Mini-DV xMB/minute ratio?
 

I'm about to invest in a high end Mini-DV camera (upgrading from VHS-C - yes -) I have a 50GB Harddrive for my program files and OS and then a 150GB for my post-production software and storage (should I maybe re-install the software on the 50GB and gain the 4GB worth of space for the storage HD?)

How many gigs would an hour of Mini-DV take up? I've heard around 13GB, if so, 145GB worth of space should be fine for editing, correct? Or should I invest in a large HD?

Also, des using a firewire 1 or firewire 2 connection make any difference to the quality of filesize of the captured video?

Well if you use a firestore you get 3 hours of video on 40GB

But with editing dont forget that you also want to output a rendered version and then possibly create files for DVD creation

if you do any serious video editing IMO you should have a lot more disk space.

I would suggest at least a 250GB drive for work. A different maybe a 160GB drive as your main HD and then additional storage for short term storage.

Our main editing machine has 600GB disk space. Then we have a terrabyte NAS drive and several external drives between 120 and 250GB

At the least i would get a 250GB drive to go with what you already have

Missed the other part

not sure what you mean by firewire 1 or 2 but a firewire DV stream is digital and will always be the same quality no matter what

Thanks, Michael...

Are external harddrives recommended? We have 2TB worth of storage space on our editing systems at school.

Firewire 2 is twice as fast as 1 - I think it's 8 mb/sec as opposed to 4.

One hour of DV = about 13 gigs. Externals are great for transporting your work from one computer to another. I have a 300 gig internal with an 80 gig partition as my C: drive, another 80 gig internal for capturing, and both a 120 and a 160 external. Good enough for what I need it for, for now anyway...

i see you are talking about FireWire 800 / 1394b. Would that effect capture speed from video cameras at all ?

Isn't DV Capture real-time? Does it maybe affect how fast the video plays while it's being captured?

Interface speed is irrelevant. Transfer/capture speed is governed by the DV camcorder and is realtime at 25mbs,way slower than either of the IEEE1394 interfaces. If these interfaces are used for external drives then it will matter though will always be what the devices on each end can operate at either burst or sustained. Keep all your OS and programs on a boot drive ( 80G is fine) but have seperate drives for you DV storage and temp files. Make sure that your NLE is set up to use the storeage drive for all its files as you do not want any interuptions while your editing. Windows accesses the boot drive all the time and this can cause problems if you store video on this boot drive. Ideally have more than two drives. I have a 40G boot, 120G for temp files ( for all my programs ) , several internal 200G drives for storage and some external drives for backup.

Ron Evans

Right now I have Windows, games, music and program files on a 50GB (for leisure) and then all my Editing/Post-Production software and business related documents on a 150GB drive named StormBreak Productions (my business) which I also use to store footage. I'll be getting a HDD upgrade in a bit, but should I not keep the post-production software on a drive separate to the 50GB (Windows) drive? I really don't feel like uninstalling/reinstalling all my software on the 50GB. That software only takes up 3.5gb though, so it doesn't really make a dent in the 150gbs.

Yes you could leave it there just make sure that the temp files are also on this drive and don't revert to the boot drive. You want to make sure that there are no video or temp files on the boot drive.

Ron Evans

Yeah, believe me, my editing lecturer has warned me time and time again NEVER to put footage on the OS drive. Does the NLE load up footage faster if it's on the same drive?

No, it doesn't matter where the program loads from. Load time will depend on the drive speed in the main. Speed matters when the PC has to play out the file. The processor has to read the file into memory and then play out to the interface. During this it is important that there is no OS interuption on the SAME drive( OS normally has a higher priority then an application and could cause an interuption especially if processor , memory and hard drive have marginal performance for video editing). As processors , memory and hard drives get faster this is becoming less important but could still cause problems on even a fast system. I have to repeat again to check that the NLE you are using has the temp/preview files assignment NOT on the boot drive. They can be on the video storage drive or dedicated drive just NOT on the boot drive. What NLE are you using?

Ron Evans

Don't buy a bigger HD now. Buy it when you need it. You are "just" a beginner, so you probably won't be making anything long in the near future, right? 145GB is PLENTY for shorts.

Well, a beginner in the business sense, not the actual filmmaking/videography regard..I'm planning on specializing in small-scale music videos though and imagine I'd need quite a bit of space for those.

I'm using Premiere Pro 2.0, my scratch disks are always set to the storage drive, but I was wondering if having the actual NLE on a separate drive to the data causes issues. Debating whether I should leave all my NLE software on the larger harddrive or move it to the boot harddrive.

As I said in my earlier post ideally keep program and OS on boot drive, storage on a separate drive and rendered/temp on another drive. Hard drives are cheap. When you go beyond this you could consider a RAID, but that is another topic.

Ron Evans