How to set up computer for video. etc.

[tmh]

OK, bad news for me is that I'll be formatting my HD on my Laptop soon and starting from scratch. The good news is I can set it up how I want now that I spend lots of time screwing around with video projects.

P4, 2.6ghz, 516mb, 40 GB HD, firewire. XP Pro. This is a "desktop replacement" type laptop. I also use an external USB 2.0 160 GB HD and an External USB 2.0 Benq 1620 DVD writer.

My questions - if you were me how would you...

1. Partition the HD. How many and what goes where?

2. Which partition for Win XP pro? is it OK on the "D" partition instead of C? Should it be alone or should all programs be with it?

3. Keep the video editing/authoring/burning programs on a different partition than the captures and projects?

Any other tips or ideas are appreciated. I might as well have somne good come from my problems.

[reboot]

With only one hard drive, it doesn't matter.
If you had 2 hard drives, not just 2 partitions, THEN it can make a load of difference where stuff goes.

[edDV]

Even with one drive, I would separate a video capture partition and also put all scratch-tmp-video buffers there. That way you will minimize file fragmentation during capture and simplify defragmentation later. Also turn off system restore on that partition.

All single drive computers are subject to pixel to field dropouts if the OS or background processes take control of the single drive during capture or DV transfer. This should be managed.

[tmh]

OK, thanks. Sounds like it's not as useful as I thought to partition a single drive. I will follow the advice of using a partition for all the video files created during a project. I can defrag that drive partition a few time each week when i'm doing videos and I'll know where things are.

[FulciLives]

I tried to capture to a 120GB ATA-133 HDD hooked up to my computer (a screaming fast desktop) via USB2 (it was in an external USB2 enclosure).

It didn't work ... it couldn't "keep up" and I would get audio sync issues and after about one hour it started dropping frames BIG TIME.

I put the same HDD inside the computer and it captures A-OK now.

So a USB2 external HDD may not work for you.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[proxyx99]

Certainly a good point. In case of trouble, capture to sys drive and move to usb for storage/edits. Partitioning would only separate video files from possible OS activity (tmp stuff) related corruption. Good in the long run but since it is difficult to forsee your space requirements setting up partitions puts a limit on a max file size (in case of DV). If this is not a consideratio then 10/30, 15/25 split is generally a good idea. If the OS part. dies for some reason the other will be OK. Give it some thought.