Storage

[Anonymous]

I have been reading the storage buying guide in the latest Videomaker magazine and was wondering what they do exactly. Can somone tell me why I would need one or why other people need them.

Thanks,

JBorunda

[Aspyrider]

I didn’t see that article but typically video files are huge and will fill up your hard drive fast. Having a good storage system can free up space on your computer after you have completed a project. Just copy your project files to the storage system and delete them off your main computer. Then you have them if you need to return to that project.

J.

[Anonymous]

Aspyrider is correct about the size of video files. And while it is possible to compress them to save space (or to upload,) they lose a great deal of their quality, which can not be returned. Remember, computers generally operate faster if they have from one fourth to one third of their hard drive space open.

Generally, if you’re editing shorts for YouTube or the like, this can be achieved easily enough. But when I am editing a half hour talk show with three camcorders, I start out with at least 90 minutes of field footage and edit it down to another 30 minutes. So I have over two hours of video stored on my hard drive. At a bit under 13 GB per hour, that is 26 gigs of hard drive space just to store the video. When I’m in full scale production, I’m doing two programs a month, so I eat up over 50 gigs a space a month. And that doesn’t include any personal projects or one-off specials. So it only takes two months to fill up a 120 gig hard drive and a mere five months to consume half a terabyte (a.k.a. 500 gigs.)

So the article details the various options for storing those quantities of data, both during post production and for long term archiving. I personally chose to use DVD’s for my archives and have an external 250 GB hard drive to store data while I use it.

I hope between the two of us we’ve answered your question.

[Anonymous]

simple, the more that you make videos that take up a lot of space, the more that you’re going to want to make; extra storage means that you’ll have a place to keep them 😉

[Author]

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