Firewire or USB DVD Burner and Ext. HD?

[scottallen]

Any help would be appreciated. I have a sony s260 laptop. I need to get an external dvd burner and a external hard drive that's faster and with additional storage space. I have 2 USB 2.0 connections and one firewire. The question is, what's the most effecient way to configure these so I can capture dv from my camcorder into the external hard drive and then burn it to DVD. What will put less strain on my computer? I have 512 megs of Ram and I believe it's a centrino 1.7ghz.

Thanks for any suggestions!

-Scott-

[piano632]

Firewire is faster and requires less CPU power than USB2.

[budz]

firewire has less compatibility issues than usb.

[dcsos]

Firewire is way better for burning
However, don't capture to an external Firewire hard drive while capturing over the same firewire port. Have 2 If you intend to do that (add another
port connected by a pcmcia CARDBUS adapter, not a firewire hub)

[scottallen]

Thanks for the advice...

What's the reasoning behind using the cardbus adapter? Is there a bandwith limitation with firewire?

So, assuming I am using the Cardbus adapter, I can capture dv to my external HD and correct my camcorder using the other firewire port. Then, after I've edited the footage (or whatever), I can unplug the camcorder and plug in the exteral DVD burner into that firwire port and burn a disk.

So in other words...pretend that I don't have the usb port, at least for video editing's sake...?

I'm just trying to get it right....Thanks for your help in pointing me in the right direction...

-Scott-

[dcsos]

if you don't want (or can't afford) the second firewire, the USB is ok for an external HARD DRIVE
this way capture over the FIREWIRE , burn over fiewire, but SAVE to USB HDD is fine..
In fact you can try both devices on firewire to see if you drop frames this way..It won't break the computer..try it DAISY CHAINED before you buy other stuff ....but likely you need one of the above..
HTH

[edDV]

If you do one thing at a time there is no problem. Capturing while burning is risky and needs detailed testing before you would trust data to this technique.

A USB2 HDD may give some isolation but is more CPU intensive and more subject to OS contention. This is a practical issue only if the external disk is used for realtime DV stream transfer.

PS: The safest technique is to "capture" (DV stream to a file) to a partition on the internal laptop drive and then copy the file to the external drive for storage. That way transfers to and from the external drive are under OS error correction control.

[TaoTeWingChun]

My setup:

HP Pavilion zv5430us laptop, AMD Athlon64 3400+, 1GB RAM, 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 IEEE 1394 FireWire port.

SONY TRV-350 Digital8 with Analogue/Digital passthrough

2 external WD 120GB 8MB cache drives in an external firewire enclosure

1 external USB 2.0/IEEE 1394 FireWire enclosure with NEC 3520A DVD+-R/W DL burner

My Use:

I daisy chain the TRV-350 to the external firewire enclosure and capture there for everything I need [be it analog-digital conversion or DV capture], never had a problem in over 1,200 hours of use.

After I process edit the raw video footage I encode to DVD standard NTSC video format and burn out on my NEC in its USB 2.0 case.

Now since FireWire is less CPU intensive, it's perfect for capturing all sorts of video, no problem.

And having my NEC 3520A in a dual format enclosure means that I can take it aywhere I might need it and I'm guaranteed it will connect somewhere.

Hope this helps!

TTWC

[scottallen]

Thanks for all the help! Greatly appreciated!

-Scott-