How Big?

[Texas04]

Hey everyone, i'm probably going to buy a new intelpowerbook soon (at least i hope soon) and am wondering what size hard drive to buy.
I will be doing professional video editing on Wedings, Quinceañeras (i think thats how you spell it).
Im upping the hd on the Powerbook to 100 GB and 1gb of ram. But I want an external, the videos probably wont be longer than 2 hrs, so i was thinking 160GB or 300 GB firewire drive... what do you think?

 

[thomasp]

I'd have thought it's far too early to ponder over what size of HD to get for a computer that we don't even know when it's going to be released

Although, do remember that the bigger the hard drive, the more data you risk losing if it gets corrupted or dies.

 

[chopsuey158]

I would buy as big a hard drive as you can afford. You'll find that space dissapears quickly with music, games, movies, pictures, etc. Make sure to back everything up though.

 

[adk]

Just remember that DV takes up massive amounts of space, so you're going to need a ton of space - something like 13 - 15 GB an hour, which means the 160GB drive you're considering will only hold about 100 - 120 hours of DV. An average wedding would have at least 3 hours of unedited footage, maybe 5. If you're a serious video editor, you're probably going to need a least two 300GB drives (one for backup), and you'd also get much better rendering times with an Imac or a Powermac.

 

[Texas04]

Just remember that DV takes up massive amounts of space, so you're going to need a ton of space - something like 13 - 15 GB an hour, which means the 160GB drive you're considering will only hold about 100 - 120 hours of DV.

You are right but on average we will only do 2 weddings or quinces a month. (We arent a big company, just enough for some fun and profit) So, thats why i was leaning twords the 160 GB, because I wont be keeping much of it. And I know i could get better rendering on a better machine, but for my purpose I need a portable. Maybe when a little more money rolls in...

 

[adk]

You are right but on average we will only do 2 weddings or quinces a month. (We arent a big company, just enough for some fun and profit) So, thats why i was leaning twords the 160 GB, because I wont be keeping much of it. And I know i could get better rendering on a better machine, but for my purpose I need a portable. Maybe when a little more money rolls in...

Just make sure you back up. You don't want to have to explain to some psycho PMS bride that you lost the footage of her throwing the stupid bouquet.

 

[Lunja]

The trick we're being told at Uni is to do a paper edit first, so you watch the raw footage on a monitor, note the timecodes of clips you want to use, then put them into an EDL which you can make on Excel (I think) and then do a batch capture, and go off to let the software do it's job. This saves loads of time on the workstation (Meaning cheaper rentals if you're hiring a suite) and also means you digitise less footage, and therefore the risk of crashes isn't as high.

If you're going to take this on professionally in the future, it'd be worth buying multiple external HD's so that they can work as digital masters of your footage. Don't touch one again until the project is finished.

And the other golden rule we are taught- back up your work three times- once on the computer, once on an external HD, and once on DVD which is kept away from the office/workstation, in case of fire, flood etc. Don't know whether they were being over-protective there... lol

Good luck with it though. Keep us informed

 

[Texas04]

Lol I like the PMS bride thing, and the batch capture sounds cool, I might want to do some more of that. never tried it before,
and for "back ups" I'll have the original tape so all i will have to do is recapture... won't I? But yes I will probably use the PB itself for back ups, or the external HD for backups and the PB for the actual project im working on...