external hard drives

[leslieb 0]

hey all, looking for some suggestions. I have a mac laptop, and will be traveling extensively for a year. I've discovered I'm gonna need an external hardrive. The compact sizes generally run 120G-160G. The "bigger" models run 350G-750G and a tetra-mother size. Is it realistic to expect that I will want all of my footage (raw and edited) stored on the drive requiring the super big one? Or, will I probably load on a few tapes, edit, use the footage and move on? I'm gonna keep all my tapes, but I may want to go back and use parts of the edited footage too. I'v ebeen shooting 3-5 hrs of footage a month. Any suggestions?

[PhreeZone 20]

What are your goals for the footage and will you be able to keep your tapes with you to recapture if needed?

I leave everything on tape until I need it then capture it, use it and delete it. I know others that keep everything and have 4-5 external drives sitting around so they can queue up the footage anytime if needed. The sweet point on pricing for drives right now is the 250-500 gig size. Thats the best size to price ratio.

Something to do right from the start is to accurately catalog every bit of footage as you capture it. This will save a ton of time as you are looking for one specific clip 6 months from now but have no idea which tape or file its in anymore.

A side suggestion is if you are going to be keeping your tapes with you get a good storage rack or box for them. I know some people use tupperware boxes but I perfer the DV tape racks like this one: http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/media-superstore_1972_6332446 They are neater and stack up really nice.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[DSE 5]

I use external HDD's for almost everything that isn't an uncompressed project. All my skydiving footage goes to an HDD the moment I'm off the jump, cataloged by:
Month
Date
Name/event

All stills are saved either immediately after the jump or at the end of the day, cataloged the same way in the same folders.
I used all of one 500GB drive from April-August, and have about 60% of another 500GB drive from August to present.
Phree is right about price, but also consider that the bigger drives are heat monsters that have a higher potentiality for failure.

[sinjin 0]

can you guys comment on whether you are using usb 2.0 or firewire externals... i am looking into buying one as well,, thanks dse for the note on the larger drives being subject to failure,, i had no idea..

p

dont let life pass you by

[leslieb 0]

Do you mean 'bigger' as the tetra drives or the 500- 750 size? I could see how a few 500's would be beneficial in case one fails you don't lose everything.

[DSE 5]

I use drives that are configured for both 1394 and USB2, for max compatibility. The studio/post systems we have don't care for USB (Avid doesn't approve of them) and so I need 1394 in the post rooms. At the DZ, I usually use a laptop and USB2. The MyBook, LaCie and Seagate (among others) offer both.
The bigger drives only have a higher propensity for failure, I've not had problems with them. However, heat kills HDD's faster, it used to be in years past, we'd keep SCSI RAID systems in wine coolers at 65 degrees for optimal operation. We no longer need to do this, but the axiom of "heat is bad" still applies. Big/multiple drives plus small, portable enclosures=heat.
Not to mention they're heavy as hell. I don't have a problem slinging my 500GB drives around in my backpack; they're reasonably light.

[Cashmanimal 0]

I have used many different EHD's and have had experience with the really high-end ones (including the one made by ferrari/ by a ferrari engineer?).

I have found that the MyBook is a FANTASTIC choice. It is very reasonable priced, comes in a very wide variety of sizes, and has a long warranty (3 years I think?). I use it with the Firewire 800 (which will be standard on your mac) and it is incredibly fast, almost as fast as the internal. Also, a little perk is the lighting on the front; it has two rings, one which indicates its current status (sleeping, thinking, awake....) and another which indicates how full it is. I never see it because it is stored away, but i guess the idea is good and fun. I have traveled with it and it does just fine.

In addition, it has firewire 400 and usb 2.0 ports so you can use it with any computer, and can also plug in multiple computers to the same drive (6 on mine I believe.....).

Some have said their experience with it was not so good... been using mine for about a year now, I love it. Just my two cents. Here is the one I use.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=12FAD2A7&fnode=home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/storage&nplm=TN907ZM/A

It's all fun and until someone loses an eye... then it's just a game to find the eye

[PhreeZone 20]

If you want a USB2 MyBook Microcenter has the 500 gig ones on sale until the end of the month for $129 with no rebates needed.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[The111 1]

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If you want a USB2 MyBook Microcenter has the 500 gig ones on sale until the end of the month for $129 with no rebates needed.

That place has very poor rating. Same drive is $139 on Amazon, with free shipping.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[dragon2 2]

I have a bunch of external harddrives, most of them the big ones but I've got 2 portable ones too. I find the portable ones come in very handy when travelling and when you only have one plug available, for your laptop. i'd buy both

As for firewire vs usb2, i used to buy discs with both but those are more expensive and I had some problems with the chaining (usually only 1 fw port available on a laptop) so now i just buy usb2. FW800 is cool but hard to use on a pc and you don't need it for capturing.
Usb2 is good enough, later this year we'll get usb3 which should be great too but for now i stick to usb2.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[PhreeZone 20]

I just walk into their store less then 15 minutes from my house to pick up what I want.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[The111 1]

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I just walk into their store less then 15 minutes from my house to pick up what I want.

Bad business is bad business, I wouldn't support them given the many people they've screwed (from reading the reviews). Plus you can still get screwed by a brick and mortar store. Imagine you get a new drive that is damaged and they refuse a simple exchange, forcing you to initiate a complicated and time-consuming warranty claim.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[PhreeZone 20]

They are a big box chain just like Fry's or Best Buy. If you don't want to deal with them it doesn't bother me but with 21 locations nationwide they are a store that beats a lot of chains in pricing all the time. I've returned over $1000 worth of computer parts with no hassle in the last 16 months. They are actually easier to deal with then Wal-Mart for returns. A lot of those reviews involve rebates. I had issues getting a rebate back also but it was the 3rd party fault, once I called Microcenter and informed them I had an issue I had money in had 2 weeks later.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[leslieb 0]

I'm going to be posting clips of edited footage on my website as I travel, and then make one big movie when I'm done. I'm going to keep a few tapes with me and send them to a friend in the US to store for me for when I get back in case I need them. I was thinking about saving the edited footage on disc and sending that back also, however, the apple people told me its better to import footage from tape, and maybe impossible (?) to import off of DVD.

[The111 1]

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the apple people told me its better to import footage from tape, and maybe impossible (?) to import off of DVD.

DVD can hold data like any other medium. I personallly use DVD-R for all my raw footage storage. I may be a minority, but I like the fact that the session is closed and the data cannot be deleted. I also burn multiple copies, because we all know that optical media can fail. In 5 years I will re-archive everything on whatever the new optical media standard is.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[Icon134 0]

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the apple people told me its better to import footage from tape, and maybe impossible (?) to import off of DVD.

DVD can hold data like any other medium. I personallly use DVD-R for all my raw footage storage. I may be a minority, but I like the fact that the session is closed and the data cannot be deleted. I also burn multiple copies, because we all know that optical media can fail. In 5 years I will re-archive everything on whatever the new optical media standard is.

I was thinking the same thing...

out of curiosity how much footage can you get on a single DVD? And what format do you use for the footage (avi, wmv, mpg, mov, etc)?

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[The111 1]

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out of curiosity how much footage can you get on a single DVD? And what format do you use for the footage (avi, wmv, mpg, mov, etc)?

Well, on a 4.5GB DVD I can usually fit about 4.5GB of data. Go figure.

Footage from my old HC90 captured RAW came in as AVI. From my new HC5 it's M2T (I think). In both cases, a rough estimate (I don't know where I got this from but it is in my head) is that ~13GB = ~1hour. So it takes about 3 DVD-R's to store an entire tape of raw footage. I also keep the tape, but it is nice to have an already captured version. Dumping a disc's content to my HDD for working with is much easier than recapturing from. I don't like dealing with tapes, and even though I have a nice big archive of them I have never dug into it, once. I get the raw footage from my DVD-R's in the rare occasion that I need it.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[Icon134 0]

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out of curiosity how much footage can you get on a single DVD? And what format do you use for the footage (avi, wmv, mpg, mov, etc)?

Well, on a 4.5GB DVD I can usually fit about 4.5GB of data. Go figure.

Footage from my old HC90 captured RAW came in as AVI. From my new HC5 it's M2T (I think). In both cases, a rough estimate (I don't know where I got this from but it is in my head) is that ~13GB = ~1hour. So it takes about 3 DVD-R's to store an entire tape of raw footage. I also keep the tape, but it is nice to have an already captured version. Dumping a disc's content to my HDD for working with is much easier than recapturing from. I don't like dealing with tapes, and even though I have a nice big archive of them I have never dug into it, once. I get the raw footage from my DVD-R's in the rare occasion that I need it.

Right... but of course you knew what I meant... thanks...

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[dragon2 2]

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the apple people told me its better to import footage from tape, and maybe impossible (?) to import off of DVD.

There are 2 types of dvd's you can make, and the playable kind is not good You want to burn a data dvd not a viewable dvd (viewable in a standalone dvd player that is). Burn the data as raw footage (that's .dv for mac dv, .avi for pc dv, .m2t for hdv - depending on the capture software used), do NOT convert it to quicktime/wmv/etc and the footage is just as good as the tapes are. Importing from a viewable dvd is much harder and the footage is very compressed so not good for editing later, that's probably what they meant.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[mccordia 74]

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do NOT convert it to quicktime

One some capture software/hardware, quicktime is actually the format in which is captured..

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[dragon2 2]

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do NOT convert it to quicktime

One some capture software/hardware, quicktime is actually the format in which is captured..

Just don't convert anything to anything and capture in the best possible resolution then

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[DSE 5]

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do NOT convert it to quicktime

One some capture software/hardware, quicktime is actually the format in which is captured..

Just don't convert anything to anything and capture in the best possible resolution then

In most cases, Quicktime conversion doesn't do anything to the media itself, it merely repackages it. Kinda like buying apples at the store and they give you a plastic bag, but you prefer paper. Moving the apples from the plastic bag to the paper bag doesn't affect the apples, only the container used for transport.