[sensorfreaky]

Well, maybe "epic" is a bit of an exaggeration but it's certainly epic in my book... I have 5 hours of wedding events footage on mini-DV tape and will be using iMovie (or maybe I'll go out and buy FCP Express) to edit it down to a DVD. A few questions...

1. Exactly, how long of a movie can you fit in a standard 4.7G DVD-R using iDVD 3?

2. What size external FW HD do I need to use as my scratch disk? This is 5 hours of footage to sift through mind you and I plan on sending all the clips to my HD first. I was planning on buying LaCie's 120GB 7200rpm... but now methinks I need the 200GB model?? It's a hefty $160 price difference so I don't want to get the 200GB model if you folks don't think I'll need it. Then again, I don't want my video editing to be too limited due to HD space. Is 120GB enough? My iMac has an 80GB drive but only 8 GB free space remains.

Thanks for your input.

[direktor]

1. Exactly, how long of a movie can you fit in a standard 4.7G DVD-R using iDVD 3?

Hour and a half, I beleive.

An hour of DV takes almost 13 gig. You'll be alright with the 120 gig.

[ism]

Just remember once you start editing and playing about the disc space you need increases. Half an hour of raw footage I edited for a christmas video currently uses 20 GB of space, what with imported audio, temporary outputs to quicktime full quality, etc. Obviously the final required space isn't 20GB, but at some point you need this extra room.

So I'd plan on at least double the raw footage requirement, in which case 120 GB might be cutting it fine.

It depends on how you're going to work I suppose. Personally I don't like trashing a thing until everythings fully completed just incase I want to go back and make changes, and often I've got temporary movie projects working on copies of media files until I'm totally happy.

[sensorfreaky]

Thanks all!

Affter previewing some of the tapes, it looks like I have closer to 6 hours of footage. At 13gigs x 6 = 78gigs, and double that is 156 gigs, I suppose I could get away with using a 120 gig drive as long as I prep all my clips so as to eliminate useless and extranneous footage then empty iMovie's trash to free up some room... then doing the major editing based on the already pre-edited clips. Looks like 120 gigs might be plenty if I go that route but like ism said, I'm not sure if I want to start trashing things before I'm content with the final product. Then again, they will always be permanently archived in the miniDV tapes..... ugh! I still can't decide.

I wish I would've kept track of my disk usage on my last projects. But those were only 20 minutes long each at most so I never noticed the space crunch.

[buddhabelly]

i think 120 GB should be fine. Just because you have 6 hours of tape, doesn't mean you have 6 hours of good footage. There will be shaking camera, out of frame shots, out of focus. What I like to do is to run the tapes on a monitor (or tv) with the timecode display on and make notes on cuts, footage that obviously can't be used ie, the little brother getting sick from drinking champagne, footage that maybe good for an outtake (see previous ex.) It is much more efficient, both storage and editing wise. And you have a detailed catalogue of all your footage, so you can rummage for that one shot in 5 years.

At the very least, I would play the footage into Final Cut and do a batch capture, keeping in mind my previous suggestions about picking footage. Not as detailed or in depth, but it'll still save you some room rather than capture the entire tape.

You said it yourself, you'll still have all the source. If you used the notebook method, having the source and working it will be easier.

My 2¢ (well maybe $2 )

[sensorfreaky]

Oh and one more thing.

With Final Cut Express/Pro, is there any significant difference in drive space usage when editing as compared to iMovie's drive space usage?

I'm assuming captured DV footage is the same across the board is it not?

I think I may just go with the 120 gig LaCie drive.

[buddhabelly]

as l londg as you mean DV the codec and not DV "digital video " in general, then yes. The spec for DV is set and is the same acrosse the board.

I like the LaCie's case, very sexy. but if you wanna save a few bucks, buy an external firewire case with an Oxford 911 bridge and an ATA drive. Put em together and whala. Some cases are more bland than others. I put a 80GB WD Cavier internal drive ($89) into a CompUSA generic seethru graphite ($45). I haven't dropped a single frame.

[sensorfreaky]

Dammit! LaCie is sold out of all 120 gig D2 FW drives. And the $25 Maccentral discount ends tomorrow.

So I had no choice but to get the 200 gig version. Steep and I'm not sure if 80 more gigs is worth the extra $160 or if I will ever even need that kind of storage space but oh well. The good news at least is that I found out it's the only drive in the D2 series that has an 8 MB cache... probably why it costs so much more? Anyone know if that makes a big difference in performance among 7200 rpm drives?