External Drives

[Steverup]

I have an external Western Digital 250GB drive which I solely use to store video on. Everytime I try to capture video to this drive, it drops frames. Now I am understand that external drives in general drop frames, so I guess I should capture directly to the C drive. But I do not want to store the video on the C drive forever, and when I try to transfer to the external drive from the C, Windows gives me a memory error.

Any recommendations?

Are there better, affordable external drives out there rather than the Western Digital that will NOT drop frames?

Thanks,
Steve

[ROF]

Any firewire drive will do.

[glenpinn]

hi there.

why are u trying to capture to your external drive in the first place, im not sure how u can be doing it, i cant do it on mine thats for sure.
its a good idea to have 2 seperate internal drives, one to capture and process on, the other a storage drive, and have an external drive as a second storage drive for backups as well (if u can afford it)
capture to your main hard drive first, process the video and burn it from that drive, then store the video onto your ext drive if u dont have another internal storage drive.
if your not going to edit, encode, author or burn straight away, store it on the ext drive until u need to process it, at which time u should transfer it back to your main drive.
i guess you have a usb ext drive, or is it firewire, or is it a combo, if its a combo, use the firewire option of transferring the data, more reliable than usb in my opinion.
i have a west dig 250gb 7200 8mb firewire ext storage drive as well for storing my dvd mpeg2 video files on and its as good as any other brand, but firewire connection is better than usb "IMO"
if your planning on storing captured video files without encoding them first, ur gunna need the 250gb capacity.
i have 2 drives in my pc, the main is a 160gb west dig 7200 8mb, the second is a west dig 250gb 7200 8mb, and i capture my dv to my main drive in raw dv-avi type 2 using DVIO 1.32 and when possible try to do my editing in that format, then I use tmpgenc xpress to encode it to dvd mpeg2. if im not authoring/burning straight away, ill store the file on my second 250gb west dig internal storage drive till im ready to author/burn with dvd-lab pro or tmpgenc dvd lab, ill then transfer a copy of the dvd mpeg2 file to the external drive as a backup to the copy on my second internal storage drive.
im veru cautious about hard drives. i always keep 2 copies of all dvd mpeg2 video files, and 2 copies of all my photo restorations as well, if one drive stuffs up ive still got the other as a backup and wont lose my files unless both storage drives go at the same time.

can i ask what sort of video are u capturing, dv, analog vhs etc and what is your capture method and how are you capturing to the ext drive, what connections are u using.
im very curious and im asking because theres no way i can capture to my ext drive even using my dv camcorder, my ext drive is connected to my pc using firewire cable, and there is no other connectors on the ext drive to hook up a dv camera, so it would be impossible on my ext drive to capture video and connect it to my pc at the same time, and it has to be connected to your pc to capture.

very interesting topic.....GLEN

[Redd]

I've been using a Western Digital 120 gig External Firewire drive for all video production that does include capturing, editing, and rendering. I use two different NLE's but capture only with Scenalyzer. Both NLE's are installed on the C:\ but all video work is done on the G:\ Ext. Firewire drive. DV is captured via firewire and analog is captured via Canopus ADVC-100. End result...I've never had any dropped frames capturing to the Western Digital 120 gig External Firewire drive.

[Steverup]

Hello:

I am capturing using a Camera as my source player (paying DVCAM tapes) and using Premiere as the software. In Premiere I can choose whatever drive I want to capture to so it is piece of cake to capture to an external drive, but if the video is longer than 2 minutes, I start to drop frames.

I have no problem capturing to my C drive, edit and author, but for storage reasons I always plan to move it to my external drive when done. This is my problem. Anything over 4GB, PC's won't allow the transfer. Supposedly, according to microsoft, 4GB is the limit, so I am never able to transfer the video off my C drive.

I am trying to figure out a solution. Because I have problem capturing to an external drive, I figured maybe there are much better external drive to choose from that won't drop frames.

Steve

[Redd]

Hello:

I but if the video is longer than 2 minutes, I start to drop frames.

How are you capturing? Via firewire?

This is my problem. Anything over 4GB, PC's won't allow the transfer. Supposedly, according to microsoft, 4GB is the limit, so I am never able to transfer the video off my C drive.

So it appears that your C:\ is already formatted to NTSF, but your external hard drive is FAT32, that's your problem with the 4gb limit. You can format your external to NTFS to correct that problem. Click here to see how. Another solution is to use Scenalyzer to capture. There's an option to capture to FAT32. Scenalyzer will automatically create multiple 4gig files for you as it captures to handle FAT32.

I am trying to figure out a solution. Because I have problem capturing to an external drive, I figured maybe there are much better external drive to choose from that won't drop frames.

I really doubt that the external hard drive is your problem...if it's a firewire drive. Check all of your connections and possible for a bad cable to the hard drive