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Speed of hard drive up against HD footage
In my motion graphics class this semester, we will be working with some HD elements to finish up lower thirds, segment titles, etc etc etc in After Effects.
The documentary itself is in HD, consequently so must the graphics be. I recently received a 1 TB hard drive as a gift, but the problem is, it’s a MyBook home edition. It only comes with a USB 2.0 port. For the LIFE of me I cannot figure out WHY it only has that, but I am satisfied because it holds so much.
My teacher today told me that USB 2.0 will not be fast enough to handle all of the HD workload going in and out of the drive. Since i will need to work directly off of the drive, speed is important.
Question – Is USB 2.0 *really* too slow to handle a 30 fps, 720p composition? Any way to make it work?
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1 Reply
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The drive will handle the load just fine. After Effects is not a playback environment, you’re not editing, you just creating and then rendering files.
If you need to view your HD content real time, you will need RAID or proprietary cards. Your professor needs to be VERY specific about the formats he expects you all to be using. The school should be providing the resources required to do the editing. Demanding you provide your own multi-disk, multi-thousand dollar RAID is unconscionable.720p is not very demanding but the issue is that USB is not designed for continuous data streaming. USB ships in packets and allows long waits for other traffic or CPU activity. That makes video playback choppy and unreliable.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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