New to Mac, New to Video Editing. Ext. HDD Question

[txnoob]

I just got a a Mac Mini and hope to be able to edit some family videos and make them look pretty.

My question is how necessary is Firewire as the data drive? I purchased a Seagate FreeAgentGO 160GB
external a few months ago on the cheap. It's a 2.5" 5400RPM drive and was thinking of using that. But
I've read a few posts indicating that firewire, especially now with firewire 800 being available, was the
way to go.

So will the USB 2.0 Seagate drive I already have work, or will it be a significant handicap?

 

[LethalWolfe]

USB 2.0 is a handicap as well as it being a 5400RPM HDD. Not saying it won't work, but that's definitely not a recommend device to use.


Lethal

 

[ChrisA]

I just got a a Mac Mini and hope to be able to edit some family videos and make them look pretty.

My question is how necessary is Firewire as the data drive? I purchased a Seagate FreeAgentGO 160GB
external a few months ago on the cheap. It's a 2.5" 5400RPM drive and was thinking of using that. But
I've read a few posts indicating that firewire, especially now with firewire 800 being available, was the
way to go.

So will the USB 2.0 Seagate drive I already have work, or will it be a significant handicap?

Is this standard definition video, maybe Mini DV? If so you will be fine. Faster is always better but I was able to use FCE on a G4 mini using only the internal drive. Yes some frames got dropped on playback and it was not super quick but it worked. Final rendering took hours but I let it go over night. My new Intel iMac is much faster. The Mini should work. Drives are cheap now. You can buy a very large FW800 drive for $100. Use what you have an see. A LOT depends on what features you use and how many video and audio tracks to use. The number of tracks makes a huge difference

The one thing I find that you need is a large screen FCE just eats up screen space with all those controls

 

[derekjd]

thought

You can get 750GB externals USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 for like $100 on a bunch of sites, I have two on my iMac and they seem to work fine. Make sure the don't have auto spin down (sleep mode). Something to think about...

Derek

BTW: Max out your ram!

 

[txnoob]

You can get 750GB externals USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 for like $100 on a bunch of sites, I have two on my iMac and they seem to work fine. Make sure the don't have auto spin down (sleep mode). Something to think about...

Derek

BTW: Max out your ram!

RAM is already on the way. 4GB Woo hoo! Anyway, back to issue.

So Firewire 400 will be fine? I thought the Mini only had Firewire 800. Or is that port backwards compatible?

 

[txnoob]

Is this standard definition video, maybe Mini DV? If so you will be fine. Faster is always better but I was able to use FCE on a G4 mini using only the internal drive. Yes some frames got dropped on playback and it was not super quick but it worked. Final rendering took hours but I let it go over night. My new Intel iMac is much faster. The Mini should work. Drives are cheap now. You can buy a very large FW800 drive for $100. Use what you have an see. A LOT depends on what features you use and how many video and audio tracks to use. The number of tracks makes a huge difference

The one thing I find that you need is a large screen FCE just eats up screen space with all those controls

The camera is a Canon FS100 SD Media camcorder. It is not HD. So unfortunately the raw data will be coming from USB cable as I've ready you can import to iMovie directly off this camera, as long as it's iMovie '08 or later.

Right now I only have a 17" 4:3 LCD, but plan to get a 22" 16:9 next month.

 

[derekjd]

RAM is already on the way. 4GB Woo hoo! Anyway, back to issue.

So Firewire 400 will be fine? I thought the Mini only had Firewire 800. Or is that port backwards compatible?

Yes it is backward compatible. Here is a wikipedia link for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire#FireWire_800_.28IEEE_1394b-2002.29

I use Firewire 400 on my iMac (white 2.16)... Seems to be fine fooling around with 720p video. If you can get 800 for roughly the same price or a little above I would go with the speed.

Derek

 

[txnoob]

Okay, got my WD MyBook 320GB Firewire 800 drive. I guess I never really asked what way to use the Firewire drive to make it most advantageous for my video editing. Should it be where I store all my video or images. Should it be my main booting drive, or should it be just where the final video is placed while/after being encoded/processed.

 

[namethisfile]

Okay, got my WD MyBook 320GB Firewire 800 drive. I guess I never really asked what way to use the Firewire drive to make it most advantageous for my video editing. Should it be where I store all my video or images. Should it be my main booting drive, or should it be just where the final video is placed while/after being encoded/processed.

i use my external lacie drive as a backup drive and also as a scratch disk for editing video since i don't have a dedicated drive for either. of course, a dedicated video drive would be better since you generally don't want your backup files to go just because you edit a lot of video and wear out your drive. this hasn't happen to me yet, thank goodness. but, yes, if you are a heavy editor, a dedicated drive would be best and is recommended. i also assume that this drive is at least 7200 rpm, which is the minimum requirement for editing video.

hope this helps.

as to making it a bootable drive? why would you need to?

 

[txnoob]

I was just asking where the performance gain comes from. Currently I have the FW 800 set up as the drive where the final compiled video/project is saved/exported to and it's also storing duplicates of family photos. I'm assuming that's how it needs to be for the advantage of performance in video editing? Now I switched my USB 2.0 160GB as my Time Capsule.

 

[namethisfile]

I was just asking where the performance gain comes from. Currently I have the FW 800 set up as the drive where the final compiled video/project is saved/exported to and it's also storing duplicates of family photos. I'm assuming that's how it needs to be for the advantage of performance in video editing? Now I switched my USB 2.0 160GB as my Time Capsule.

Aside from upgrading to a faster computer, there is not much you can do to gain performance, perse. there is only the requirements and it looks like you meet those from looking at your signature. you won't be able to encode or render faster after switching from a USB drive to a firewire one, for example since those functions are dependent on cpu as of now. of course, depending on your project and/or video source, the mac mini might slow down if the project is very large or if you are working w/ 1080p source material. i am not sure. but, in most scenarios, you should expect that the mac mini is powerful enough to be able to edit video smoothly w/o dropping frames.

there are also other things like the source of your video that might be more suited for editing in FCE or FCP, since it will be able to edit it natively. in this case, i would convert those files into those native formats. this would negate rendering in the timeline if you do. and also, i would give the editing program you are using a 100% of the RAM and make your external firewire drive the scratch disk where you store the video, audio, photo and render files to. hope this helps. and have fun editing!

 

[txnoob]

Aside from upgrading to a faster computer, there is not much you can do to gain performance, perse. there is only the requirements and it looks like you meet those from looking at your signature. you won't be able to encode or render faster after switching from a USB drive to a firewire one, for example since those functions are dependent on cpu as of now. of course, depending on your project and/or video source, the mac mini might slow down if the project is very large or if you are working w/ 1080p source material. i am not sure. but, in most scenarios, you should expect that the mac mini is powerful enough to be able to edit video smoothly w/o dropping frames.

there are also other things like the source of your video that might be more suited for editing in FCE or FCP, since it will be able to edit it natively. in this case, i would convert those files into those native formats. this would negate rendering in the timeline if you do. and also, i would give the editing program you are using a 100% of the RAM and make your external firewire drive the scratch disk where you store the video, audio, photo and render files to. hope this helps. and have fun editing!

I guess I didn't give the whole picture. I was having issues w/ dropping frames using the 160GB Seagate FreeAgentGo which is a 2.5" 5400RPM USB 2.0 ext. HDD. I was just wanting to confirm that I had the drives set up to best remedy that problem.

 

[bigbossbmb]

the media and render files you are using should be stored on the on the mybook.

do not make it your boot drive.