External HD / large AVI question

[Dennuz666]

I just discovered (after 6 months ) i can connect my digicam to the firewire and capture super high resolution video without loss.

But for 10 minutes my AVI file is about 2Gb. My internal hd's are running out of memory and i'd like to capture a full 60 min. tape to HD. I don't have any IDE left so i thougth of an external HD USB2. I have one firewire port for the cam so it has to be USB2.

The question: a 4200 RPM USB2 external HD... do i get away with it or is the RPM to slow?

[The village idiot]

Firewire is looping. Any drive enclosure that you buy should have 2 firewire connectors on it, one to the computer, one to the camera. I suggest you get a firewire enclosure for a hard drive.

[Gees]

I use a Maxtor 80 gig USB2 drive for video only. Works great. And I can switch it between machines when I need to.

[Dennuz666]

OK. I'm thinking of a 40 Gb disk. But is the 4200 RPM enough to capture? Or do i have to go for a 7200 RPM HD.

[Gees]

No, definitely go with 7200 or you'd regret it. Smaller disc is fine, but you may regret that in future too. Go for as big as you can afford. If there's not too much price difference between 40-60-80.

If you haven't done much editing yet, you will be amazed how quickly you can chew through 40 gigs.

But for 10 minutes my AVI file is about 2Gb. i'd like to capture a full 60 min. tape to HD.

That's 12 right there, plus any other editing or converting you need to do, storing DVD folders (if you are making DVDs), etc.

[bugster]

Dennuz666, in many cases it is cheaper to buy a standalone external drive enclosure with firewire or USB2 interface and then buy a seperate HD to put in it than to buy one of the 'ready made' external HD's.

All it takes is a little knowledge (very little really) and confidence that you can put the two together. If you are able to install an internal HD, you can certainly manage this.

[lechtin]

I just got a laptop with a 4200rpm drive - forget it. I was amazed at how it actually slows everything down (i have used many computers with slower processors than the laptop and I'd swear they were actually faster)

I also agree that buying a stand-alone enclosure and a hard drive separately can be more practical. I just bought a ADS Dual-Link enclosure (both USB 2.0 and firewire) and would not trade it for a cheaper single interface model. Firewire is proven to be better for video capture and the USB interface makes it more practical if you want to use it with other computers.

[EwanG]

Something else you might want to consider are that you can buy firewire "bays" that allow you to swap HD trays.

So, for example, you get a Maxtor HD, buy a tray, and then lock the tray into the bay. You run out of room (or want to backup without tape), and you buy another HD and tray.

Am working with one of these right now, and outside of not being able to figure out how to pull off a hot swap (have to shut down and switch HD trays), it is working very nicely.

FWIW,
Ewan

[The village idiot]

If it is like 2000, go to the task bar, and in the right hand corner you will see icons for many things. Click once on the one that looks like a PCMCIA card with a green arrow above it. It will say"stopXYZ device" click on the device you want to stop, and wait for it to acknowledge that it is stopped. Then unplug the enclosure from the firewire, or turn the power off, change drives, turn power back on and connect firewire cable. Maybe there is a better way, but this one will do the trick. If you double click the icon, you will get a window with more info and options.

[The village idiot]

That's roughly from the windows help files

[ofbarea]

If you get an external firewire case, get something with oxford 911 chipset.

Depending on the OS, Service pack level, chipset of the firewire card, chipset of the firewire case, memory cache of the hard disk (in the external firewire case), you may run into problems when capturing from a DV camera to an external hard disk that is located in the same firewire bus. The video stream is sent at 25 MBs. Since the firewire bus (1394a - 400) has a bandwidth of 50MBs, the disk will get a maximum of 25 MBs. This is even lower transfer speed than a ATA-33 interface.

Still it could be enough for some setups.

[The village idiot]

I use an external all the time and it works great with the DV device looped off of the drive. It seems to work a litle like SCSI and the controller takes car of the data, doesn't seem to need a lot of help from the CPU once it gets started.

[ofbarea]

After having a better understanding of firewire cases, I think that the performance errors listed in my previous post were caused by very old firmware in the Oxford 911 bridge chipset and by improper settings.