Using 2 external drives for final cut pro 7

[steveOooo]

I have approx. 45hours (prob less after selecting i/o of capture clip) of avchd footage that i need to encode / process as apple proress

I think 2tb drive may just about hold 30 hours of footage.

I know its pos to use 2 ext. drives, but if i select these two drives to capture, render, will these capture the same file to both drives, or will it capture to hdd1 then when hdd is full, will it automatically start capturing to hdd2

When i edit, will it seek/ read the media clips from both hdd1 and 2?

 

[spinnerlys]

Have you also considered the Apple Intermediate Codec?

And if you haven't setup the two external HDDs as a RAID, only one HDD (the one you selected in the Log & Transfer window) will store the imported footage. During editing both HDDs will be used if the clips you use are spread on both HDDs.

 

[steveOooo]

no i havent,

currently encoding as pro ress 422, so intermediate will effectively be roughly half the size as pr422? Isnt it set up for hdv video - im using avchd (recorded from sony nxcam)

If i change from pro ress 422 - to - apple inter codec, will this mean id have to re-encode everything thats been done as pro ress 422?

The final output of this project is SD DVD, but would like hd version / bluray at a later date.

Will using inter codec effect greatly image quality? ie id still get 720 / 1080i hd images using inter codec?

 

[bigbossbmb]

ProRes is a far superior codec than AIC... I wouldn't suggest considering that.

With AVC, I'd even set your transcode settings for ProRes LT and save a little bit more room. No, having 2 externals set as a scratch disk is fine. They won't have the same master clips copied to each. FCP has a hierarchy for the drives... so once your first drive fills up (with a space buffer that you specify), then it starts writing to the second one.

 

[steveOooo]

if i change to (lt) will this mean ill have to re-encode the already encoded 'pro res' files?

 

[bigbossbmb]

you don't have to re-encode... you can use them in the same sequence. just be sure that the sequence gets set to LT.

 

[matteusclement]

Raid 0

I might be insane, but wouldn't a RAID 0 set up be easiest? and fastest?

 

[bigbossbmb]

not with 2 separate externals... if the OP purchases a RAID enclosure, sure that's an option. But there isn't anything wrong with keeping the disks as separate volumes. If the OP would be using FW800 or slower, difference in speed would be negligible with good disks.