Which External Hard Drive(s) for Video Storage

[Jason Myres]

The current 15-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t have an ExpressCard slot. And you’re right, an ESATA ExpressCard connected to a good external drive would be a great solution for you. But, you will need to buy a 17-Inch MacBook Pro or possibly an older MacBook Pro 15 that does have an ExpressCard slot.

In a sense though, your situation is a bit out of date. While the XL1 is a nice camera, many modern cameras use some form of media card (P2, SxS, SD Card, etc) rather than tape, so capturing in real-time over FireWire, is becoming more and more rare. Many people now use some form of USB card reader to ingest their data to an external Firewire drive so they can edit their video media.

In your case, the XL1 will need to be connected via Firewire which leaves you with only USB for external storage on the 15-Inch MacBook Pro. You can give a good quality USB drive a try (like a G-Technology G-Drive), but there is a chance you will see dropped frames or other errors while you are capturing or editing.

You have a few options:

A) Buy a MacBook Pro 15. If you do this you’ll need a modern card-based video camera, and an external FireWire 800 Drive for editing. You’ll use a USB card reader or USB directly from the camera to capture your video. If you buy an SD card-based camera, you will not need a seperate card reader as this model has one built-in.

B) Buy a MacBook Pro 17. If you do this you can keep your XL1. You’ll need to buy an ESATA ExpressCard and connect it to an external ESATA hard drive for editing.

C) Buy an older Mac Book Pro 15 with an ExpressCard Slot. If you can find an “Early 2009 Unibody” MacBook Pro new or used somewhere, you’ll be able to have your cake and eat it too, by keeping your XL1 and using an ESATA ExpressCard and Hard Drive with it, like you would with the current 17-Inch MacBook Pro.

Here is a good place to look for deals on older models that may still be available:

https://dealmac.com/Computer/Apple-Computers/Mac-Book-Pro-Deals-466.html

JM

[Chris Tompkins]

You can plug in a External FW drive to the Comp.
Plug the camera via FW into the Ext. HD to capture.
FW drives are fastest enough for DV editing.
FW are great for backing up your media too.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta

[Steve Eisen]

[Jason Myres] “In your case, the XL1 will need to be connected via Firewire which leaves you with only USB for external storage on the 15-Inch MacBook Pro.”

Using a USB drive as your capture scratch has NEVER been recommended for FCP.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Jason Myres]

I know, but modern drives are getting good enough (like a G-Tech) where it might be possible. She’s using a an XL1 which means MiniDV at only 3MB/s. So, its at least worth a try given the costs to upgrade her camera, or move up to a 17-Inch MBP.

JM

[Jan Laidlaw]

Thanks for the info Jason and all.

I know my camera is totally out of date. I have been out of the video loop for awhile and I need to upgrade, as I can afford to. Is there a camera out there in the $2 or $3,000 range that compares to the XL1 with reliable storage? Or, if not, can you recommend minimum reliable low cost professional”ish” camera? Or if there is another thread somewhere for that, I’d love to check it out.

For now though I need to use what I have as my budget allows, and to begin with most of my projects will be for the internet so I’m not sure that they merit all the $$ involved with a new camera just yet. (I actually have a Kodak Playsport for $150 that surprisingly does just fine for some of the Youtube stuff that I’m doing and since I can keep it in my pocket, I can get shots I wouldn’t otherwise.)

It’s about $400 – $500 more for a 17″ MacBook Pro with the hard drive I want. I actually think I’d prefer a smaller more portable laptop, so it’s a bit frustrating that the 15″ has these limits. But I need something reliable so I’ll consider the 17″ as well. I’ve experienced systems that drop frames or crash or are painfully slow and I really need a system that just works so I can just do what I need to do. Decisions, decisions…

I’ll check out the link you gave for older models too.

Thanks again.

Jan

[Jan Laidlaw]

>You can plug in a External FW drive to the Comp.
>Plug the camera via FW into the Ext. HD to capture.
>FW drives are fastest enough for DV editing.
>FW are great for backing up your media too.

>Chris Tompkins
>Video Atlanta

Chris – just to clarify, are you saying I can plug the camera directly into an external Firewire hard drive (which is plugged into the computer) to capture using Final Cut Pro?

If that’s what you mean, is there any concern about Firewire drives dropping frames? Does the Firewire external drive slow down rendering? Any other disadvantages or advantages?

Do you have any specific products or brand names to recommend?

Thanks for your feedback.

Jan

[Miodrag Ristic]

if you decide to stay on Canon XL1, which is really outdated (SD, 4:3, tape),
I’d suggest you get a Firestore FS-4 or FS -4 Pro, hard drive for simultaneous recording to tape and a hard drive.
Not only that gives you an instant back up, but it shortens the time required to get your footage
to your FCP for editing. There is no digitizing tapes, no capture, just connect your Firstore and transfer your Quick Time files.

Secondly, if you decide to go the route described bellow by Chris, you can piggy back via firewire your Firestore instead your Canon moreover for the facy that Canon’s firewire is somewhat temperamental.

Finally, if you don’t like the idea of piggy backing hard drive to a hard drive via firewire, you can first
transfer your footage from Firestore to your MacBook Pro’s internal hard drive, then disconnect your
Firestore and connect your external hard drive and then copy your footage from MacBook Pro to your external hard drive.

Mio

[Miodrag Ristic]

Yes, that’s what he meant. You can connect up to 16 drives in one chain (in theory),
in practice, I don’t know how many people are using that feature and with how much success.

Again, Canon is known to have a temperamental firewire interface.

Some models are hard enough to get to work via firewire, let alone to connect them in firewire chain.

For example, my Canon camera sometimes wouldn’t accept the port in my screen, only the firewire port on the front of my Mac.
Sometimes, when I connect my Canon to the Mac, Final Cut would start spinning the ball, once I disconnect the camera everything would go back to normal.

Mio

[Jan Laidlaw]

Hi Mio

The Firestore FS-4 looks interesting, but when I do eventually upgrade the camera later, then I’ll bet I’d need to upgrade that too?

I also need something that will store the files for my little Kodak Playsport when I need to work with them.

At this point I’m rethinking the 15″ and I might go with the 17″ MacBook Pro with an ExpressCard slot, an ESATA ExpressCard and external ESATA hard drive.

Thanks to all for for the additional insights.

Jan

[Miodrag Ristic]

Yes Jan, unless your next camera is HDV then you can use FS-4 Pro (I think the model is)
for both DV and HDV.

I wasn’t that “lucky”, I went for DVCPRO HD (Panasonic HPX 170), P2 solid state memory, which doesn’t really need a Firestore backup (although I liked that security anyway) but the P2 cards are expensive, each 64 GB card is “another Firestore” in price.

I meant to say, jump to HD does require some planning and budgeting and some workflow rearrangement.

It’s good that you decided on MacBook Pro 17″, it gives you more options.

Mio