Transfering High Def video

[Edandlindz28]

Can I download HD video using Firewire but have the destination be a external hard drive via 2.0 USB?

Can I put iMovie on the external and use that to edit the video?

I don't have enough hard drive space on my internal or should I install the OS on the external and use that?

Really would like some help on this. I have the iBook G4 last model made.

I was looking at the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500 or 320 GB Ultra ATA100. I heard that SATA is not compatible with the iBook.

Thanks.

 

[diamond3]

I would try to fit iMovie on you internal hd. The actual application of imovie 06 hd only takes up 80+ mb of space. If you can't fit that, the you need to make space because your computer will run a lot faster if you have at least 5 gb free.

As far as transfering high def video through firewire to your usb external, i believe it should work. However, don't just go off of me as I have no experience on this. I can transfer footage from my camera through a firewire port onto an external connected to a different firewire port. So my guess is USB shouldn't be any different.

Now, the real question will be if your external hd and computer can keep up with the importing of High def video. Hopefully someone else can elaborate on that.

 

[LethalWolfe]

You don't want any applications or the OS on the same drive that you are storing your media so you'll need to find some stuff to clear off your internal drive so you can install iMovie. Capturing to a USB 2.0 drive may or may not work. If you can get a FW drive, but if you can't give it a shot w/the USB 2.0 drive and you may get lucky.


Lethal

 

[diamond3]

You don't want any applications or the OS on the same drive that you are storing your media so you'll need to find some stuff to clear off your internal drive so you can install iMovie. Capturing to a USB 2.0 drive may or may not work. If you can get a FW drive, but if you can't give it a shot w/the USB 2.0 drive and you may get lucky.


Lethal

i don't know how well that would work since most likely his video camera needs to connect through a firewire port and his iBook only has one. I guess you could try getting an external with an additional firewire port, but I would think that would be worse then just a usb 2 external hd.

 

[ppc_michael]

USB 2.0 is slightly faster than Firewire 400, so you should have no problem connecting your camera to your iBook through Firewire, and connecting your hard drive to your iBook through USB 2.0, and capturing directly to that external hard drive.

You should leave iMovie as well as your OS on your internal hard drive, definitely. But capturing video directly to an external hard drive is extremely common and you should experience no problems, as long as your external drive has a 7200 RPM spin.

 

[Cromulent]

USB 2.0 is slightly faster than Firewire 400, so you should have no problem connecting your camera to your iBook through Firewire, and connecting your hard drive to your iBook through USB 2.0, and capturing directly to that external hard drive.

You should leave iMovie as well as your OS on your internal hard drive, definitely. But capturing video directly to an external hard drive is extremely common and you should experience no problems, as long as your external drive has a 7200 RPM spin.

USB 2 maybe slightly faster but firewire has a better sustained data rate. As far as I know USB 2 tends to send data in waves or pulses rather than keeping a constant data rate going.

 

[killmoms]

USB 2.0 is slightly faster than Firewire 400...

Common misconception. Firewire is actually faster for sustained transfers. USB 2.0's oft-quoted 480mbit/s is its peak burst transfer rate. Benchmarking has shown that Firewire 400 is demonstrably faster for sustained writes.

In response to the OP: I'm guessing you're talking about HDV? It consumes the same amount of bitrate as DV (25mbit/s, or about 3.2MB/s, WELL below the maximum write speed of any modern hard drive or external interface) so you'll have no troubles capturing. Finally, the type of the external drive (ATA or SATA) doesn't matter at all as long as you're connecting via USB or Firewire. The only interface you can't use is eSATA.

No reason to install either iMovie or the OS on your external. iMovie itself is pretty small, so...

The only trouble you might have is the speed of editing HDV. While it doesn't consume more disk bandwidth than DV, it is a more computationally intensive codec (as a result of being long-GOP MPEG-2 and a larger frame as compared to DV's SD frame and all-intraframe encoding).

 

[LethalWolfe]

Common misconception. Firewire is actually faster for sustained transfers. USB 2.0's oft-quoted 480mbit/s is its peak burst transfer rate. Benchmarking has shown that Firewire 400 is demonstrably faster for sustained writes.

In response to the OP: I'm guessing you're talking about HDV? It consumes the same amount of bitrate as DV (25mbit/s, or about 3.2MB/s, WELL below the maximum write speed of any modern hard drive or external interface) so you'll have no troubles capturing. Finally, the type of the external drive (ATA or SATA) doesn't matter at all as long as you're connecting via USB or Firewire. The only interface you can't use is eSATA.

No reason to install either iMovie or the OS on your external. iMovie itself is pretty small, so...

The only trouble you might have is the speed of editing HDV. While it doesn't consume more disk bandwidth than DV, it is a more computationally intensive codec (as a result of being long-GOP MPEG-2 and a larger frame as compared to DV's SD frame and all-intraframe encoding).

Since the OP is using iMovie though the files get transcoded into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) which makes them about 3x the size of HDV.


Lethal

 

[killmoms]

Since the OP is using iMovie though the files get transcoded into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) which makes them about 3x the size of HDV.


Lethal

Oh wow, I didn't know iMovie didn't edit HDV natively. Huh. Well, still—3x 3.2MB/s is still under 10MB/s, which is still far below even the minimum write speeds of any Firewire drive on the market today so... while not quite as low as DV in that case, it's still plenty small.

 

[Edandlindz28]

Thanks for the help. I am deployed right now, so I have to explain this to my wife.

I think I will keep iMovie on my iBook and try to transfer HDV through firewire and have its destination on the external HD via usb.

I heard daisy chaining the camera into the external then exxternal to laptop is not a good idea, being it streams to the computer then back out to the external at the same time, clogging the FW400.

Does anyone know how much 1 hour of HDV is in GBs? I would rather download to laptop then then transfer to external once complete. I can probably free up about 40GB on my internal hard drive, but that is it (move pics and musi onto external).

I was going to make my own external with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra ATA100 500GB pairing with the OWC ministack, or recommendations on doing an external case with FW800 for later down the road when I upgrade?

 

[Rod Rod]

i don't know how well that would work since most likely his video camera needs to connect through a firewire port and his iBook only has one. I guess you could try getting an external with an additional firewire port, but I would think that would be worse then just a usb 2 external hd.

I heard daisy chaining the camera into the external then exxternal to laptop is not a good idea, being it streams to the computer then back out to the external at the same time, clogging the FW400.

I've captured a lot of DV and HDV with such a chain and I've never had a problem. It's worked for me on my old G3 iBook (for DV) back in 2003 using FCP 3 and iMovie 2. It's worked for me on subsequent PowerBooks and a MacBook Pro. I've never had a dropped frame or data break due to the chain.

The only time you'd run into trouble is if the hard drive onto which you're loading the footage gets around 80 to 85% full. That's not a function of the chain but rather how hard drives innately are.

Does anyone know how much 1 hour of HDV is in GBs?

I'm pretty sure one hour of Apple Intermediate Codec adds up to around 40GB.

 

[Edandlindz28]

Okay purchase 1x500gb ministack from OWC.

Next will be to bump up ram to 1.5 GB, currently 1GB and purchase another external when the new OS comes out for Time Machine.

This is the first time I have done this stuff. Hopefully my wife can put it together and it works okay...