Using USB external to capture video...

[Borjan]

Hi there.

Currently using an iBook G4 1.33 to capture SD camcorder video. I'm telling iMovie to send it to the movie file located on an external 7200rpm SATA hard drive connected via USB 2.

Now, I know I 'should' use firewire. But it seems to be working okay. Will the smoothness improve for the video if I do, ie are there frames being dropped that I'm not noticing? I'm not really complaining with the end results at the moment though, that is the thing...

 

[fluidedge]

firewire has the advantage of being able to move around entire streams of data, where as USB moves around 'packets'.

I've done work on a USB external - you'll get away with it with simple DV, with no compositing/layers. Forget about it with HDV or any uncompressed formats though.

USB will be fine, but if your thinking about doing lots of video editing treat yourself to a FW external drive (or buy an enclosure and a drive and make one yourself) - I'd get a 2.5" FW external like the LaCie Rugged drive.