to buy a Mac, he says he just might, if we cant figure it out

thanks
trout

 

[WinterMute]

ok more info.

The software he is using is Avid Express Pro. He is running on a PeCee, but the meat of the issue is the same.

is there a setting in the software that compresses or something?

according to him he has 5 minutes of DV downloaded and it is taking up over 100gigs, is that even possible?? I really dont know anything about this, im just trying to help him, and know there are film guys on this site.

p.s. I told him to buy a Mac, he says he just might, if we cant figure it out

thanks
trout

He may well be importing at Broadcast quality in Avid, even the Express version, check the import or capture settings and if there's an option for an "off-line" edit, then choose that, it should import using DV Stream.

What camera is he using?

 

[Trout74]

He may well be importing at Broadcast quality in Avid, even the Express version, check the import or capture settings and if there's an option for an "off-line" edit, then choose that, it should import using DV Stream.

What camera is he using?

A cannon DV camera, I think were getting closer here.
ill check it out on Saturday, an dreport back.

thanks for your time today,

Trout

 

[dummptyhummpty]

I'd suggest he gets the biggest HD he can afford I have a 250Gb LaCie FW800 drive for audio and video, and I have to be careful to archive projects and clear the space once I'm done, otherwise I run out of room pretty quickly.

How do you archive your projects? Right now on my pc I have a bit of space eaten up by videos I'm not ready to do anything (I could put them on DVD and let that be that though) with but I want to store them some where. Do you put em on DVD or what? I'll have even more trouble when/if I get a PB with the 100gb.

 

[enclave]

I'd suggest he gets the biggest HD he can afford I have a 250Gb LaCie FW800 drive for audio and video, and I have to be careful to archive projects and clear the space once I'm done, otherwise I run out of room pretty quickly.

How do you archive your projects? Right now on my pc I have a bit of space eaten up by videos I'm not ready to do anything (I could put them on DVD and let that be that though) with but I want to store them some where. Do you put em on DVD or what? I'll have even more trouble when/if I get a PB with the 100gb.

I never do conversion of natuive dv fottage due to the quality lost, best thing to do is buy a generic HD and an external enclosure and keep it as a backup drive for archiving things. I have 2 250gb drives and when I need them I just plug them into the enclosure

 

[WinterMute]

I'd suggest he gets the biggest HD he can afford I have a 250Gb LaCie FW800 drive for audio and video, and I have to be careful to archive projects and clear the space once I'm done, otherwise I run out of room pretty quickly.

How do you archive your projects? Right now on my pc I have a bit of space eaten up by videos I'm not ready to do anything (I could put them on DVD and let that be that though) with but I want to store them some where. Do you put em on DVD or what? I'll have even more trouble when/if I get a PB with the 100gb.

I keep the DVD Studio Pro files and the Final Cut Pro session files, but I dump all the video footage, as I have the raw footage on the DV tapes and I can recapture the footage should I need to re-edit, using the FCP session as an EDL.

Basically it's the raw video that consumes the space, the DVD files are all MPEG2 and aiff, AC3 or DTS files.

I put all the data files onto a DVD-rom and store it with the DV tapes.