External HD for Video

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...

 

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...

 

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.

 

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?