tips for beginner in DV

[chibianh]

Hi. I've been wanting to get into doing some digital video and such for quite some time now. So, to my surprise, I got some hardware to allow me to do this today. I got a few questions if anyone is willing to answer them. I'm going to be editing video on my Tibook.

1. I got an external drive and plan to use it to capture video and store all my projects on there. Is this wise?

2. How should I chain the firewire devices? ti>fwhd>dvcam or ti>dvcam>fwhd? Would you recommend this? I only have one firewire port. Is one way more efficient than the other?

3. Because the external drive will be used for capturing video, can I partition it and only use one partition for captureing video and the other for storing?

4. Can I place the fw drive on its side? Does this affect performance any way compared to when it's playing flat?

5. Can't think of other questions at the moment. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Anh

 

[teabgs]

1. It's as safe as only having one copy on your internal drive.

2. It depends on the drive. I hear that with some drives you need to install something (I forget) or else you can't chain the Camera and Drive. I have a friend who has a friend with the same situation. I have been meaning to find out what the solution was. Anyway, it was a LaCie drive, and he did get it to work with the Camera attached to the drive.

3. yes

4. Maybe. What is the brand and model of the drive? You probably can.

5. Max out your RAM. You'll want it if you're using Final Cut for real time effects. IF youre not using Final Cut use Final Cut Express if you're serious about this. iMovie is ok for silly little things, but you want the big guns.