Questions about video editing...

[x.sunrise]

I made a music video in iMovie HD 6, and I'm not finished with it yet but I haven't worked on it in awhile and I just noticed it's taking up 70 GB (half of my hard drive space). How do I compress it without exporting it so that I'll still be able to go back and edit it later? Can I move the file into my school computer account (because I don't care if it takes up a bunch of space there...)?

Also, I'm thinking of buying new video editing software. I mostly make film montages to background music but the effects in iMovie aren't enough for me... so I know about Final Cut Express, but I've heard that it's quite tedious? Something about having to render everything all the time? Anyway... I heard Adobe Premiere Elements is quite good so I was thinking of running Windows on my Mac since it only works for Windows. What are your thoughts on FCE vs. other video editing software? What would you recommend for someone like me - I'm not a complete beginner but I've only made a few videos in the past. I want something with more effects that are more customizable but easy to use since I don't have that much time to spend learning/editing.

Oh by the way, I'm kind of a newbie at this stuff, so you should probably use terms that I can understand, lol.

 

[spinnerlys]

You can move the footage to your school account and use it there or get it back later.

But compressing the footage is not a good idea, as it looses important information that editing applications need to edit properly.

DV encoded footage (which is in Standard Definition - SD) takes up 220MB/s (12GB/h), if you have HD (High Definition) footage it can take up to 49GB/h.
Compressed footage for example does not store every frame when you use any kind of MPEG codec like H264, which is needed to make exact cuts or transitions.

FCE might be up your alley, but as with every kind of tool, even those you can touch, like a hammer or a milling machine, you need to learn how to use it to get good results out of it.
I don't know if iMovie has some effects packages than can be bought and added onto it, but you should take a look into that, if all you want to do is adding effects.
FCE though offers more effects, have a look here.

What kind of effects do you want to accomplish?

And think about getting an external HDD for storing your video files, because editing takes up lots and lots of GBs.

At work we currently have a project with 1300 tapes and it takes up roughly 12TB, and a third of the footage is compressed to a tenth of its original quality.

 

[chrismacguy]

Id definitely get an external HDD (I do all my editing on a MacBook with iMovie HD and Final Cut Express 4 - as you can see in my sig Im an amateur video editor) - My current 40-45 10minute projects take up approximately 230GB of space (and thats compressed, and with all the trash emptied). Heck - my average 5 minute clip is about 2-4GB (and this isnt HD). I use a 640GB external to keep all of my stuff 😀

 

[ARF900]

I agree, consider and external hardrive.

 

[spinnerlys]

Id definitely get an external HDD (I do all my editing on a MacBook with iMovie HD and Final Cut Express 4 - as you can see in my sig Im an amateur video editor) - My current 40-45 10minute projects take up approximately 230GB of space (and thats compressed, and with all the trash emptied). Heck - my average 5 minute clip is about 2-4GB (and this isnt HD). I use a 640GB external to keep all of my stuff 😀

May I know what kind of footage do you have that takes 2-4GB for 5 minutes in SD?

DV encoded video takes approx. 220MB/min, so 5 minutes would be 1.1GB.

Or do you edit (Digi) Beta material in 1:1, which takes 20MB/s, *which would result in almost 6GB for five minutes of video?