Need a scratch disk for video editing

[Drew n macs]

I have installed ssd in my mbp and now need a scratch disk. Any advice on a set up?

I will be editing on ilife 11 till the new final cut X comes out. I will be editing less than 16gb of video to at most 15 min video clips.

What do i need for a scratch disk? I will use a firewire port (800).

What size scratch disk do I need. Will I benefit from a SSD scratch disk since I am editing relitively small amount of video?

At this time a could pick up a ~100gb ish ssd relativly cheap. if this is not a good idea what specs should I get for a scratch disk? 2.5/3.5? 7200 rpm?

There was some post I found using Mroogle on scratch disk but the info seemed outdated.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Since the 16GB footage is most likely using some highly compressive codec like MPEG-4, iMovie will transcode the footage to another container/wrapper/format (.mov) and another, editing friendly, codec (Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC)), thus the file size will get bigger (up to 49GB per hour with 1080i60 footage).
FCP X will be able to edit the footage natively though.
An SSD might provide faster access times, as there are no platters to spin and a head to properly position, but it might not be necessary.
And FW800 is the fastest interface (besides Thunderbolt and Gigabit Ethernet) you can use.

 

[Drew n macs]

Since the 16GB footage is most likely using some highly compressive codec like MPEG-4, iMovie will transcode the footage to another container/wrapper/format (.mov) and another, editing friendly, codec (Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC)), thus the file size will get bigger (up to 49GB per hour with 1080i60 footage).
FCP X will be able to edit the footage natively though.
An SSD might provide faster access times, as there are no platters to spin and a head to properly position, but it might not be necessary.
And FW800 is the fastest interface (besides Thunderbolt and Gigabit Ethernet) you can use.

I thought esata is faster than firewire? not thany many macs have the connection.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I thought esata is faster than firewire? not thany many macs have the connection.

Yes, eSATA is faster than FW800.
I assumed you had an older mobile Mac, as you didn't state what Mac you have.
I don't know why I thought that, must have been a remnant of another thread I visited earlier I suppose.