External HD for Video Editing

[damontgo]

I'm about to purchase an external digital capture system with firewire interface, as well as Final Cut Express HD for my iMac G4. I'm going to need an external HD to store all of my uncompressed footage. Cost is definitely a factor- and I shouldn't need more than 100 Gb. I've heard Seagate is good, but when I look through newegg.com, I don't see any external drives. Could I just buy an HD case or something for any HD i purchase??? I've never messed with a new HD before, so I'll need some help, Thanks guys.

[shadowbreaker513]

You can use almost any 3.5" hard drive with an external enclosure. Just pick up whatever hard drive you like, and then get a external enclosure for it with Firewire.

[damontgo]

so then any drive can be firewire compatible?? I just have to find the appropriate encasing?? Where could i buy a case?

[glc]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...145-339&depa=0

That has the Oxford 911 chipset, which the Mac guys that do video work say is the only way to fly.

[KoRn_KId]

I have a question,

Which type of external HDD connection (USB 2.0 or Firewire) would work best for video editing?, or does it makes no difference at all?

[TwoRails]

USB's specs rate higher, but in actual use, Firewire has a slight edge.

[damontgo]

I liked the look of that case, and it didn't seem unresonable in price either. I had a few questions about which HD to get, however. I found this Hitachi drive at a great value:80 Gb Hitachi $55 Is this a good drive??? And is it compatible qith the case mentioned by glc?? i don't really know if I even have to worry about compatibility or what...

I also found this :80Gb WD HD, $66

I know Western Digital is supposed to be super reliable, so if that Hitachi looks sketchy to any of you, I think I'd rather play it safe with the WD drive. Also, and compatibility issues with this HD and the mentioned case??

Thanks a bunch guys, this is really helping me out.

[Mac Medic]

try to find a case that has FW800 and 400 so if you upgrade your mac in the future you'll already have an 800 enclosure.

Personally I would buy a G-Raid system.

http://dv411.com/graid.html

[glc]

I'd rather see you get this drive -

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...148-015&depa=0

[damontgo]

That G-Raid looks nice, but I can't shell out that kind of money. I don't ever plan on upgrading my Mac's firewire, so I'll go with the case I mentioned before, and I think the Seagate glc mentioned. Thanks for all the help guys

[damontgo]

Ok- I'm finally getting off of my lazy butt and ordering my HD. I think I want to go with a littl ebit of extra storage space, so my HD options are currently this 80 Gb Drive or this 120 Gb Drive . As far as I can tell, they have the same interface, and would both work just fine with this External Enclosure . Please correct me if I am wrong.

I will be using this drive with my 15 inch iMac G4, which has firewire ports. I've been reading lately, and it seems there are different sized firewire ports? I've seen 4-pin, 6-pin, and 9-pin mentioned. I don't know what my iMac uses, and i don't know what that enclosure uses. I was looking at this 16-ft cable , but I don't want to buy it if it's the wrong number of pins. I thought I had this figured out, but I guess not.

I'm also looking to get this capture system which appears to use both 4 pin and 6 pin firewire. I believe I have 2 firewire ports on my iMac (not at home currently) but I don't know what pin count they have. If anyone could straighten me out, I could really use the help on this one. Basically, I'm about to break into the semi-professional gaming circuit, and I need to be able to look at my games, and the games of my teammates in Halo2, and I want my to capture the video from my xBox, and save the DV files to the external HD. At the same time I'll also need to see the game on my TV, which is just a standard 27 inch analog AV in/out, so I think I'll just need extra cables for that. I'm thinking my xBox inputs to the cap system, which outputs the AV signal back to my TV, and also caps the DV files and saves them either to my iMac, or my external HD. I just neeed to know what cables etc. I'll need, and how many.

I'm about to throw down a lot of cash, and I want everything to work smoothly. Also, when get my HD, I'll need to format it before I can use it correct? And I suppose I would use Apple's Disk Utility for that? Never worked with extra drives, internal or external before, so I'm a little clueless. Thanks guys

[Mac Medic]

your imac has 6 pin firewire ports (400-mbit each). When you first plug in the drive OS X will give you a message that you have mounted a disk that it doesn't recognize, just click ignore, open disk utility and partition the drive (this will format it too). It'll take about 20-30 seconds to format and partition the drive then it will mount on the desktop as an external firewire drive that can stay permanently attached (don't forget to un-mount the drive before you un-plug it from the system).

As for the rest of your questions, I have no idea, I only edit video on my Mac's, but you will need some kind of software to capture the x-box video you feed to the mac, I imagine the capture device will come with some. imovie or FCE may work if the capture device outputs to the mac over firewire but there's no guarantee either program will recognize the device. I would look at the DVguys site and try to find which capture device they recommend for the mac that definitely does come with mac software as the only software listed with the pyro unit is Adobe Premier Elements which is windows only.

[damontgo]

Do you think QT pro would be able to handle the incoming files? Or Final Cut Pro?

[Mac Medic]

Apparently the pyro does the DV conversion in the box itself, all you'll have to do is drag the clips into FCE. It does suffer from dropped frames though.

http://www.applelinks.com/pm/more.ph...447_0_1_12_M48


You can read some more quotes here, but it doesn't look promising for dropped frames.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...539618-2234262

[damontgo]

it sounds like it only drops frames when coverting analog to DV. Xbox would be a digital source wouldn't it?

[Mac Medic]

I imagine it would be an analog signal, I cant see a digital output on my xbox.

[TwoRails]

I haven't used it personally, but have you checked out this:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...144-214&depa=0

I read an article that sez it's supposed to be pretty good.....

[damontgo]

I've seen that, and drooled over it, many times before. The thing is, I'm already going to drop around $300, I don't want to make it $400. But man do i wish I could get the canopus