Hard Drive question

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I know it's important to keep your drive defragged if you use it for capture.
And I know you need a fair amount of space for capture.
I always defrag my drive before I begin a capture (& NOT with that crappy defrag proggie that's built into Windoze).

I haven't stepped up to SATA yet, and don't plan on it until the price of the 10,000RPM drives drops to the realm of reason.

So, for the time being, I'm stuck with ATA/133 7200RPM drives.
My question is: What's a good size for a drive you're gonna use for capture? Can a drive be too big to be used optimally for capture (too large = too much delay &/or resulting dropped frames)?

One of my hard drives (an OLD 80G) is on it's last legs, and it's time to replace it.
I'm using a 160G drive for my captures, would a smaller or larger drive give me better results?

TIA!!

[Xylob the Destroyer]

here's the drive I'm considering to replace the dying 80G
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100702-1

[reboot]

Can a drive be too big

Never. Keep it defragged, and fill it up!

[Bodyslide]

Here's another good deal.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001407XU/ref%3Dnosim/bensbargaicenter/002-5641192-1630448

[Richard_G]

I've got the 200GB version of the Maxtor Diamondmax Plus10, 'kin brilliant drive. Fast and quiet but by the time you've formatted it, it's only 189GB. But as all drives are quoted as unformatted sizes (to make them appear bigger) I can't complain - until I'm 11GB short of space of course!

[Xylob the Destroyer]

Bodyslide: "I/O data transfer rate - up to 100 Mbps". I prefer to stick with the 133 drives. Other than that, you're right, that's a phenomenal deal on a 200G drive.

So, increasing or decreasing the size of my capture drive won't have any sort of impact on the quality of my captures??

[reboot]

So, increasing or decreasing the size of my capture drive won't have any sort of impact on the quality of my captures??

Nope. Quality is dependent on bitrate, and aspect ratio size, not hard drive size.

by the time you've formatted it, it's only 189GB

Most manufacturer's use 1000 bytes per K, 1000k per MB, and 1000MB per GB. In the real world (a computer) 1k is 1024bytes, etc.
It's all a marketing scam.

[SLK001]

Most drives today (7200RPM) are fast enough to keep up with any video capture you might want to do.

I use a 160GB drive that I use for capping and I don't defrag it all that often. But I DO dump cap files that I no longer need.

[mstone321]

If you have a dedicated drive (or drive partition) for capturing just do a "quick" re-format from time to time to keep it fast and furious for your
capturing pleasure.

matt

[Xylob the Destroyer]

...I use a 160GB drive that I use for capping and I don't defrag it all that often. But I DO dump cap files that I no longer need.

yeah, most of my caps are deleted within an hour, because I run 'em through VirtualDub to edit and/or compress as soon as I'm done capping
pull 'em from the capture drive through VirtualDub and output to another drive so VDub isn't trying to read from and write to the same drive all at the same time

[ktnwin]

The size of the hard drive for capturing really depends on what you want
to do with it.

Do you always capture about 2 or 3 hours of DV video then edit/create DVD ? or you tend to work with much larger projects ( 6, 10, 12 hours of DV video).
Chances are you won't need more than 6 hours of DV video for one DVD project. One hour of DV needs about 13GB

For example, if you need to work with video about 6 hours long, then 6x13 = 78GB plus some working space for editing/authoring DVD, I would say 120GB is plenty for that purpose.

[SLK001]

One hour of DV needs about 13GB.

Only with a LOT of compression!

[Richard_G]

For example, if you need to work with video about 6 hours long, then 6x13 = 78GB plus some working space for editing/authoring DVD, I would say 120GB is plenty for that purpose.

It probably is, but if you can get a 160GB for only slightly more and a 200GB for only slightly more than that, why bother with a 'little' 120GB (I replaced my 120 with the 200!!).

I think the Maxtor big drives are almost unique in being UDMA133, most other manufacturers big drives are UDMA100, the Seagate definitely is. The others are quite fast enough but the little extra speed it gives may be worth it one day. Maxtor also claim that the Plus10 series drives are optimised for video and multimedia. Quite what that is supposed to mean, I have absolutely no idea (does it mean the other drives aren't so drop frames deliberately?), but. like I say, mine does the job perfectly.

[Richard_G]

One hour of DV needs about 13GB.

Only with a LOT of compression!

Huh?? DV, Digital Video from a camcorder or Canopus or similar is 13GB per hour without ANY compression (other than what was done in the camcorder).

By the way, you know what they say about hard drive space? It's like memory and money, you can never have too much.....

[Skith]

UDMA133 is a joke, it is 99% marketing. No single drive will ever come close to that, even on "burst" transfers. You *might* with a multiple drive RAID setups under specific circumstances. UDMA100 is plently fast for video capture and editing.

Don't be mislead by marketing hype.

[SLK001]

One hour of DV needs about 13GB.

Only with a LOT of compression!

Huh?? DV, Digital Video from a camcorder or Canopus or similar is 13GB per hour without ANY compression (other than what was done in the camcorder).

By the way, you know what they say about hard drive space? It's like memory and money, you can never have too much.....

Depends how you capture it. If you capture at 720x480, it will be:
720x480x3x30 bytes per second, or about 30MB per second. Multiply that by 3600 sec/hour and you are talking a "lot" of space.

[Richard_G]

You're getting bits and bytes mixed up. Not only that, you do not capture DV, you TRANSFER it via Firewire. Anything else, isn't DV. As you rightly say though, the size is around 30 Mbits per second but that is 3.7 Mbytes. 3.7 x 3600 = 13,500 Mbytes AKA 13.5GB.

In saying that, he never mentioned DV at all in the OP, that was mentioned by someone else later in the thread so it's all pretty academic anyway!

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I usually capture 30 or 60 minute TV shows and also am backing up my library of VHS.
BUT, I capture YUY2 with no codec ("uncompressed" if you will) and 30 minute TV shows are about 17G each.

[WiReTaP]

I have a Western Digital 200GB 7200RPM ATA133 drive in my home theater pc and it works great. I capture 2hr movies with no problem. It all depends on how well you build the computer and if the capture device is compatible with the motherboard chipset so the data flows well.

[edDV]

I usually capture 30 or 60 minute TV shows and also am backing up my library of VHS.
BUT, I capture YUY2 with no codec ("uncompressed" if you will) and 30 minute TV shows are about 17G each.

What is your capture device? Thats alot of capture and CPU work for a VHS souce. What benefit do you get vs a single pass MPeg2 real time encode (e.g. a PVR 250 or Mainconcept SW encode)? Maybe your CPU can't handle it but that sure seems like alot of useless number crunching and disk space. VHS is bandwidth limited. After Y/C separation, you don't need to cap full luminance bandwidth.

17GB / 30min = is still around 9MB/sec *
This is still well within the specs of a 5400RPM drive so don't waste money on 10,000 rpm drives.

SATA is not really faster for single drive capture. The transfer limit is the physical drive, not the interface. Don't waste money there either.

* about the same as the older MJPeg capture cards like the DC30+

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I've never tried to capture mpg.....
the CPU doesn't seem to have any problems handling it -- i usually only get 1 or 2 dropped frames per hour, not bad compared to what I've read on these forums

I'm currently running a 7,200RPM drive, so thanks for the heads-up on the 10,000RPM drives.
Though, I'll probably get one eventually anyway. I'm just waiting for the prices to become reasonable.