Hard Disk Considerations

Today's computers juggle floods of data as we ask them to respond to our creative urges in real time and create DVDs while we wait. High performance AV media drives are pivotal components. If you haven't considered upgrading your media storage recently, maybe it's time. Whether you need to add more hard drive space to your current system or are looking to buy that new dream editing suite, you'll need the answers to the following common questions.

How Much Space Do I Really Need?
A conventional rule-of-thumb is to allow 14 Gigabytes of disk space for each hour of Mini DV video (at 25Mbps). You might expect that a 30-Gig drive would be more than enough for a one-hour project, but you'd be wrong. Your computer's O/S, editing software, graphics programs and sound editing programs all use space. They also create fleeting, but enormous temporary disk files. You'll also store music, sound effects, stock footage, titles, special effects and other project elements.

Depending on your editing and shooting style, you can easily capture more than one-hour's worth of raw footage for each hour of a final production. Well-coordinated and planned shoots with detailed shot logs can minimize the amount of wasted footage. Careful utilization of batch capture utilities can also minimize space requirements. A very rough estimate is that fastidious editors who carefully log and capture only what is necessary will need about 30GB for an hour long project. Most of us will need a bit more. And some of us lazy types who roll the tape, hit the capture button and then rely on scene detection to break up the entire tape will need considerably more. Multiple camera shoots also dramatically increase disk requirements. A one-hour, three-camera music concert or wedding shoot can generate 35 to 45 Gigs of raw video. And what if you have to simultaneously juggle multiple …