Recording straight to hard drive

Some friends of mine what to shoot on a Sony HDV V1U, and record straight to an external hard drive. Is the proper procedure to start FCP on a lap top and capture just like it was from a tape through fire wire or is there a better method for this?
Thanks
Vince

Success rate is 100% on my "professional" shoots. My laptop is kept in prime condition with disk warrior before each shoot and I use freshly formatted hard drives with FW800. I'm sure one of these days someone will kick my cart and knock a hard drive to the floor or a hard drive will just plain go south, then I'll be crying. But I imagine it'll happen as often as a head clog on my vtr. Also, I'm only recording 45 min. lectures, one after another. I can verify the previous recording quickly. I would tell you to back up to tape also. I don't because I have done it long enough to be confident in my system. I know, all concrete will eventually crack.

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Record speech to hard drive

Hi,
I have a 17" Powerbook G4 running OSX 10.39. I would like to record speech to my hard drive using the internal microphone. In sound preferences I can select the internal microphone and see the input level rise and fall as I speak. Is this recording to my hard drive? If so where? If not what can I do?
Many Thanks,
John.
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
Mac OS X (10.3.9)

You can record with the internal microphone using iMovie, or better yet with Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
For more details on additional recording methods, see my tip:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2379847&#2379847

A few questions about mobile recording (RME & MH & Hard drives)

in a couple of months i will have enough for a laptop and a firewire interface.
after quite a bit of obsessive research, it has come down to the metric halo MIO 2882--which i now favor as an option--and the rme fireface.
I favor the metric halo because it is bus powered. this is actually the only thing that tipped the scales in favor of the metric halo, as the fireface has better preamps (apparently the 2882's pre's get hissy with high gain.)
this brings me to my questions.
1) if i run my rig off of battery power, i will not be able to use an external firewire drive. would i get acceptable stability from tracking to a 7200rpm internal drive? i understand that tracking to the system drive is ill advised, but what else is there to do?
2)if it is ill advised to track to the internal hard drive, why shouldn't i just get the fireface and run everything from a power outlet? what use is having a bus powered interface when i can't track properly witout plugging my drive in anyway?
3)how many owners of the 2882 track off of the powerbooks battery, and what has been your experience with this?
Want Macbook Pro...badly Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Get anExpressCard/34 with a Firewire 800 input and run an external Fw800 drive off of that. (I assume that the ExpressCard isn't on the same bus as the FW400, but you might want to investigate that...) Before you get an external, do a few tests and record on the internal drive. See if the internal is adequate for your needs.
Also, be sure to upgrade your MPB to have a 7200 rpm drive, the standard drive is the 5400 rpm.
Concerning battery life... There isn't a lot of info on the new MBP battery life. In fact, you have to get to the specs page to get a mention of the battery info.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/whatsinside.html
I suggest doing a thorough search if this is a real concern. You can dim the screen and that dramicatically increases the battery life. I am not sure if the MPB have the same battery as the Powerbook, but for the old Powerbooks, you can purchase "tricked" out batteries that have a higher energy capacity.
good luck with your MPB.
Dual 1.8Ghz G5 PB G4 1Ghz LP7.1.1 Motu 896 Mac OS X (10.4.5) Reaktor 5.1 Reason 3.0.4 Live 5.0.2 Battery 2.1.1 Recycle 2.1

Recording to external hard drives - Firewire 800 problems

Ok so i did post a similar thread on this in the "mac mini" part of the website so im very sorry for double posting but I thought since this problems pertains mostly to recording and specifically recording on garageband, that I would try posting here as well. Heres my deal:
I am a musician working with garageband and I have always been recording to my internal drive until recently. I was unaware until I read some posts here from the good people like you guys, that that is not a good idea to record to your internal drive. So, I got an external firewire 800 drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DGZ05A) and this cable (http://www.amazon.com/2M-Firewire-800-9PIN-Cable/dp/B000XQILWK/ref=pdbxgy_e_imgb). When I received it, I first used disk utility and reformatted it for Mac OS Extended Journaled. Then I proceeded to move a couple sample libraries and my entire "Garageband" folder (with my saved songs in it) to the external. I instantly knew something was wrong. The files were taking forever to get written over. It took about 15 mins for a 5GB folder to be moved over. I was already discouraged. Anyway, I plugged in the USB cable that came with the external (the drive has hook ups for both USB 2 and firewire 400/800) and tried moving the same files and it was MUCH faster. The same 5GB file was moved over in a matter of minutes.
I then tried recording to the drive (using firewire again) and it would hardly even PLAY the song without stopping every couple seconds (too many effects error, and yes ALL the tracks were locked). Tried to record as well and i'd get even less time before garageband would stop the song with the same error. So I disconnected firewire and went USB. Thru USB the song didnt stop once, not on playback OR recording. Then I moved the songs back to my internal and played them (and recorded) with no problem either.
I ran a couple tests on the drive using AJA system test and came back with these results:
Basic test of read/write speed using firewire 800:
write - 14/mb sec
read - 21/mb sec
then, using usb 2.0
write - 18/mb sec
read - 37/mb sec
both these connections seemed to be running slower then they should ..but at least the USB connection would actually let me play a song and record to it without stopping
I manually copied over a 2.04GB file and via firewire 800 connection it took 2 mins and 20 secs. Via the USB 2 connection it was 55 seconds! ..also, while i transfered the files i noticed that the USB transfer was nice and steady with tiny increments of the file being transferred. Firewire, however, was speedy then slow, speedy then slow. Very inconsistant transfer speed throughout the process. kind of choppy
So what gives? I cant figure out if I'm doing something wrong, or if my external HD is bad? Or the cable is bad? Or maybe the firewire port on my mac mini is bad (i've never used it before for anything other than this external drive). Or i'm thinking maybe my processor isnt strong/fast enough to record to the external firewire drive? Im working with a mac mini 120GB internal HD and the 2ghz intel core 2 duo with only 2GB ram (i know thats not ideal for recording and im planning to upgrade at some point, but i have been recording to the internal just fine with the RAM i have now and never had a problem until trying to record to the firewire drive). I was going to go out today and get a new cable and see if that was the cause of it. Anyway sorry for the book-length post! But PLEASE SOMEBODY help me here! ..as i said, im not very computer literate and only just started producing music using computers so please use dummy terms lol ..thanks in advance

Strictly my opinion, and more than happy to be educated with facts and convinced otherwise... but, there are no dangers.
Bottom line is this... does your specific computer setup encounter ANY problems during recording or editing with your chosen software and current workflow? If not, then there is nothing wrong. Simple as that. Further, if you are having problems, then its more than likely dealt with by upgrading RAM amount and internal HDD speed and size. If you have a slightly older machine that is pre FW800, you will find by bench marking your HDD's that an upgraded internal system HDD will significantly outperform any external HDD read/write spec's. Even with FW800, comparing apples with apples, your system HDD will more than likely have better spec's. Please however, do not take my word for this, but try it out for yourself. Make sure you have facts about your own system rather than believing my claims or anyone else's claims. I used Intech's Quickbench http://www.speedtools.com/QuickBench.html to get some facts about my machine.
There will be an argument made that you will be putting strain on your hard drive by recording to the system drive because it not only has to deal with this function but also with other functions related to your audio programs and OS. Apparently you may be working it on the 'hard' side and shorten its life span. Probably technically correct but practically speaking you will more than likely never even notice any such strain. If you are worried about a system HDD crash or death because you are working it too hard then the answer to this is a well planned back up regime. You should have one anyway, regardless of setup.

I think I'm going MAD--Is it ok to record on Internal hard drive?

Ok,
For the past 5 days I have been trying to solve a variety of problems related to my external hard drives and I think I'm starting to loose my mind.
Basically, I have an external hard drive I use for recording that goes to sleep every 10 minutes and there is no way to stop this. When this drive awakes when I begin to record, it shoots this horrible noise through my system speakers and guitar amplifiers. I've tried numerous things to end this noise batttle, but I wont bore you with the details.
HERE IS MY QUESTION:
Is there any problem with recording directly onto my computer's (MacBook Pro) hard drive? I was always under the impression that audio shuld be recorded (usually via firewire) onto an external drive. My plan is to keep main songs I'm working with on my actual computer, record on the internal drive, and then backup everything up later onto my noisy external drive. Does this sound good? Will there be any new problems I might encounter with this method, or is there any reason I should NOT do it this way? Please let me know as it might end my problems.
Thanks for the help.

Let me add my voice of "dissent" to recording on internal system drives.
Once you start...then you kee going,and then,eventually the drive WILL FAIL.
Most internal systems drives need to be used for the applications,and the OS.Why? because they need the drive for "random-read-write-access"...they need to access this drive an random moment,s and when you are using the drive to record linear audio files...the system will get bogged down.
The fragmantation occurs precisely when the random read-write-access is occurring.Normally the OS takes care of the maintenance task of keeping this from happening too often.but when you are using the drive to read-write large data files (audio) the system cannot keep up as before.
See,it's simple,really.And that is why most mfrs of D.A.W software reccomend an external hard drive for recording.
Cheers

Recording direct to hard drive.

Note: I did search the archives first.
How can I record video direct from a camera to the hard drive? I have both iMovie 08 and iMovie HD 06. Assuming that I can does a miniDV tape (in my case) still need to be used in the camera?
Thank you.

Hi Geoff - you will probably find that to establish the connection between your camera and iMovie, you will need to have a tape temporarily installed. Once connection has been made, the tape can be removed and the direct recording can then proceed.

Slow start when record to external hard drive

I'm new to this so bare with me. When set up to record multitrack to my external drive, (via firewire 400 connection) it takes several minutes to start on my macbook. Seems to start ok with internal hard drive. Also experiencing disc too slow error about 40 minutes into recording. Any help would be appreciated.

Open up Disk utility. It's in your Utilities Folder.
Select your external disk in the left column.
In the lower left corner, you should see this, which will tell you how it's formatted:
!http://web.me.com/johnalcock/filechute/DiskFormat.png!
If it says Mac OS Extended, you're OK, and there's another problem.
If it doesn't (it might say FAT32 or NFTS) then _backup all the contents of that drive first_, and after you're sure it's backed up, format the drive, following the instructions in Disk Utility.

Recording onto external hard drives

I have been having trouble recording guitar with direct input. (I am probably getting the apogee one soon) The sound is in perfect time when I record it but when I play it back it is off time, and needs to be nudged to sound correct again. I have also been recording onto an external hard drive lately, will this effect the problem in any way? Do any of you record onto external drives or do you use the computers built in hard drive?

Sorry for the miss communication, the off timing occurs when I record onto my macbook pros internal hard drive (and that was with garageband but I am now using logic express). I don't know what the rotational speed is, but I have three external hard drives, is there a way to tell? Do you record onto an external drive or the built in drive?
Thanks, Jv-

Record video straight to EXTERNAL hard drive? is that possible?

instead of recording onto the hard drive of my lap top, is it possible to change the settings so that i can record imovie videos right onto my external drive?

Welcome bartz056 to the  iMovie boards ..
easy .. :
when you choose 'New Project', iM offers you to choose an external hdd as destination. be sure, the device is firewire connected, and more important, formatted to 'MacOsExtended' ...-

Hard-drive and audio interface set-up - Advice please

Hello,
Please offer me some advice if you can. I have the new 13" macbook pro 2.26Ghz with Logic Studio. I am going to get a hard-drive that has both usb and firewire 800 interfaces and need to decide whether to get a usb or firewire audio interface. The crux of my problem is in what configuration to use the devices, which will determine which audio interface I choose. E.g.
1. Firewire 800 hard-drive to record tracks onto and back-up + usb audio interface; or
2. Firewire 800 hard-drive as above + firewire 400 audio interface daisy-chained; or
3. Record onto the internal hard-drive and use a usb audio interface; or
4. Record onto the internal hard-drive and use a firewire 400 interface.
FYI, the audio interfaces I'm looking at are the E-Mu 0404 USB or Focusrite Saffire LE, both of which have had excellent reviews.
Questions to consider, please, are: Which configuration will offer the best performance and least latency? Is it worth recording onto external hard-drive (7,200) or will the internal drive (5,200) be faster/as fast? Will daisy-chaining cause a significant drop in performance? Do you have any alternative configuration suggestions? Plus any other comments you can think of.
Thank you in advance
Jamie

The good thing about #2, if the drive enclosure also has a USB 2.0 interface you have the option of using/trying that configuration as well. I know a few that get away with using USB drives for recording.
Make sure the audio drive is formatted Mac OS Extended, with Journaling OFF.
Don't trust the drive formatting as it's delivered.
pancenter-

TS3834 External Hard Drive

I am currently using a Mac Book that has only (2) USB ports. Is it worth it to record to an external hard drive, given my limited interface choices? I am just doing some home recording projects that require recording one track at a time, but I am playing back 12 or so on a typical project.
Thanks,

If you are streaming audio then you need something faster than a USB drive such as a Firewire 800 port. If you have a MacBook rather than a MacBook Pro, then you probably do not have a Firewire port. You will likely find the results will be better recording to your hard drive, then copying the files to an external drive for storage.

Tape versus hard drive HD camera

I know this subject has been beaten to death, but I just wanted to make sure of my decision. I've heard that tape is better because various editions of FCS may or may not have problems dealing with video recorded on a hard drive video camera. I've also heard that the quality is better with tape. And that you also might lose your footage if the hard drive goes kaput before you download the footage. I've decided to repair my 2 year old camera (over $560) because I love it to death. By the dealership is giving me flack about it because I can buy a hard drive camera for a lot cheaper. Am I right in keeping my tape based camera?

I've recently sold my tape based camera and have moved to cameras that use P2 cards. I love it! I can either log each clip with in and out points, or just dump everything onto the hard drive. The workflow is much faster for me.
It feels good to not be "consuming" plastic and everything else that comes with tape. In fact--there is a "green your film production" movement within our micro-industry of wildlife filmmaking. One of the suggestions is to get rid of tape based systems.
Which reminds me--anyone want a Sony DSR DV tape deck?
But honestly I jumped from a DV camera (Canon XL2) to a Panasonic HD camera...so the quality jump helped lessen the sting of nostalgia . Kind of like going from film SLR to digital SLR. I kinda miss the dark room.
I certainly understand, though--if you were like me it wasn't just the camera--it was all the lenses that went with that tape based camera, the (once) expensive tape deck that connected to the computer, etc. etc.
I'll tell you though--ten years ago I was spending almost $50 per tape for HD CAM. It feels good to not incur that expense any more. You certainly second guess pushing the trigger when tape is not cheap--and then there's film... We won't go there...
Really, it just depends on your projects, who your intended audience is and what makes sense for your film budget. We could all drown in debt trying to keep up with this technology. The problem is, it's all so cool! Good luck!

I want to record video using iphone5 but save direct to external hard drive

I want to film an interview and for convenience I want to use my iphone5.
But I only currently only have enough space on the phone to store a few minutes of video on my camera roll
Can I somehow plug in an external hard drive or any other device and save direct to this (by-passing the phones' internal memory) so I can use the phone's camera to record over an hour's worth of video?
Thanks

Well, I am not aware of any smartphone device that is able to attach an external drive. I am aware of some that allow for the insertion of memory sticks, but I'm not sure that would provide you with the memory you would need for the project you are trying to do. And with them, you would have to see if it is possible to bypass internal memory and go straight to the external.
You can provide feedbackk to Apple at www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate link.

Sony v1u camera's hard drive recorder and fcp 6

I bought the hard drive recorder with the V1U HDV Sony camera. The files called M2T's i think are not supported by FCP. Do you know if they are in the FCP 6? Or if the 24pA setting still has to go through a CinemaTools reverse telecine to be seen.

I will let wiser minds than I comment. However, do you have a choice? Either FC can read the format or not. With me, I go from MPEG 2 to PAL DV, it seems to be OK. But I am not doing professional stuff.

Using iPod as an external hard drive while recording

I've found that using my older iPod photo as an external drive when recording seems to work really well for me. Has anyone else also experienced this?
Is this a good idea and can I run Reason 4 and other plug-ins from my iPod? If I do, should I daisy chain or use a PCMCIA Firewire card for it?
Thanks in advance for your answer.

It's not a good idea, iPod hard drives are not designed for sustained transfers like this and you will eventually kill it.
Given that external drives are so cheap, you are far better off getting a decently fast 7200rpm drive that is robust, rather than relying on the little 3600 drive (or whatever it is) in the iPod...

Recording straight to hard drive

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