[MacDV] External HD sizes

[Mark M. Florida]

Rather than think about your storage needs in terms of finished length, 
you need to know how much *source* footage you have -- that's where 
your storage needs should be assessed.  DV requires about 13 GB per 
hour, so you'd be able to fit about 6 hours of DV source material on an 
80 GB drive.  As far as RAID goes, single drives should be plenty fast 
enough for DV work -- so no RAID.  The only thing I can think of that 
could be a problem, depending on which computer you have and which 
camera you are using is FireWire issues.  If you're using an older G4 
(or Blue G3), you may have hiccups writing to FireWire drives while 
capturing from a FireWire camera.  To get around this problem, you just 
need to add a PCI FireWire card to add a completely separate FireWire 
bus (both jacks on G4s use the same bus) -- then connect the drives to 
that card and your camera to the built-in FireWire ports.  If you're 
using a PowerBook, you can get a FireWire PC (PCMCIA) card to achieve 
the same result.

That's my 2 cents.

- Mark F.

On Dec 8, 2003, at 1:44 PM, Dwayne Bradley wrote:

> I have a couple of quick questions that I am sure a genius or two (or 
> three) on this list can answer for me.
>
> I just got my copy of FCE (which by the way I think is awesome 
> compared to iMovie in the short time that I have got to play with it) 
> and I am looking at getting a couple of external HD's for external 
> storage/work space.  I have seen before on this list that the external 
> HD approach is advisable.  Would two 80GB drives be sufficient for 
> about 1-2 hours worth of finished video work?  This length of time 
> would be for all projects that I am working on at the same time (3 to 
> 4 max), not just one project.  Would you suggest using the drives 
> independantly or put them into a RAID 0 (stripe) or a RAID 1 (mirror) 
> configuration?  Also, where do you suggest that I store the project 
> file?  Internal HD or on one of the external drives?
>
> Everyone's opinions and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Dwayne Bradley
>
>
> ----------
> <http://www.themacintoshguy.com/lists/MacDV.html>.
> Send a message to <MacDV-DIGEST at themacintoshguy.com> to switch to the 
> digest version.
>
>  XRouter | Share your DSL or cable modem between multiple computers!
> Dr. Bott | Now $139.99      <http://www.drbott.com/prod/xrouter.html>
>
>    Cyberian   | Support this list when you buy at Outpost.com!
>    Outpost    |         http://www.themacintoshguy.com/outpost.shtml
>
> MacResQ Specials: LaCie SCSI CDR From $99! PowerBook 3400/200 Only 
> $879!
> Norton AntiVirus 6 Only $19! We Stock PARTS! <http://www.macresq.com>
>
>