HP Media Drives for video editing

[scubamickey]

Doesn anyone know if the HP Personal Media Drives are fast enough for video editing?

How much HD space does a typical 60 minutes of video from a Sony HC5 take up?

My computer has about 100 GB of free space and I'm trying to determine if I need a separate hard drive (or a media drive) to edit and store the video.

I haven't made any camcorder purchases as I'm trying to determine what the real, total cost of this hobby would be.

What are you all doing?

I have Ulead for editing, btw.

 

[H2O Photo Pros]

I do not know that drive itself, however make sure whatever drive you use is 7200 RPM. The best drives for video would be from G-technology These are designed for photographers and videographers. Ive been looking at them for years, numerous friends and customers have had them and always recommended them as well. They are reasonably priced, very reliable, and very quiet and fast. I spoke with the company last week at NAB and discussed some of their new products, very very nice.

 

[drbill]

I've used a number of 7200 rpm drives from Maxtor and Western Digital without any known problems related to the drives.

You should use a separate data drive to capture the video on, not the boot drive. I have five hard drives of 250 GB or greater in my computer in addition to my boot drive. Heck, they're all pretty full.

9 minutes of mini-DV video takes up 2 GB of storage. HD depends on the compression algorithm used, but I'm pretty sure MPEG-2 compressed HDV is comparable in storage requirements (anyone correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know about AVHCD compression.

 

[Mountain Dog]

I have over 3 Terrabytes of media storage in each of my edit rooms, all made by Lacie. I also have drives I use for long term media storage that are Western Digital. I don't have any G-tech drives, but their reputation is as good as any.

The key, as the previous posts noted, is to get a drive that spins at least at 7200rpm. I would reccomend against trying to use your computers internal hard drive for media. External drives are cheap enough these days.

As for the cost of this as a hobby, it's like scuba diving. If the question is , "How much is this going to cost?" The answer is "How much you got?"

Mountain Dog

 

[scubamickey]

Why the recommendation against using the internal HD? Mine is a 7200rpm running on a new computer with a 64x2 chip. Is it primarily because of the disk space required to uncompress the video and work space needed?

I have an additional port in my box that I can add another drive to for long term storage. Then I'll just get an external drive to do the editing. They certainly are cheap enough, you're right about that.

 

[scubamickey]

Oh, I came across this article on Gizmodo. Thought you all might get a kick out of it if you hadn't already seen it.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripher...d-enclosure-does-a-quick-three+way-251040.php

It's a 150 GB 7200 rpm external HD that is pocket sized. Seems like a great idea if you are traveling with your laptop and expect to need a bunch more space.

 

[Mountain Dog]

Why the recommendation against using the internal HD? Mine is a 7200rpm running on a new computer with a 64x2 chip. Is it primarily because of the disk space required to uncompress the video and work space needed?

I have an additional port in my box that I can add another drive to for long term storage. Then I'll just get an external drive to do the editing. They certainly are cheap enough, you're right about that.

You would be surprised how quickly you'll fill that internal drive. You would also be asking a lot of that one drive...it would have to run the operating system, your editing software and feed that enormous data stream we call video. That's really too much to ask. As cheap as externals are, there's no reason to tax that imporant "c" drive with so many responsibilities. Also, it just makes organizing your workflow a lot easier if your media is on a dedicated drive.

By the way, that port for the external drive has to be able to handle a high data transfer rate as well. The task is really beyond a standard USB. There are a number of set-ups I have seen in use. Firewire is by far the most common. SATA is an even faster option - but not very common among consumer level computers. It usually requires installation of a card in your computer to provide SATA ports.

Mountain Dog

 

[scubamickey]

Gotcha. My computer is set up for firewire so I will be using that. Thanks for the info. I appreciate the help

Irene