[MacDV] how many hours (QT) will fit on 500GB drive?

[Aaron]

I know this is a bit late, but I'll inject some thoughts anyway.

The first thing to consider is that QuickTime can do compression using a number of codecs and, for each codec, at a wide range of bit rates. The number of variables that can be adjusted for each codec can be mind-boggling. But I'd say that you could get decent quality using as little as 300 MB per hour of video using H.264 compression.

However, if you're trying to get both good quality and high compression, the process will be, even with the fastest dual G4, several times slower than real time. (In other words, it will take several minutes to compress each minute of video.)

If you do want to save the video in compressed form, and you'll need to do that unless you have the money and storage space for 13 GB of hard disk storage per hour of video, you may be better off using a hardware digitizer that compresses while it digitizes, rather than a Media Converter that produces uncompressed DV output. I can't claim any specific knowledge about such digitizers, but perhaps others on this list may have useful information. I'd be interested in knowing about them myself.

 - Aaron

>Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:04:57 -0700
>From: sb <videovideo at mac.com>
>Subject: [MacDV] Re:  how many hours (QT) will fit on 500GB drive?
>
>A media converter uses DV codec. DV uses 3.6mg/sec, which is about 13GB/hour
>
>Since you are starting with pretty high quality, you could take the DV video
>files and then compress to a different codec, like iPod video, H.264 which
>will hold much much more. HandBrake is good for that process.
>
> regards,
>
> sb
>
>On 10/23/06 12:58 PM, "Malcolm Hamilton" <malcolm_hamilton at cbc.ca> wrote:
>
>> Hi there,
>> I'm wanting to copy 20 seasons-worth of the tv show I work for, onto
>> an external fw hard drive.
>> I'm playing the original half-hour Sony SP and SX show tapes, through
> > a Media Converter (firewire out) into my G4, via QuickTime, and onto
>> a 500GB external drive.
>> Can anyone tell me how many hours this drive will hold, with whatever
>> compression QT uses?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> mhcbc