Firewire DV Video Filesize

[nayrbnoswal]

Can anybody tell me what kind of file size they are getting for say a 20minute clip? My experience with DV shows the average film reel being upwards of 8 GB or are there different setting to keep it under 2GB.

With a mac a file size over 2GB creates a second file is it then possible to copy files to a secondary drive and have a session recognize their order?

Thanks.

switching from fuse card for OSX PT6.0 [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Bokir]

If you're going to do video with PT, then I assume you use either Miro DC-30 or Aurora Fuse. It is documented in PT compatibility list that we need to limit the data rate not to exceeds 1MB/sec. That translate to the range of 1GB for 20 min reel.

[David McRell]

We use MJPEG A (Fuse/Igniter) cards for Pro Tools, and will continue for some time primarily because of the variable rates and frame sizes it offers, but we use DV for other stuff.

DV NTSC/PAL: 3.5MB/sec (1GB for 5 minutes)
Theoretically, DV delivers better image quality than MJPEG A at that same rate.

How are you acquiring DV (which device and software)? Depending upon these you may have some options.

(The 2GB segments is interesting.)

Cheers

[JC925602]

I have a DV file of 12,1 GB here (around 58 min).

Mac OS 9.1 and X will allow files bigger than 2 GB, just uncheck "Maximum size for capture/export file segments" in the scratch disk pref of final cut pro.

Having many small segments (2 GB each) will not be a good option. You will have a small file referencing to all those 2 GB segment, and quick time will load the fist second of each segment, resulting in Quicktime using 40 Meg of RAM. I tried it once.

Also, some segment had one half frame missing, so the film was not in sync from start to end.

Just add a second IDE drive to your mac and put the film on it. You can put close to 6 hour of film on a single 80 Gig HD

JC

[seandaly]

Don't forget that FCP is based on QuickTime, which is a flexible and powerful architecture - although FCP is often associated with DV it can be used with a wide variation of file types and video formats, the pro formats requiring hardware assistance but compressed formats working fine without a card.

DV is a codec - uncompressed video is roughly 28 MB/s - DV brings that down to 3.5 MB/s. But nothing stops you from editing in a highly compressed format, then recapturing clips at high quality later for the final cut. This is the idea behind the "OfflineRT" codec in FCP 3.0 but you could just as well use a garden variety codec - Motion-JPEG or Sorenson which is particularly efficient as a size/quality tradeoff - it doubles very well on playback (better than MPEG)- or even more exotic codecs like the On2 codecs or ZyGoVideo, which create miniscule files. The concept is that these much smaller files are easier to share and can run on a laptop, allowing working edit results ahead of final editing.

BTW the FCP manual states that it's a good idea to have separate scratch disks for video and audio, neither of which is the system disk.

hope this is helpful

- Sean

[Mark Wheaton]

keep in mind however, that offline codecs will not play through firewire in Pro tools. Pro Tools only plays Apple DV codec out of firewire.