storing video to edit it.

[ch4321_99]

Back to run of the mill questions for the moment. I am confused about how people manage to edit stuff on their PC. I believe that about 10 mins of digital video takes up about 20G hard drive space. How do you get to edit the whole thing? Do you:
1. Swap in 10 mins at a time, edit it, and swap it back out to the camera, swap in the next 10 mins, edit it, etc....

or

2. Is it possible to store up the entire film on say a DAT drive or something?

Cause at that rate, 3 hours of video is going to require about 360G of space just to store. What are people out there doing? My camera does not have DV In so I don't think I can go with choice 1 above - what are my other options?

[Eliud25]

Many people buy computers that have i-link(IEEE1394)already buit in which helps you edit you video movies easier. These machines are made by Sony(Sony Vaio), Apple(imac), Compaq(Presario 5686).Alot of other people buy editing appliances Casablanca, Screenplay, and now Panasonic has one,too. These editing appliances make editing easy because you don't need 1394(i-link)to make them work. You can store a whole 2 hour video movie in one of these machines. Many people go the other way. They buy a computer and then try to configure it so it can edit. It usually doesn't work because you have to have everything perfect like compression ratios,etc. Now people are starting to buy camcorders that have editing built inside. I think Sony has one that records on a mini-disc and Hitachi has one that records on a Dvd ram. If that fails due to money shortages you can always edit with a vcr and camcorder or not edit at all but let a professional edit it for little money.

[Matt J Heaton]

I don't think digital takes up that much space. I'm sure someone here will know.

[Matt J Heaton]

I think I remember it being about 10-12 minutes per Gig though I can't say for sure.

[marti-c]

I think 2.5gb gets about 20mins of digital video on a hard disk. as for the other problem of storage,nowadays you have to really just edit in 20 minute blocks.You should be keeping your original tapes as "rushes" and simply have a edit list set aside so if you need you can backtrack.

[tashunka]

I have a 6 gb drive with 4 gigs partitioned for video editing only. I can get about 20 mins of footage on their and leave room for rendering. It really depends on your capture card and the software you are using. I have a G3 and use Edit DV Unplugged. I've been using the quantum fireball ide hard drive so far without dropping a single frame. I am planning on purchasing a 20 Gig in the near future to allow me to use about 90 mins of footage and ample room for rendering and other things. This will probably run me about $350-400 Canadian.

You could use a DAT to back up but not to capture directly to. They are too slow.

[miker]

If you capture MJPEG, you can capture (if memory serves) with various levels of compression:

352x288 (VHS) - ~500K/sec

704x576 (very slightly below D1 broadcast res.) - ~1MB/sec

This includes uncompressed sound, on a Matrox RR-S.

Of course the more you compress, the more you risk blocky artefacting. A lot of the time though, you see it on the monitor, but not on an everyday TV when you dump it back to tape.

DV (i.Link, IEEE, FireWire etc) is I believe fixed at around 3MBits/sec.

Another consideration when working with Video for Windows (.AVI) is the infamous 2GB filesize limit. Still, if u capture slate-by-slate this shouldn't pose too much of a problem.

E&OE (!!)

[ch4321_99]

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I was a bit off in estimating how much space video takes up. I am getting a 30G external drive for my pc and based on your replies I think it should be OK!

[khan488]

I've editred a feature with adobe at home and I good estimate of the ratio would be 4 minutes per gig. I used a 3 gig hard drive and had no problems what so ever. I used a capture card and iLink. When editing it is best to just capture the images you are going to use and not the whole tape, segment it out. Also remember to defrag your harddrive regularly.

Good luck