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The new IMAC + external HD + capturing video
Hi there. I have just upgraded to a new iMac which doesn’t have half of the connectivity my G5 had 🙁 I therefore find myself with a dilema… If I need to use an external HD via the Firewire 800 socket on the back of the iMac, how do I capture video onto it? I don’t really want to capture to the Mac’s internal drive, as I will quickly fill it up, although I could copy the videos across once captured…
Aside from having to buy another new cable is there a way of getting round this please?FYI, I am using a Western Digital ‘MyBook’ external drive with Firewire 800 connection.
Thanks very much for any help and advice you can offer.
Phil
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30 Replies
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use an external drive w/two or more FW ports then daisy chain your camera or whatever through that.
Moto Guzzi rider
dog lover w/wife, Ex & 3 kids -
[Brad Kopp] “use an external drive w/two or more FW ports then daisy chain your camera or whatever through that.”
Thats like connecting two hoses onto the same connection, sure it might work ok but nether hose will work as well as if it was connected by it self.
I would recommend getting a raid that connects via the ethernet port. (its like connecting the second hose to a different part of the house)
There have been many posts already about this with the new 27″ iMacs here on the cow. If you have more questions Im sure a search with answer them nicely.
There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
I know a lot of people will disagree, quick and dirty but no so bad, cheap too: Use a high capacity (2TB) USB Hard Disk. Make sure that is 7200RPM. USB is 480Mb/s Vs. 800Mb/s of Firewire 800 but both have protocol, 8b/10b encoding etc. One is better for certain aspects the other one for others. I would prefer this to a LAN HD. A LAN HD is fundamentally a server with the extra overhead. 1Gbit LAN also has its inefficiencies. I didn’t check the imac, I assume it doesn’t have a eSATA port. Too bad it would have been the best. I do run an external eSATA box with 5 hard disk striped and it is really fast & cheap.
Gabriele – California
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[Phil Wickham] “If I need to use an external HD via the Firewire 800 socket on the back of the iMac, how do I capture video onto it?”
If you have a FW or FW VTR, then you simply connect that to the back of your FW 800 drive.
You can also look into ethernet connected media storage devices like we run here. We have a 16TB Final Share SAN that is connected to 6 workstations, including 3 iMacs. We can edit 1080i ProRes all day on the iMacs without using the FW ports.
[Phil Wickham] “FYI, I am using a Western Digital ‘MyBook’ external drive with Firewire 800 connection.”
FYI, a poor choice of media drive. You can use this for backup, but I would recommend something more video centric for editing like the G-Tech, OtherWorld Computing and such.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
[Gabriele Sartori] “Use a high capacity (2TB) USB Hard Disk. Make sure that is 7200RPM. USB is 480Mb/s Vs. 800Mb/s of Firewire 800 but both have protocol, 8b/10b encoding etc”
Yep, we’re going to disagree. USB cannot provide the same sustained throughput of Firewire. USB is good for bursts of data, but if you are trying to play back a full show of video, I would never trust USB to play without dropping frames.
USB 3 looks promising, but I would not recommend USB at this time for video editing.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
[walter biscardi] “USB cannot provide the same sustained throughput of Firewire. USB is good for bursts of data,”
Walter
There are very good reasons for you to be right. Things though changed quite a bit and I believe that USB is surrounded by a lot of old prejudice. Let me explain my view :
A 2TB HD has a huge sequential transfer rate. More than USB and FW800. Both these links have about >30% inefficiency due to the protocol on the wires and their own protocol. It means though that about 35/40 MB/s are still available from USB. Disk speed must be considered as sustained random access and one of these new HD will saturate the USB even in this condition. For these reasons you can reach pretty much the theoretical limits of USB2 a thing pretty difficult in the past. About burst Vs. sustained for the USB itself we have to agree to disagree. In a modern, well implemented USB2 link there is no reason why it should not be capable to give a adequate sustained T/R if the source (the disk) can provide it. In my opinion MANY of the negatives of USB are due to his history but aren’t true anymore. Also I’d like to remember that until recently most of the people using FW on the mac (including myself) was relying on FW400 that isn’t any faster than USB2 with a good, fast HD, with 32MB of buffer available today. I’d suggest to give it a try.Best regards (and it’s always a pleasure to learn from your big experience in video editing. I’m just a computer guy that spend his money trying to kill his weekends on FCP)
Gabriele – California
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[Gabriele Sartori] “There are very good reasons for you to be right.”
Walter IS 100% right on the issue, no need for you to argue it.
[Gabriele Sartori] “Things though changed quite a bit and I believe that USB is surrounded by a lot of old prejudice”
Umm nope USB technology has NOT changed, that will happen with the release of USB 3.0 which is NOT available. USB 2.0 while yes the speed of it would be fast enough for video, the FACT that it works in bursts of speeds makes it impractical for sustained data rates.
[Gabriele Sartori] “Disk speed must be considered as sustained random access and one of these new HD will saturate the USB”
Sorry but while yes the hard drive itself can sustain speed the USB enclosure cannot.
[Gabriele Sartori] “About burst Vs. sustained for the USB itself we have to agree to disagree.”
So your going to disagree with science, with the industry standerd as to how USB works.
[Gabriele Sartori] “In my opinion MANY of the negatives of USB are due to his history but aren’t true anymore.”
No they are to to the technical limitations of USB.
There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
I too had this disdain for USB as a media drive. Depending on your needs, it might be a good choice.
For a feature I had to edit on the field at DV-PAL resolution. I had rushes of about 10 hours and an edited timeline of about 2 hrs+. Sound was dual-system, so it came off BWF files.
I did the entire edit over a few months on my MBP connected to a bus-powered WD Passport drive (250 Gb) connected via USB. I could even have an end-to end presentation of the final edit off this single drive. And all the rushes were captured to this very same drive off a DV deck connected over Firewire.
Like I mentioned, all this was DV-PAL. If your needs are ProRes, or ProRes at HD res., then USB may have a problem delivering it cleanly.
If you want to consider GigE then consider iSCSI or AoE.
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
[Zane Barker] ”
Sorry but while yes the hard drive itself can sustain speed the USB enclosure cannot.”Enclosure speed? Dah !?
[Zane Barker] “So your going to disagree with science, with the industry standerd as to how USB works.”
I don’t want to start a flame chain (that it seems you want to start) but since you are talking with such authoritative statements, can you tell us from what background are you saying this? Are you part of the USB implementers forum? Are you working in any USB working group? About mine, you can just google my name.
Best Regards
Gabriele – California
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[Neil Sadwelkar] ”
I too had this disdain for USB as a media drive. Depending on your needs, it might be a good choice.”This is what I was saying. It is not the best medium but is not what it used to be. Silicon technology improved, recent controllers have much more buffering, HDs are more capable. I wouldn’t use a 2.5″ passport drive unless I was in an emergency situation but for most practical uses there is no reason why a fast, large (size increase linear density hence transfer rate) 7200RPM USB2 drive can’t do the job these days.
Regards
Gabriele – California
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