USB 2 external disk drive ?

[Captain Mench]

It is not recommended.

USB speeds burst and aren’t sustained.

CaptM

[Jeff Carpenter]

It is not recommended. Here’s why:

Let’s say you copy a 1 GB file from your computer to 2 external hard drives. One is USB 2 and one is firewire.

Both copies will take about the same amount of time, but the way it is done is different. The firewire drive will transfer the data at a nice, even rate. The USB drive will sometimes go much faster, but sometimes much slower. Over time, it all evens out and the transfer time ends up being very similar.

So for normal computer use, either type of drive is fine. Lots of people use USB 2 drives and are perfectly happy with them.

But for video, it’s a different story. We’re not concerned with “average over time” when it comes to copying video off of a tape. We’re concerned with x frames per second and maintaining that number no matter what. USB 2 is a bad choice because those dips in the transfer rate lead to dropped frames. Firewire might not hit the same peak rates as USB does, but it will maintain a usable data rate at all times which is what matters most when you’re editing.

[Ed Dooley]

I’m sure there are a bunch of people editing simple DV projects with them. The problem
with USB2 is that although it’s throughput is theoretically faster than Firewire, it doesn’t
handle large files, like video, as well. I think you’ll run into problems with DV when you
have multiple streams.
Ed

[Sarah Leisdovich]

can it however be used to store video footage, without any problem?
thx

[Jeff Carpenter]

Yeah, storage is fine. The drives are perfectly fine, it’s just that you’ll get dropped frames when playing video long enough.

So capuring and printing to tape is impossible and editing (although possible) can be very annoying.

But as for just copying files onto them? Everything will be fine!

[Sarah Leisdovich]

so it’s not recommended not even to store videoprojects because of this risk for dropped frames?
thx

[Shane Ross]

No, you can STORE files there fine. Just don’t plan on using them while you EDIT footage from them. That is when you’ll drop frames.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Ed Dooley]

Eye of a chicken?
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Scroll to the bottom of this page for another definition of Ojo de pollo:
(no offense meant, I thought maybe there was another meaning
besides the literal translation. This is all I found):

https://www.ooze.com/finger/html/foriegn.html

Ed