How much external disk space is needed for editing HD video?

Question

If I'm using FCE:
1) How much external disk space is needed for editing HD video:
if I downloaded 150mins of HD video? and
do editing with it which will have an output of 120mins.
Now PC, going to a MAC user soon   Windows XP  

Answer 1

Hi(bonjour)!
As a rule of thumb for HDV editing, use those numbers:
12 to 15 meg/second for capturing ( your project is 150 minutes long, so 780 meg/minute, or 117 to 125 Gig).
If you do any editing, add transition, video effect, add 12 to 15 meg /second to the total.
As your project will have to be rendered for the print to tape operation, calculate 12 to 15 meg/second for all the length of your final movie. Add this amount to the total. (example: a 60 minutes movie : 49 Gig).
If you want to burn a DVD on your Mac, calculate 3 to 4 meg/second for downconversion to DV material if you check "self-contained" in quicktime export dialog. (example: your finished project is 60 minutes long : 10.8 Gig)
iDVD itself needs 3 to 4 times this amount if you want flawless operation.
Finally, if you use your internal hard disk for all this storage (it's not a good idea to capture on the same drive where Mac OS X belongs), your Mac OS needs some spare room to breath (doing caching, etc), and your hard drive must have a least 25% of free space to avoid file's fragmentation.
As hard drive's price drop, get the maximum size you can afford. 250 Gig is a good choice if you want to do just one project of 90 to 150 minutes at the time.
Michel Boissonneault