8 hour record time

Question

I am being asked to videotape 3 days of teaching. 8 hours more or less each day. Then print to DVD, yikes. I think the best way would be to use a 100 gig FS-4 HDD recorder. They say it can take in 7.5 hours of video. That way there will be no tape swapping and no real time digitizing that will run up the editing budget. I am sure, and least hope and maybe could talk the guy into stopping for breaks for the class and the videographer every 2 hours. I cant imagine he would go 4 hours non stop, take lunch, the go another 4 hours. I have never put 4 hours on a FCP timeline. I have a MBP 17, an OWC 750 gig using eSata. I wonder if I could use "capture now" straight to the external HD. I just seem to feel more confident with the FS-4. I will be shooting in DV format on a Sony VX-2000. I will most likely burn to a DL DVD for the 1st time in iDVD. Anything I should be away of there or should I go DVDSP.
I would appreciate any thoughts, thank you.

Answer 1

First, I'd ask the teacher(s) to break every 75min., and shoot tape backup using 83 min. tapes. Should anything go wrong with Firestore or Capture now, you'll need the tape backup.
If you use Capture now, you wouldn't have matching timecode to the recorded tapes. I'd consider the Firestore.
We shoot longish events using Firestore (FS 100-160), with tape backup. We've made it a practice to make sure we have tape rolling 15-20 seconds prior to and following the Firestore start/stop. If you don't, you won't be able to match timecodes, due to not having pre-roll on tape, sufficient to match the 1st frames of Firestore recording.
IIRC, your Firestore may not have the ability to 'create quicktime reference movie'...which stitches together all of the 2Gb clips (limits due to FAT formatted drive inside the Firestore) You should check on that with your FS-4. With the FS-100's, you would use this feature to create a single 'reference movie'...still need all the media captured, but don't have to deal with tons of short clips.
For some reason, I'm thinking there may be a 4hr timeline limit in FCP, but I could be wrong.
I've not worked with DL-DVD's, but would guess that they'd limit you to 4 hours max (in iDVD). Don't know about DVD-SP.
I'd propose to the event coordinators, that I could provide multiple DVD's broken up into day parts...i.e. D1AM, D1PM, D2AM, D2PM...etc.
Are you using 1 camera, or multiple cams? If they refuse to break for tape changes, you might set up a 2nd camera, for overlap recording.
How are you acquiring audio?...in camera?, with what mics?, through a sound board?
Ideally, you might acquire an additional camera to record capture now, with clean audio coming from your sound mixer (if there is one).
Hope that helps.
K