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XDcam footage ratio to harddrive space
I have a DP that has recommended 2 500 GB drives to our director for a short film…one serving as an untouched “negative” and one as a working drive. The final film will be 10-15 minutes and will involve several days of shooting. She is now worried it might not be enough.
My question: How many hours of XDCam footage can be captured to a 500 GB hard drive (And I would assume only filling it to 320GB or so as to maintain drive integrity)? Ex-1 camera, 1080p24. Take your pick as far as codecs.
Just curious what kind of ballpark estimate (hour-wise) I could give the DP for a drive that size. It’s her first ex-1 film and I haven’t shot anything in 1080p on the ex myself.
I was pleasantly surprised last summer when I shot an entire short film in 720p and everything was under 60GB (I’m guessing around 2-4 hours of footage altogether). Back then I used the xdcam transfer software but I noticed now you can do it via FCP log and transfer as you would P2?
….I have very little experience regarding ex-1 workflow, but anyone who could address the problem above would be greatly appreciated. links also welcome.
Thanks,
JK -
3 Replies
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If you are recording in HQ (35Mbps) each 16 gig card is about an hour of footage. So 320 gigs is about 20 hours of footage.
Good Luck
Michael Palmer -
JK,
Here’s a link to a great widget for calculating drive space. (It’s free!)
https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/a5hwof/VideoSpace.wdgt.zip?id=us4jsv
Using this tool, I came up with the following results:
320 gigs = 20 hours (with 4 ch audio)
Or, you can just use Michael’s “16 gig/hour” figure.
Mark -
Michael and Mark–
Thanks for the knowledge! Much appreciated.
Best,
JK
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