Using an exteral hard drive to edit movies
Hello,
I need some help. I have a iBook G4 and am running OS X 10.3.9. I have a lot of footage that I want to import and edit in imovie. I do not have enough hard drive space on my laptop to do that. I would like to buy and external hard drive to edit on, but I don't know which to purchase. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
My camera is fire wire and I don't mind downloading and then moving the projects to an external hard drive but I need to be able to edit from there. I have firewire 400 and USB 2.0 plugs so I could use either to plug into my machine. Any help on choosing a modle of hard drive would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance.
Huart,
One thing to consider is how many Firewire ports does your Powerbook have? Since many only have one, people often try to hook their Firewire drive into the Laptop then daisy chain the camcorder off the back of the drive. While this can work, often it does not.
And sometimes it will half work. As an example, in the beginning, I daisy chained my Sony off the back of my drive. For importing this worked great, never had any troubles importing several tapes. However when I got to the point where I was ready to export my first completed project back to tape, I found it wouldn't work right. Turns out exporting through the daisy chain was a no go. I then moved the camera to directly connect to my eMac with the drive also connected directly to the eMac and it worked fine. Since then I have always imported and exported with both tied directly to the Mac. Note, there is no problem going to and from the external hard drive directly.
So with a one Firewire port Laptop, if you have trouble with a daisy chain connection, you basically have two choices.
The first is to simply import to your internal drive, unplug camera, plug in drive, then copy back out to the ext drive. Same thing in reverse when you need to export back to tape.
The second is to invest in a PCMCIA Firewire card. They are not very expensive and now you should be able to run both devices at the same time, one into the Laptop directly and one via the card.
Patrick
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Hi Clarkett99,
To use an external hard drive for your iTunes library, see the steps in this article -
iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
iPhoto can be used in a similar way, follow the steps in this previous discussion -
how do I save photos and their albums...: Apple Support Communities
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3744259
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
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Hi
I am trying to ask iMovie09 to store the projects I am creating on an external Hard Drive. I have a hard drive that I was using with my G^ and iMovie06HD without any problem.
I don't see anything in IM09 that will give you the option of where to store the movies. I have a huge backlog of film to edit and I don't fancy killing my new hard drive.
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Hi,
I have just tried to set up an Airport Extreme with an external hard drive at home. I have 4 computers connected to the "network" - an iMac, a MacBookPro and 2 x windows machines. A printer is connected wirelessly to the two Macs.
I cannot find the hard drive - I have tried the steps mentioned by Bob Timmons Mar 17 2010, but the only things I see under "Shared" in Finder are the iMac and the printer - not the Airport Extreme (seems odd??), not the windows machines, and most importantly, not the hard drive connected to the USB port on the Airport Extreme.
I therefore expect that the iMac and printer are connected wirelessly and directly, rather than through my network (& I'm happy for the printer to be connected this way, but I do need the PCs and the hard drive all networked).
According to my network connection, (in top bar on the screen) I am definitely connected to the network - yet nothing else shows in finder??
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Presumably, in order to format the Hard Drive, I will need to disconnect it from the Airport Extreme, and connect it directly to one of the Macs too?
My apologies for so many questions, but this is all very technical stuff for the non-techie layperson.
Many thanks for any help anyone can provide on one or more of the questions / issues.
Martin -
Can you use an external hard drive to back up my movies in iTunes but still be able to access them or is there a device so I don't have to use a pc ??
You can store them on a separate hard drive, you don't need to keep them on your laptop's hard drive. On your computer's iTunes on the Advanced tab in Edit > Preferences there is a 'copy files to iTunes media file when adding to library' tickbox - if you untick that, you should be able to copy the films to a separate drive and add them back to your iTunes library (File > Add To Library) and it should then point to them on that separate drive and not copy them to your hard drive. When you are happy that it is what is happening and that they are safely on your external drive you can delete the films from your laptop's hard drive.
If you plug the external drive into a different USB port next time (assuming that your laptop has more than one) then it might get a different drive letter, so you might need to always use it with the same port. -
I have just started using WD external hard drives, I use it to save my movies and music on. On more than one occasion, when I connect it to my MacBook it erases everything I had save on the hard drive. Can someone please help me with this problem? I am super tired of having to put all of my movies and music on the hard drive just to have it erased again. The products I am using are WD 4TB My Book and 2 TB My Passport external hard drives. When it happens, there is always an icon that reads, EFI, along with the My Book icon. Thank you for your assisstance.
dwgar1322 wrote:
I have just started using WD external hard drives, I use it to save my movies and music on. On more than one occasion, when I connect it to my MacBook it erases everything I had save on the hard drive. Can someone please help me with this problem? I am super tired of having to put all of my movies and music on the hard drive just to have it erased again. The products I am using are WD 4TB My Book and 2 TB My Passport external hard drives. When it happens, there is always an icon that reads, EFI, along with the My Book icon. Thank you for your assisstance.
Yes, you have WD software installed REMOVE IT !!
WD has warned its customers about their huge mistake that their software doesnt work on Mavericks and causes data loss.
(also dont use WD drives anymore)
Read all about it here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=255&tstart=0
See their website on removing the destructive WD software here:
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/External-Drives-for-Mac-Exper iencing-Data-Loss-with-Maverick-OS/td-p/613775
Western Digital External Hard Drives Experiencing Data Loss On OS X Mavericks
http://www.cultofmac.com/252826/western-digital-external-hard-drives-experiencin g-data-loss-on-os-x-mavericks/ -
Should I use an external hard drive to store the files while editing and how should I do this?
Getting used to FCPX and want help learning how to store my Canon D60 Video files on either my internal Mac book pro or on an external hard drive while editing projects? Do the files need to be transcoded on the computer drive or can that happen on an external HD?
Thanks,
GregWell, in my opinion, it all comes down to speed. There are a lot of editors that swear that working with footage on your system drive will do all sorts of horrible things, cause crashes, etc. Really its a bunch a malarkey. The most it will do is slow you down when your system needs access to the drive. Bandwidth is bandwidth is bandwidth - its all the same. If working with video on your system drive caused crashes, so would doing thousands of other things and we would all have dumped apple long ago for Microsoft or linux.
Here's what I tend to get for sustained read speed on various drives (ie reading a few large files like video files):
USB 2.0: 25 - 30 MB/sec. Drive RPM doesn't matter much since USB is limiting factor, unless you're running a system.
Firewire 400: 28 - 34 MB/sec. Drive RPM doesn't matter much since FW is limiting factor
Firewire 800: 55 - 60 MB/sec. Drive RPM doesn't matter much since FW is limiting factor
internal drive on SATA II or III connection, or USB 3.0 external drive:
7200 RPM: ~100 MB/sec
5400 RPM (most laptop drives): probably ~70-80 MB/sec
SSD: 250-500 MB/sec if installed internally or over USB 3. USB 2 or firewire connection for an SSD is a waste of SSD speed *except* that they have fantasticly fast random access for reading many small files, so I got a really fast launching system in an experiment installing a system on an SSD and connecting it via FW 800 - but that's not relevant here
so - to make a short story long - do whatever works for you. avoid using USB 2.0 or firewire 400 drives if you're editing HD - you can't play transcoded ProRes 1080p footage from them reliably. And once you have more than one clip overlapping, like at cross dissolves, you're sunk. You're internal drive is likely much faster, even with the overhead of the system using it too.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the app store is a good HD speed tester. Ignore all the video specific stuff at the bottom - its mostly for uncompressed video, which I doubt you're working with.
Since i have a recent macbook pro (late 2011) and my edits are usually not more dense than 3 layers of video at a time (mostly concert video rather than narrative film), I actually almost never transcode, or even render - and this is for 1080p HD video - because FCP X is so good at playing the imported original h.264 files. I store my media I'm working with on my internal laptop drive (which i upgraded to a 7200 RPM) or a FW 800 7200 RPM external drive.
h.264 files from the camera are much smaller than transcoded ProRes files, so they will play back from USB 2 or firewire 400 drives, but I would only do it in a pinch.
enjoy your editing. -
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How to use an iomega prestige portable hard drive (mac edition) to resolve a startup space problem. I need 4.85gb to up grade to itunes 7. I have 1.07gb free
com.apple.NVDAResman appears to be the culprit, indicating a problem with the graphics card. Run the Apple Hardware Test program, extended tests.
See
What is a kernel panic,
Technical Note TN2063: Understanding and Debugging Kernel Panics,
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ,
Resolving Kernel Panics, and
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics for more details. -
When I installed iTunes 11 on a Windows 8 system the installation did not seem to work correctly. There is no sidebar and no ribbon w/ File, Edit, etc. I tried to use an external hard drive to move from an older computer using XP to the new one w/ Wdw 8. I thought if I deleted iTunes from the Wdw 8, I could reload it. Apparently I did not delete the music files because they appeared in the format I complained about, no side bar or ribbon. Can anyone walk me through the process of deleting everything and reinstalling? I am not very computer savy so a step by step would really be appreciated.
Thank you,ctrl B - Show menus
ctrl S - Show sidebar -
Will using an external hard drive cause me to have duplicate files on my itunes library?
I put all my ITUNES MEDIA folder on my external hard drive from my older computer.. I recently bought a new computer and installed Itunes. I synced some of my Itunes purchased songs back on by using my Ipod.. however the songs I ripped from my cds are still not reinstalled in my library.. I will have to use my external hard drive or re rip those.. and there are a lot of them.. since I have already replaced some of the ones I purchased back on using my Ipod will it duplicate them if I use the prefrences method and return them all from my external hard drive? If i delete my files that I have already returned on my new computer before using my external will Itunes remember which are Itunes purchased music and which arent as well>??? also how exactly do you move music from an external? just plug it in and click the prefrences box about syncing files and keeping Itunes library organized?? any other thing to click?
An iTunes library consists of both the media and the database that knows which files are in the library and hold details of ratings, playcounts, playlist membership and other details not stored in each file's metadata.
Depending on how you have moved content to your external drive you may find you are only moved the media, but not the database. If you import this media into a new library it will work, but your library will be seen as "new" with respect to any devices that you have and iTunes will want to erase and reload them, losing you current selections, settings and data on the device.
These are two possible approaches that will normally work to move an existing library to a new computer.
Method 1
Backup the library with this User Tip.
Deauthorize the old computer if you no longer want to access protected content on it.
Restore the backup to your new computer using the same tool used to back it up.
Keep your backup up-to-date in future.
Method 2
Connect the two computers to the same network. Share your <User's Music> folder from the old computer and copy the entire iTunes library folder into the <User's Music> folder on the new one. Again, deauthorize the old computer if no longer required.
Both methods should give the new computer a working clone of the library that was on the old one. As far as iTunes is concerned this is still the "home" library for your devices so you shouldn't have any issues with iTunes wanting to erase and reload.
I'd recommend method 1 since it establishes an ongoing backup for your library.
If you have an iOS device that syncs with contact & calendar data on your computer you should migrate this information too. If that isn't possible create a dummy entry of each type in your new profile and iTunes should offer to merge the existing data from the device into the computer, otherwise the danger is that it will wipe the information from the device.
If your media folder has been split out from the main iTunes folder you may need to do some preparatory work to make it easier to move. See make a split library portable. Alternatively you could copy over the iTunes folder and make sure your external drive has the same drive letter on the new system as the old, however moving the library into a portable form will make every subsequent move that much easier.
Should you be in the unfortunate position where you are no longer able to access your original library, or a backup of it, then see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device for advice on how to set up your devices with a new library with the maximum preservation of data.
tt2 -
Can someone please provide instructions on how to import an iPhoto library from an old Mac to a new Mac without getting a bunch of duplicates? I tried transferring my pictures using an external hard drive and then copying it to the Pictures folder on my new Mac. I ended up getting a bunch of duplicates. My old Mac has an older version of iPhoto while the new Mac has iPhoto '11. Is that the cause of the problem? Please advise. Thanks.
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This moves photos, events, albums, books, keywords, slideshows and everything else.
Regards
TD -
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Always use two drives for this: one for backup; the other for storage. Don't mix the two uses on one drive. There's a greater risk of data lost without that redundancy.
If you plan to backup using Time Machine, then be sure the backup drive's capacity is at least twice that of the drive you are backing up.
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