Hi, I'm a new film student and I'm thinking of buying an external hard drive for film-making purposes. What type of hard drive would you recommend for a film student? a 500GB or a 1TB? Thanks.
oh man, one of my friends has a TB. when i saw all of that storage space i almost flipped and stole it! go with that if at all possible!
"They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But a film? Well, thats worth a thousand pictures."
-(Own3d Studios)-
www.own3dstudios.com
"They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But a film? Well, thats worth a thousand pictures."-(Own3d Studios)-
www.own3dstudios.com
tb are actually decent qualities these days but you might not actually need that much space
?url="http://mfarkas.com"?Michael Farkas?/url? - ?url="http://freelancevideoeditor.mfarkas.com"?Freelance Video Editor?/url?
Using External HDD. One point that needs to be understood about using them. They are good for backing up, and can be used for editing SD footage, having the captured date on the drive, but forget about using them as a capture store for HD foortage. The reason for this is, internal SATA drives are average 1.5 Gbs, SATA2, 3 Gbs, externally connected through USB2, 480 Mbs and if by Firewire 400, it is 400Mbs and by the more expensive Firewire 800 at 800Mbs. Some NAS can be at 1Gbs if you have a network card that is Gigabit. That is the low down.
Most brands are good, will come witgh applications that will back up your data with almost one push of a button. 1TB is of course now, better bag for buck.
By all means if you are editing on a school/university machine, using one of these drives to copy your data to and from internal storage it a great idea. But with size look at what you are editing, HD requires more space and the more you capture the more you require. Short films HD will fit on the 1TB, a feature film, 1TB might be pushing the limit of the drive, barely. But don't go the 2TB drives as they are new and new dirves are not the best, wait for at least the 3TB to come out or 4TB before getting the 2TB.
I hope this helps.
Michael Rogers
McRogson
Michael Rogers
McRogson
Can I ask what length your films will be.
Rob - UK
Rob - UK
It's astonishing how quickly you burn through drive space when you're doing film work, especially when you're onlining HD 1080p. I usually figure myself to one terabyte per year of sustained work, or 1.5TB for every feature. Get a drive that uses Firewire (400 or 800) or e-SATA; USB can't handle a full-rez video stream. The good news is that terabyte drives are cheap, cheap cheap (I just bought one for about $100).
As far as editing HD footage goes, I've edited a great deal of HD material (HDV 1080i60, ProRes/DVCPRO HD 1080p) from Firewire 400 drives. Granted, there's the occasional hiccup when you scrub through a long timeline, but it's a more than serviceable workflow. I've also used externals as capture scratch drives without incident (SD and HDV, which are roughly the same bit rate). You wouldn't want to try capturing from an HDCAM tape direct to a FW400 drive, but other than that, you're probably fine.
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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com
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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com
Hi,
Yes, it's almost certainly worth the extra money to get the largest firewire drive you can. Best check compatibility with your computer's operating system - some drives are pre-formatted for Mac / Pc, and although can be reformatted, you may as well save time / hassle by getting the right one at the start.?:D?
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