Basic Questions

[Shane Ross]

1. DVCPRO HD. Either 720p or 1080i or 1080p

2. Depends on a LOT of factors. 720p at 23.98? 29.97? 59.94? 1080p 24? 1080i 29.97? That camera shoots 81 different formats, and they all have different storage requirements. Go to http://www.aja.com and download the DATA RATE CALCULATOR and you will see how much each of the various formats takes up storage wise.

3. Internal SATA drives? Yes. Not the system drive, but separate drives, yes. Firewire 400? 720p 23.98…yes. 720p59.94…pushing it. Firewire 800 drives are better, raided ones even better (Firewire VR, G-Raid, Mercury Elite Pro), eSATA drives best.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Kat Hayes]

I am currently using internal SATA drives in my Macpro and a few G-Drive FW 800 500GB drives. I will have access to the HVX soon and want to shoot in the highest possible quality and downconvert most of it, but keep the masters in the highest quality possible.

1. Is there any reason why I would not be able to work with footage on one of these external drives with a Macbook Pro?

2. How does someone without an expensive tape backup system archive lots of HD video? I currently have three 500 GB drives in my macpro, and have no idea how much HD that will store, (I will check your link) and three external 500GB G-Drives.

Thanks for your help!

[Kat Hayes]

I am currently using internal SATA drives in my Macpro and a few G-Drive FW 800 500GB drives. I will have access to the HVX soon and want to shoot in the highest possible quality and downconvert most of it, but keep the masters in the highest quality possible.

1. Is there any reason why I would not be able to work with footage on one of these external drives with a Macbook Pro?

2. How does someone without an expensive tape backup system archive lots of HD video? I currently have three 500 GB drives in my macpro, and have no idea how much HD that will store, (I will check your link) and three external 500GB G-Drives.

Thanks for your help!

[Shane Ross]

[kat.hayes] “1. Is there any reason why I would not be able to work with footage on one of these external drives with a Macbook Pro?”

None at all. Just, if they are the NEWER G-Raid 2 drives (using SATA drives) you cannot daisy chain them. Performance drops from 65MB/s to 16MB/s when you do that. Shame…the first G-Raids (with IDE drives) didn’t do that. But, if you use them one at a time, they are great. The Firewire VR from CalDigit doesn’t suffer this daisy chain issue

[kat.hayes] “2. How does someone without an expensive tape backup system archive lots of HD video?”

I backup to bare internal SATA drives that I connect with a USB>SATA adapter. But I am looking to other solutions like BluRay for archiving P2.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Kat Hayes]

1.) How can I determine if I have the older or newer G-RAID drive? It does not seem to have “2” on it.

2.) How does the performance drop from the newer drives affect what you can and can not do with them? How does the drop from 65MB/s to 16 affect the editing process?

3.) What do you need a USB>SATA adapter for if the drive is already internal?

Thanks!

[Shane Ross]

ALWAYS gonne be 3 questions? Ha!

1. When did you buy it? The receipt should say G-RAID 2 or something. If it was within the past year, it is a G-Raid 2.

[kat.hayes] “2.) How does the performance drop from the newer drives affect what you can and can not do with them?”

The lower the data rate, the lower the performance. At 16MB/s, you can really only do DV and HDV…and you’ll be pushing it. 65MB/s gets you DVCPRO HD, Uncompressed SD formats.

[kat.hayes] “How does the drop from 65MB/s to 16 affect the editing process?”

Less RT effects, less realtime streams of playback (layers of video at the same time), less options of what format of video you can edit. Limited formats.

[kat.hayes] “3.) What do you need a USB>SATA adapter for if the drive is already internal?”

I don’t archive to my internal drives. I used them to store the media I am currently working with. I use the adapter to backup the CONTENTS folder and LASTCLIP.txt file…the original data from the P2 card…and archive. I put it on a shelf. Since the MXF files are the master tapes.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Rennie Klymyk]

[Shane Ross] “That camera shoots 81 different formats”

Wow! I’m surprised Panasonic didn’t use this tidbit in their HVX200 introductory ads.

“everything is broken”

[Shane Ross]

That is something they touted last year at NAB. It might be buried in the literature.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Randy Burleson]

Shane,
Tell me more about using Blue Ray for Archiving.
I haven’t made the jump to P2 yet but I am about to and my concern is a viable archiving solution.
Burning everything to Blue Ray would be an extra step = more time to archive than just putting the hard drive on the shelf.
But, I suppose the cost factor and reliablity factor come into play.
What are your thoughts? What are the Pros and Cons to Blue Ray vs. putting a FW Drive on the shelf?

[Barry Green]

Blu-ray works; it’s just a large optical disc format.

Pros are that the discs have decent capacity, should be permanent storage, and are fairly inexpensive.

Cons are that writing to Blu-ray is quite slow; it’ll take about 90 minutes to archive an hour’s worth of footage. And the discs are very expensive on a per-gigabyte basis when compared to data tape (like LTO2 or LTO3 or DLT).

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