Recording to hard drive

What stuff do I need to record media to an external HD. Trying to edit Video.

John, welcome to the forum.
Your question is really vague so don't be offended by the answer.
If you are asking about how to set up a capture - you need a camera/deck to play the video, a firewire cable to transfer the media to your computer and a disk to record the media after FCP has done its processsing. If you are capturing VHS (not DV), you will need an analog/digital converter in the signal path between the VTR and the computer.
If you know all that and were just looking for specifics regarding an external hard disk -
FCP does not officially recommend external drives as capture drives, though many use them with no issues.
Get yourself a FW800 disk if you are planning for the future. If all you intened to do is DV capture/editing, a FW400 drive will work fine.
Raid structured disks will allow you to capture up to 10 bit uncompressed (though you will need an additional capture card to support it).
Get as large a drive as you can afford. It will fill up faster than you would expect. DV runs at ~3.6mb/s (13gb/hr).
Good brands include: G-tech & Granite Digitial. A number of people use the Lacie brand but make sure you get one that is designed for video editing. SAN type drives are too slow.
Get one that is QUIET. Nothing is more anoying than listening to the fan in your external hd running at a slightly different pitch than your computer.
Get yourself a PCI firewire card to create a second FW bus for you machine. (all the oem firewire ports in a mac are on the same bus) This way, your deck/camera can be on a second path and not getting in the way of your disks. This will ease a number of issues, particularly if you use Canon cameras.
If you are interested in direct to disk recording, there are a number of companies that make nifty components. They are not inexpensive.
good luck.
x

Similar Messages

Is USB 2 fast enough to record to hard drive over?

Hi folks. Atthe moment I'm recording to ext HD via FireWire 800, but down the line I may well want to get a FireWire audio interface, would recording to the drive work ok over USB? Or has anyone got experience of using FireWire busses? Advice/recommended options appreciated :) ta!

While the USB 2 transfer rate may seem faster than Firewire 400, it is a "BURST RATE" meaning after a few seconds it drops substantially while Firewire starts high and stays high meaning that Firewire is faster at "SUSTAINED RATES" such as streaming audio to drives. Test it your self by copying a 1 GB file to a USB 2 drive and then to a Firewire Drive while timing the transfer... Firewire will smoke it everytime
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/schwebs-lounge/54422-usb-2-vs-firewire-400-agai n.html
http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html
From GlyphTech:
"Even though USB 2.0 Hi-Speed has a theoretical max raw data rate slightly higher than FireWire (480 mbps vs. 400 mbps), the typical sustained transfer rates are about the same, because FireWire is a more efficient protocol to use in audio and video environments. In fact, in most cases, FireWire beats USB 2.0 Hi-Speed, albeit by a small margin. Very often it will be the computer or hard drive mechanism which limits the system performance more than the interface, so you might see about the same performance using FireWire-A or USB 2.0. "
According to NEC (Dec 2004):
"Specified speed of USB 2.0 is 480 mbps (in other words, around 60 Million Bytes per second, or 57.2 MB/s), but 57.2 MB/s is NOT the actual data rate.
This is because USB 2.0 packet is inclusive of overhead data.
[Note that conversion from megabits to MegaBytes requires (x*1,000,000/8)/1,048,576.]
Moreover, idle time are added between packets.
Besides, data rate is also dependent on the system architecture, the PCI bus and the attached USB devices.
Therefore, actual data transfer rate [of USB 2.0 High-speed] will be lower than 480 mbps (57.2 MB/s).
Our measurement result of data transfer rate with USB 2.0 storage device (HDD) is about 20 - 25 MB/s on average."

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.

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

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 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.

Does iTunes match need to locate the actual files or just see its record in your library database? I am currently traveling in US and I have US and Australian iTunes accounts. But all my music files are on a hard drive in Australia.

Does iTunes match need to locate the actual files or just see its record in your library database? I am currently traveling in US and I have US and Australian iTunes accounts. But all my music files are on a hard drive in Australia. Can I start using itunes music match while I am travelling without the actual music files attached to my itunes?

In your situation I strongly recommend you read over that KB article. The international iTunes Stores are not cross-compatible.
My understanding of how it would work is that when activating iTunes Match on your US Store account, any songs you have in your iTunes Library that were purchased from the AUS Store account will NOT be matched. As I understand it, those files will be uploaded (which means you need the files on a local HDD). I also do not think it is possible to have iTunes Match active on more than one store ID on the same computer. But since iTunes Match is not available internationally yet, that point is moot for the moment.
To be honest you might want to wait until the service is available internationally so you can guage how will it will serve you.

Is it possible to back up an external hard drive to Time Machine from two different computers without creating two different records?

I have an external hard drive that I do my work on. I use it on my office MacPro and on my MacBook Pro. I have Time Machine setup on both computers to back up the external hard drive to a remote backup drive, but when it backs it up, the backup goes into either the MacPro record of it, or the MacBook Pro record. The effect of this is that if I'm at my laptop and I need to access an earlier version of a file that existed when I was working on my MacPro, I can't access it.
Is it at all possible to create a universal record (or Sparse Disk Image Bundle to use Apple lingo) for my external hard drive?

Hi BDAqua,
Thanks for your help as always, sorry I never thanked you earlier, finally got some time to attend this.
I'm in the mail folder in the library of my user name. Just to make sure I get all my mail boxes I'm going to archive simply the whole 'Mail' folder after going in to the library of my unsername.
I notice you mentioned about importing there .... I've seen the .emix files you mention .... i have 30,000+ of them.
What I find helpful in mail is that if I type a client's second name, in this case 'Lopez' I can pull up all the mails relating to him in an instant, around 450. Obviously it would be impossible to pick through 30K .emix files to find the right ones .... so could I easily import them in to my Mail on my new computer?
Could I select the whole lot of them, then drag and drop them in to my new Mail on the new computer, and then use the search function on Mail? ... the normal desktop search function doesn't seem to look through the emix files, or emails for that matter.
Also, just as an extra precaution, could I make a smart folder in Mail with the name of said client for example for, then archive that folder separately?
TY
Message was edited by: Scottishengineer

External Hard Drive and Audio Recording Application

Hi, hope everyone is doing well today. I'm new to this forum but I have been occasionally browsing it from time to time and find it very useful. So I figured I would post a couple questions that I have.
First of all I would like to tell you all excatly what I want to do with my computer. Currently I am trying to optimize my computer for the Audio Recording Application I have *Cubase SX 3* I recently just upgraded my RAM from 512 KB to 1.5 GB. My next purchased is most definitaly going to be an external hard drive, which leads me to my first question.
1. If someone could recomend me an external hard drive that is abosolutly amazing for audio recording and such around $150. I would ONLY be using the drive to save my audio files. Definitaly needs to be firewire also.
2. Next question is. I've heard of people booting from their external hard drives which has nothing but there OS and there audio recording application. That way when they boot it up they don't have processes running "Behind the scenes" and taking up some processor power. Is this true? If so, how would you going about doing this and what would I need?
3. If anybody else that is reading this is like me and does alot of audio editing on their iMac G5 computer if you could give me some tips in optimizing the performance of the computer in order to get the most out of it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks ahead of time everyone.
Bard
iMac G5 w/o iSight Mac OS X (10.4.4) 20" screen 2.0 Ghz, 1.5 RAM, 250GB Hard Drive

1. If someone could recomend me an external hard
drive that is abosolutly amazing for audio recording
and such around $150. I would ONLY be using the
drive to save my audio files. Definitaly needs to be
firewire also.
Hard drives are pretty much the same. 7200 rpm are obviously a bit faster than 5400rpm. Why Firewire? USB 2 is about the same speed as standard Firewire 400, but the drives are cheaper.
2. Next question is. I've heard of people booting
from their external hard drives which has nothing but
there OS and there audio recording application. That
way when they boot it up they don't have processes
running "Behind the scenes" and taking up some
processor power. Is this true? If so, how would you
going about doing this and what would I need?
OS processes are going to be running in the background regardless of which disk the OS is on, that's what an OS does! If you don't want more processes simply make sure you don't have any other apps open. I don't know Cubase, but a G5 will handle video editing along with background tasks no problem, and video editing generally involves far more data manipulation than just sound, even if you're doing multiple tracks.
You can easily install the OS on an external hard drive using your original system install disk. Simply connect the drive and choose that as the destination in the installer. To boot from that you would choose it in System preferences/Startup Disk. You could minimise that system by deleting other applications from that drive's Applications folder, turning off internet connections, disabling all widgets etc, but as long as you only have Cubase open it shouldn't make too much difference.
3. If anybody else that is reading this is like me
and does alot of audio editing on their iMac G5
computer if you could give me some tips in optimizing
the performance of the computer in order to get the
most out of it.
There's not really much else to optimise. Modern Macs are not like computers of old, and OS X is a very modern system, not requiring the type of disk optimisation etc that there used to be.
See: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

How do I record to a external hard drive?

I want to record my projects to an external firewire hard drive, but I can't seem to find the option in the preferences?

There is no "option" per se. When you start recording audio in Logic, it will ask you to set your record path. .. from there, just as you would find a file to attach to an e-mail, find your external hard drive and direct the audio to there. Also in the File menu in Logic, you have the option to save your session as a "project." That will consolidate all of your audio (and samples if you wish) into one folder along w/ your session file, and you can go to "save as" and choose to send everything to your external hard drive. Just think "email attachment." Its that easy.

I had to get a new hard drive and now illustrator says i need to reactivate by license - when I go to do it over the phone i get a recording saying my reactivation number is invalid

I had to get a new hard drive, now illustrator says my license is expired and I have to get reactivated. When I used the phone support and entered in all the numbers, a recording comes up saying that my reactivation numbers are invalid. What can I do so I can start working again in illustrator

Where did you purchase illustrator. It sounds like it was from a shady dealer. I would contact Adobe and see what you can do.

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

Medical records. How to protect your old hard drive or how to destroy it.

How do you get a new iMac with AppleCare so that you don't have to return the old hard drive if the hard drive ever needs to be replaced?... so that you can protect or destroy the old hard drive yourself in accord with HIPAA Health Information and Privacy Act Accountability http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.html to protect medical records.
Even demagnetized a hard drive can't be protected from advanaced data recovery methods once it's out of your hands.
When a car part is replaced you ask for the old part.

I think what you are asking is if your HD needs replacement under AppleCare can you keep the old drive to protect the data on it. Is that correct?
If you need to have a HD replaced under AppleCare then you should ask the AASP and request it back. However they are not obligated to do so under the Terms and Conditions of AppleCare that states:
*"The products or parts that are replaced become Appleʼs property."*
Here is a link to AppleCare Terms and Conditions, I suggest you read it.
http://images.apple.com/legal/applecare/docs/NAAPP_Englishv5.3.pdf
If you cannot agree to this then you should self insure to protect the integrity of the HD. Then if a HD needs replacement you have the right to demand the old HD back as it's your property.
Roger

How do I record a quicktime screen recording directly to an external hard drive?

I want to record a screen recording directly to an external hard drive (or flash drive/SD card) and I've heard that doing so will improve system performance by reducing the workload somehow. I'm not entirely sure.
Is that true, will it work, and how do I do it?
Help would be much appreciated!

I think USB is much slower than your internal HDD connection and you might start losing frames. The system itself will do the same job... the only where performance may increase are the actions where you need to read/write from/to the disk i.e. open an app or save file.

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.

Recording to hard drive

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