Video's and Hard drive space

[DAVE2158]

Well first it has been a while since I been here so Hello Ok on to the question I am taking all of are home movies that are on tape and converting them to digital but hard drive space is a problem and so is cash.I seem to remeber reading some where that I can compress the video and when needed I just open it up I do not know if this is the true or not so any help ok.

 

[Fender2112]

If you import an analog video using iMove or Final Cut Express, a two hour tape use about 25 GB of hard drive. After editting you can use iDVD to burn to disk as a viewable DVD. That means compressing 25 GB to 4.7 GB.

At this point you need an "extractor" such as DVDxDV, or simular app, to get the video off the DVD. But this extracted video will not be as good as the orignal.

Hope this helps.

 

[DAVE2158]

Video and harddrive space

Thanks for the help but this I already understood I just thought there was a way to compress it before or wilt i was putting it on my hard drive..
Thanks

 

[Fender2112]

Thanks for the help but this I already understood I just thought there was a way to compress it before or wilt i was putting it on my hard drive..
Thanks

Check to see if your editting software offers "On the fly" compression. I used Strata Videoshop a few years ago and it had this feature. It would buffer the video to RAM and then compress it to the hard drive. This was the option to use when drive space was limited. It was tied to Quicktime which allowed you use whatever codec you had for Quicktime. I'm not sure if any of Apple's products have this feature.

 

[JzzTrump22]

You need a lot of HD room for iMovie. Video editing is a HD hog. My friend bought a 300GB HD just for video editing.

 

[DAVE2158]

Video and hard drive space

FYI I found a program that compresses the video by 98% it is call Foottracker here is a demo verision you can place up to 100 clips in it.Also you can import and export to iMovies, Finail cut, etc. Well I try it the other night compressed about 1G to around 2MB. this program offers a lot so check it out and pass it on I do believe the 50.00 bucks is a fair price.
here the link.
http://foottrack.com/index.html

 

[Makosuke]

FootTrack is basically an organizer combined with an easy interface for QuickTime's MPG4 compression. You can also access this, sans the organizing and automating stuff, directly from iMovie if you want to save some money.

In iMovie you want to export to QuickTime, and choose some settings that you're happy with--MPG4 is probably your best quality option, though you can balance file size and quality to get an image you're happy with.