Hard Drive Size

[valeried]

I will be purchasing a new Dell PC. I want to capture, author, and burn video from my Sony DRV730 Digital HandyCam to DVDs that will be played on a separate DVD player. I will have two hard drives. What is your recommendation for the size of each hard drive? Also, is a 3 Ghz processor large enough, and do you have a recommendation for video-editing software? Thank you.

[Turtle49]

I have a 40gb (c) and a 160gb (d). But honestly I only use about 60gb on my D: drive for capturing DV from my camcorder and editing.
If you plan to have several projects going on at once go bigger.

Hope this helps

[DivXExpert]

DV video is about 220MB/min of video. You want to have at least double the space of the maximum amount of video you will have on the drive at a given time, for editing reasons. 3GHz is plenty fast for editing and capturing. Get yourself Adobe Premiere and your all set. You might also want to get ScenalyzerLIVE, automaticly separate one long dump of tape in to different clips, by detecting when you turned on and off the camera, as long as you don't break the timecode (which isn't all that important anyway).

[northcat_8]

I can only give you my system specs and explain why...

My system:

ASUS A7V333 MoBo (need to upgrade this)
2.2 AMD Athlon
1 GB of PC2700 DDR RAM
60 GB Western Digital Operating System Drive - NTFS format
120 GB Maxtor - NTFS format - output drive
2 - 80 GB Maxtors - Stripe 0 RAID array (160 GB) - NTFS format - Capture Drive

I capture to the RAID array because of the speed. My 2-80 GB drives in that array are 7200 rpm drives.

Like DivX said, you are looking at about 4 GB of drive space for 15 minutes of DV-AVI video. And you will need at least double that space to work with it, depending on what you are doing with it. When working with video you do not want to run low on disc space and you do not want to mess around with fragmentation on your HDs, you want them to operate as optimumly as possible.

[sammie]

I've got 3 160's and 2 120's. But I do this stuff A LOT . Seriously, no matter what you get today, it won't be enough tomorrow. I won't rehash all the discussion above, it's mostly accurate, but I would suggest getting the biggest drive your pocket book can afford. With the caveat, that drives are finally getting plenty big now. If you buy just behind the technology price break you get not only a significant savings, but in my experience a more reliable drive (or anything for that matter).

[Gazorgan]

I have 3 80's in my main machine (and GB ethernet, with about 1 TB total storage). They always seem full! I wouldn't go smaller than a pair of 120's, and a pair of 160's is a few dollars more (go with the 160's).

[louthewiz]

Why in the world are you going to buy a dell they suck!!! go to www.tigerdirect.com to get a better deal and also get a hdd at least 120 gigs and a 80 for back up and finally a dvd rom AND a dvd burner to releive stress on the burner because at that website you can get alot more for the same price and you can upgrade easy where with a dell you can only use their junk which has poor build quality

[indolikaa]

Why in the world are you going to buy a dell they suck!!!

Disagree.

go to www.tigerdirect.com to get a better deal

Most certainly disagree.

and also get a hdd at least 80 gigs

Agreed.

and a 20 for back up

Most certainly disagree.

and finally a dvd rom AND a dvd burner to releive stress on the burner

Agreed.

because at that website you can get alot more for the same price

Complete horseshit.

and you can upgrade easy where with a dell you can only use their junk which has poor build quality

Piled higher and deeper.


ValerieD,

Let's try this again, shall we? I'll leave the emotional dribble out and focus on the issues at hand and how to achieve the end results.

1) A 3.0GHz processor is excellent, even if you choose the DV.avi to MPEG-2 encoding route. Stick with this choice.

2) You can never have too much hard drive space. Since you will be using DV.avi video (based on the camcorder you've described) you will need 1GB for every 5 minutes of video you downlink. Double that if you choose to edit in the .avi realm, which I would. A separate drive for capturing the DV.avi files is an excellent choice. I would shoot for nothing less than 120GB per drive, if you can.

3) As for software? Ah, there are so many choices. I went the freeware/payware route: WinDV for capturing, VirtualDub for editing, TMPGEnc for encoding, DVD-lab for authoring and burning. Others here might recommend Ulead, or Sony, or Adobe software. I don't think you can go wrong either way but try to stay away from Special Edition and bundled DVD authoring software! They have a nasty habit of transcoding into less-flexible DVD options.

.indolikaa.

Dell? A good machine but not for the techno-geek.
TigerDirect? Having had an open account until I closed it because they couldn't fill 37% of my orders over a 1-year period, I think I'm entitled to pass judgement. And their rebate performance?

[gmatov]

Office Max, this week, 120 gig WD, 7200 RPM, 40 bucks after rebate. Almost bought one, but small, even for the price. Still, 33 cents a gig? Be damned if I'd buy Dell's second drive, at their price. If you have a relative you trust, get 2, 3 even, have them send in the rebates.

You play with this stuff, you're gonna wish you had more. My 160s are too small. But, having fewer, larger, drives risks losing more data if 1 larger drive dies.

Next 250 comes up reasonable, think I'll get it, or 2. One of the kids could always use a 60 or 80, free up an IDE for the new one.

Cheers,

George

Indolikaa, disparaging education, are we? "Horse Shit", or Bull Shit", shortened to BS, "Piled Higher and Deeper", is that a PHD?

[northcat_8]

Pretty much what Indolikaa said.

Just wanted to add something.

Since you are buying, make sure you get at least 512 MB of RAM. Go 1 GB or as high as you can without breaking your bank. You can never have TOO MUCH hard disk space or RAM.

And on the software issue, to go into the purchasing of software can get pretty pricey make sure you research the software pretty good before you buy it. I would play around with the freeware stuff until you know what you are doing and have a better than good idea of what you are wanting to do.

Priced at Adobe.com -

Adobe photoshop - $649.00
Adobe Premiere Pro - $699.00
Adobe After Effects - $699.00

Total = $2047.00

That's a few new computers. Now the Adobe softwares are more expensive than most but you get the idea. You don't want to buy it and then not want it.

I also think the Dell is a very good computer. Where I use to work, they only bought Dell Computers and they were very reliable. I don't have one, I built my own computer piece by piece....never thought of myself as a techno-geek but apparently I am...

[indolikaa]

Indolikaa, disparaging education, are we? "Horse Shit", or Bull Shit", shortened to BS, "Piled Higher and Deeper", is that a PHD?

By George he got it!

Don't forget MS: More of the Same.