Audio & Video to Separate Hard Drives

[GordRocks]

I've been told that the best way to capture video is to capture the audio to one Hard Drive and the video to a different HD. I've been trying to figure out how to do that with Adobe Premiere 6.5 and also with VirtualDub but am having no luck at all. Can this actually be done or am I being conned. If it can be done can anyone tell me how to go about it? Any help would sure be appreciated. Thanks.

.....Gord

[wwaag]

Suggest that you don't buy a used car from this individual. But who knows--never say never.

For most captured AV files, the audio and video are interleaved into the same file. However, some DV editing cards require that the audio files be separated, e.g. an AVI and WAV file. I have a Matrox card for which this is the case. Although separate, I can't imagine that they be captured onto different hard drives. I've used both Premiere and Scenalyzer for capture and have never seen this as an option.

Recommend you don't worry about it.

wwaag

[Nelson37]

This can be done in Vdub but the only reason for doing this is to somewhat reduce the data flow to the drive, as a cure for dropping frames. If you're not dropping any then don't bother.

As I recall it was the "spill drive" option and required a small script.

[jdizzy40]

Yes you have been conned!

[Cornucopia]

No, you HAVEN'T been conned.

You just haven't been told the whole story...

Way back when, hard drives, busses, serial interfaces, and cpu's weren't as fast as they are now. It made very good sense to optimize the capturing and editing and replay of audio and video by doing one or more of the following:

1. use separate drives for audio vs. video
2. use striped pairs or quads(RAID 0 or similar) drives for video
3. use round-robin JBOD drives for multiple tracks of audio

This is still the default and preferred way that AVID's and ProTools work (and other similar machines). The biggest studios still do it this way.

Some things have changed:
AVI is a much more popular editing format than it used to be.
DV is a predominant stream type--and it keeps audio & video together.
Computers and peripherals have all gotten much faster. Also, some software now can gracefully skip frames when throughput gets bogged down, all without letting you in on its mistake.

So is it a bad idea? No, not if you...
1. can afford it
2. need the bandwidth
3. have software which supports splitting streams

If these don't catch your ear, think again, cuz if you ever want to move up to HiDef or many multiple tracks of audio or video (especially if you want them in Realtime), these requirements will come back to bite you in the ass. Do you need it right now? My guess is no.

The rest of the responders should do some homework before prematurely advising.

Scott

[GordRocks]

Thanks, Cornucopia

Does anyone happen to know whether this can be done in either Premiere 6.5 or VirtualDub. If not, what software could I use to do this?

.....Gord

[Cornucopia]

Thanks, Cornucopia

Does anyone happen to know whether this can be done in either Premiere 6.5 or VirtualDub. If not, what software could I use to do this?

.....Gord

Not at work right now, so can't say, esp about VDub, but Premier 6 has settings of where to store media files, and IIRC, has a line for video and for audio. could be changed in Pro 6.5, though. Personally, I DO use striped drives, but I don't have a separate JBOD for audio, at least on my DV workstation. So far not a single dropped frame. 8)

Try checking the manual...

Scott

[Nelson37]

Vdub does in fact offer this ability, "software raid". You need to write a small script, examples are given in the help file, you can create two simultaneous AVI files, (audio and video seperated would be the obvious choice) to two different drives. It works, I have used it.

If you are not dropping frames, then there is no good reason to do this other than to explore the possibilities.