I'm ready to convert VHS tapes into digital format and into iMovie (using DV camcorder as passthrough)
1. Will I have enough memory to do approx. 6 hours of tapes for subsequent editing?
2. How much of that can fit on one DVD?
About this Mac: 2GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM.
Thanks!
1) You have plenty of memory. Disk space is what you need. 12.96GB per hour... 6 hours of DV is going to be 77.76GB just to hold the video. You'll need at least double that to edit...more likely a little less than 3 times the space, IMHO. So if you have around 230GB of harddrive space free, you're good to go! If you don't have that much, I suggest you edit each tape one at a time. It's alot more manageable that way anyway. I don't know what iMovie's limits are, but I wouldn't push it. Since your output medium is DVD, I STRONGLY suggest using iMovie HD ( 06 ) instead of iMovie 08. You will have a huge amount of trouble doing what you want to do in 08.
( assuming you are going to use iDVD to author it )
2) Depends on how much you want to compress it. If you have a Double layer burner, you can easily fit 4 hours on there. if you want to fit all 6 hours, you may have to sacrifice quality. This may not be a huge problem since you're taking it from a VHS source. Be prepared for this kind of expirimentation to take a LONG LONG time. Unless it's really important to fit all 6 hours on 1 DVD, you might just consider splitting it into 2 DVDs of 3 hours each.
Good luck!
