[MacDV] Toast/copying DVD-R

[James Asherman]

On Saturday, January 8, 2005, at 12:53  AM, Lanny Cotler wrote:

> Jim, does this mean that for us videon(a)uts we should be defragging 
> often? And there are no inherent problems with doing this??
>
> L
>

Someone expressed concern that Panther might have a bad reaction. I 
doubt it. I think that is based more on the belief that the new OS's 
don't need this procedure.
I have optimized my OSX from and OS9 partition without killing 
anything. It really just moves the data around and fixes the formatting.
Some think that the OS does this itself. To some extent and in the 
context of average use one might get away with never defragging and 
optimizing.
In the context of 4gig and above files , or of needing your computer to 
record 30 frames a second for an hour at a clip or play back 30FPS for 
two hours at a clip, it's important.
I suppose that newer machines with faster busses might have better luck 
looking around your drive for the next frame in a long playback, but I 
still think it counts.
My friend with the queasy iMac proved it.
I set up his machine (one drive) and installed FCP and then I defragged 
and optimized with Norton Speed Disk. I told him not too save anything 
unless he  was going to do it again.
He doesn't have it connected to the internet, he doesn't do ANYTHING on 
it but use it as a
video workstation. When it quit during a capture, I could confidently 
tell him that he had saved something and that this file was in the way 
of a smooth capture, like a speedbump.
He deleted it and everything worked again.
I never drop a frame. I capture an hour at a time without stopping.
Video is all on a dedicated drive.(deleted after every job) Photos and 
music go on my boot drive and can be saved or deleted as necessary. Big 
files that I want to keep are stored on a third drive shoved in under 
the SUperdrive.
As long as the Defrag and optimize program that you are using is aware 
of the basic format of your disc (HFS+  etc.) it is just moving bricks 
around and does not seem to hurt anything. In fact I think it speeds 
disc access.
  I also use Cocktail obsessively to keep my caches and swap files 
minimized, and update the directories after I delete a day's work. I 
think that helps too, especially in a one-drive system.
All my own opinion and bound to get somebody riled,
  JIm