Any issues with capturing to external drive?

[akcorcoran]

Hi -

I am capturing camcorder tapes that aren't my own and was thinking I would capture them directly to an external hard drive (300 GB) - are there issues with this in terms of quality or speed? If I want to edit/work on one or several segments of the video I'd then pull them onto the hard drive but with 10 camcorder tapes (of mostly non-essential stuff), my hard drive is going to be cluttered and bogged down with her videos?

Is this a good or bad idea?

Thanks!
Alexa

[Steve Grisetti]

Nope. In fact, it's actually more efficient to capture to a second drive (interior or USB2 connected) than to your C drive.

Just make sure the drive is formatted NTFS rather than FAT32 (as they all are by default). FAT32 drives have a file size limitation that can disrupt a video capture.

[Chuck Engels]

And remember, you cannot capture from a Firewire device to a Firewire device, not usually enough bandwidth.
Camcorder connected Firewire, external drive connected USB2 will work as long as there aren't any other USB devices doing much.
I wouldn't start a 20 page print job with lots of graphics to your USB printer at the same time you are capturing

Still, you will have less issues or concerns if you capture to an internal drive, much more efficient anyway.
If you have two internal drives it is best not to capture to the primary drive where Windows is installed.

[Ted]

On a related note..

Are there any potential conflices or problems capturing to an external hard drive connected to my PC via eSata?

Thanks!

[Steve Grisetti]

I can't imagine there would be, Ted. SATA is about the most efficient way to connect several drives that I know of.

[akcorcoran]

hi -

I'm all over today! Sorry to bring back an old post but i'm back for a follow up question. So, I have a client who has about 8 VHS-C tapes (with multiple segments of content on each) and then 2 video tapes. She wants all the content on DVDs and in order by date for as many DVDs as that takes. To do that, I have to bring them all on to my computer or external HDD and then burn to DVD. Back to my original post, should I capture using my Canopus ADVC300 to my hard drive (has about 160 GB free) or go straight to external HDD (Western Digital My Book connected by Firewire 800 to my iMac, is 1TB but RAID so while it has about 609 GB free on it, I *think* with a RAID drive, you technically are backing up one side to the other, so it's really two 500 GB drives, leaving about 180 GB free on drive).

I know some of this depends also on the size of the files. If she wants playback on TV, then I need highest-quality capture, right? So, big files. Challenge is that she may want to make montages or other projects with the files once she sees them, so then I'm debating do I keep all the files until then, or just re-capture the one(s) I need.

thanks for your thoughts -
Alexa

[Steve Grisetti]

If the video is being fed through the same DV bridge, I can't imagine it makes any difference, quality-wise, which drive you send it to. It's still the same digital video data once it leaves the bridge, right? And it will be the same size (about 13 gigs per hour) no matter which drive you send it to.

[akcorcoran]

Awesome, thanks - and I didn't know the 13 GB / hour calc so that *really* helps for space planning!

OK, onward!
Alexa

[Chuck Engels]

You're looking at over 100gb of captured files if the tapes are full, and that is at standard speed not EPS.
Looks like you are running out of room on both the internal and external drives, might need a new one.

[akcorcoran]

ack - both are brand new! question is with the My Book, I have 600 GB available? am I right that I can only access half - or can I use one half of drive vs other?

I do have a Seagate Free Agent Drive on the network (connected to PC but on network) that has 400 GB free. Also have a Buffalo network drive with 300 GB on it but I'd never want to import to those over network. Could pull files there once I capture them, right? Argh - didn't want to have clients video all over though.

A

[Chuck Engels]

Are you sure that your MyBook is controlled by RAID and is a RAID 1 setup, mirrored?
I have never heard of mirroring a external drive to itself.
None of my external drives are RAID controlled and I didn't even know that I could do that.

[akcorcoran]

I don't know - maybe I misunderstood? i thought that's what the guy was saying that you basically don't run the risk that the external HDD will fail - but maybe he meant that you could access the data vs two different drives?

Here's specs:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR716 ... topSellers

I do notice that it says on the box that its' pre-configured for max capacity / speed (RAID 0) which gives you 1TB. says configurable for maximum data protection (RAID 1) which might be what the guy was talking about - and I don't think I set up...

not sure if I should go for the safety - or given it's two month old, go for the capacity. have i misunderstood? thanks!

[Bobby]

RAID is a way of connecting multiple drives, and there are a number of different RAID modes (configurations), by the number. 0 and 1 are not the only ones.

In the case of 2 drives, 0 and 1 are your only options however. 0 makes both drives work together as a single volume with all the capacity of both (i.e. twice a single drive). 1 mirrors instantaneously everything written to the primary drive on the second - it gives you some reliability (but not total reliability) but you only get 1/2 the storage equal to the size of only one of the drives.

Since you have already used it, I doubt that the package contains a utility to convert, so you are probably "stuck" with 0.

But 1 isn't the total reliability solution. if, for example, you erase a file it is gone from both - as soon as you erased it from the first, it was erased from the mirror. A good backup strategy requires multiple solutions.

[akcorcoran]

Ok, aside feeling like an idiot, now I understand a whole lot more! I do have multiple back ups for the essential things on there- from the My Book to the Buffalo or Seagate, as well as online back up for crucial files and my photography . I think if I pulled all the files off, I could reset it but not sure I want to if y'all are telling me that i need the space. This leaves me with 600 GB for usage (or at least temporary usage) for client's videos, right?

Thanks -
Alexa

[Bobby]

If you go to My Computer and right click on the drive and select Properties, it will show you the amount of used and available storage. This has nothing to do with RAID configurations - it will always show you the actual amount of storage you can use. If you had two 500GB in RAID 0, it would show 1,000GB (empty of course). If you used RAID 1, it would show 500GB.