External HDD and Video Capturing

[technext]

Howdy all,

I have a naive question regarding external HDD & video capturing. Please help me out with it.

I just bought a Maxtor 100 GB internal ultra ATA/133 hard drive solely for the purpose of video editing. I would like to purchase an enclosure for it and use it as an external hard drive with my Dell 600m Inspiron laptop which has a 60 GB HDD.

I was looking for an enclosure for this Maxtor HDD, and was confused as to which one should I buy - USB 2.0 OR firewire OR USB 2.0/firewire combo interface, so as to avoid dropping video quality while transferring/capturing/copying from my camcorder to the external HDD.

The enclosures with USB 2.0 are considerably cheaper compared to the ones with the firewire or combo interfaces.

I was thinking of transferring videos this way -

First method: Connect my camcorder with my laptop using a firewire cable and then connect the Maxtor HDD with my laptop again with a firewire cable.

Second method: Connect my camcorder with laptop using firewire cable and then connect my Maxtor HDD with laptop using a USB 2.0 cable.

Will there be any frames drop (quality drop) if I go by the second method. If the second method gives results as good as the first method, I can go ahead and purchase an enclosure with a USB 2.0 interface and save some $$.

Also, I was confused about chipsets? What are they and how essential are they when considering purchase of an enclosure for the HDD for the purpose of video editing.

Can somebody suggest me some good deals on enclosures ?

Your help will be really appreciated.

Thanks.

[FulciLives]

My (limited) experience is if you want to capture to an external HDD that you should be using FIREWIRE.

I tried it on a VERY fast computer with a USB 2.0 external HDD and had no luck.

So either get a USB 2.0/FIREWIRE external or just FIREWIRE but don't get just a USB 2.0 external.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[edDV]

Method 2 is more risky for camcorder DV transfer than Method 1* and Method 1 is more risky than transferring the camcorder DV stream first to the internal notebook HDD.

Once the file is under control of the OS, that is after the stream is transferred to a DV-AVI file, OS error correction will allow lossless copies to and from the external drive.

* this is because the USB2 HDD driver is CPU intensive and CPU activity causes DV stream data drops. The DV stream coming from or going to the camcoder is not a file transfer. It is a continouous stream. If the CPU takes control of the PCI bus, DV stream data can be lost.

The most reliable DV transfer is done to the internal drive with minimal simultaneous CPU process activity. In this mode PCI bus contention is minimal as the IEEE-1394 port pages data to the internal HDD controller.

[guns1inger]

Personally, I wouldn't transfer directly to an external drive, as although the speeds on paper all look fine, I suspect you will have nothing but trouble trying to sustain an uninterrupted transfer rate.

Theoretically, USB2.0 is faster than firewire. In practice this is rarely the case, with firewire often coming out in front.

Unless you are transferring huge amounts of data at once, I would set aside (or even partition off) a section of the 60GB internal drive for transferring to, then copy from there to the external for editing.

But that's just me.

[slacker]

I transfer DV video from a camcorder through my laptop via 4-pin to 4-pin firewire to my usb 2.0 connected external Maxtor 300 gb 7400 rpm hdd. Works fine as long as I'm not playing around with 5 other programs at the same time!

[redwudz]

I would go for a combo Firewire/USB 2.0 external box. Just a few dollars more, but you cover all possibilities. I use a small combo external hard drive with my laptop and the Firewire has always worked, but the USB has been problematic. Still, it's nice to have the USB option when you need to hook it to a computer without Firewire. No recommendations on brand name of external cases, just go with a well known brand.

Firewire PCMCIA cards are mostly all the same, about any will work.

[edDV]

I agree a separate partition on the internal 60GB drive is a good strategy to keep HDD fragmentation under control.

Also turn off antivirus and other backgound processes during transfer for highest reliability.

[trhouse]

My own experience is a bit different. I used to use an Adaptec USB2 capture device (AVC-2200) with an old laptop ( 650 MHz ). It only has a 6 GB hard drive but it has few software titles on it. It is a Windows Me operating system product with a maximum file size of 4 GB, enough to capture one title.

I bought an 80 GB Western Digital external USB2 hard drive for it. The laptop had to be retrofitted with a D-Link USB2 pcmia card but no problems were ever had capturing to that drive.

The drive itself was a problem though. The first one failed within 60 days, the replacement within 30 days. The third had the same model number but it was in a different style enclosure. That one has been flawless. The failed ones seemed to spin up fine but there was no communication with the laptop so I can understand your concern about the chip set. I do not know what they used in those first two units but it was bad news.

As suggested by others above, I never used the laptop for other purposes while it was capturing.

[edit] I once had a fax program on this laptop. If it answered the fax while capturing, the capture would fail.

[technext]

Thanks,

FulciLives, edDV, guns1inger, slacker, redwudz, trhouse

Your help was very insightful.

After reading your opinion I plan to partition my 60 GB hard drive and also consider turning off the other programs while capturing the video.

Also, I have ordered another 320 GB external hard drive with a USB2.0/Firewire combo interface. It should be arriving soon !

Peace.

[redwudz]

Sounds like a good setup. I never had any problems capturing to my internal laptop drive. Only the external, but that may be peculiar to my setup. You shouldn't have to turn off that many programs to transfer DV.

I never turned off any. Only a few programs such as some antivirus programs are reported as interfering. You can monitor what programs are running with Task Manager. When you find the right combo, you should have no problems.

One thing about DV transfers, you should drop zero frames. If you are, then change your setup. Hopefully, you can transfer directly to an external drive with no problems. I was able to transfer with Firewire, then port that via USB to my external drive. But I have an older laptop and a very cheap Firewire PCMCIA card.

Anyway, Firewire just works better. USB can be interrupted by another device on the USB bus. Firewire does not seem to have those problems.

[edDV]

It should work fine but every month people post here about dropped frames with DV transfers to single HDD notebooks and desktops.

The suggestions above limit the frame drop risk and have seemed to help others correct their problems.

Best solution is to transfer to a desktop computer with a separate video capture drive and a separate disk controller. That way the DV transfer continues even when the OS accesses the main drive for other processes. PCI bus mastering allows both processes to share the bus.