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Imported my DV's, but they hog space!
Hey all I checked around a little and haven't seen any recent discussions of this, so I figured I'd post it, in case the tech has changed in the years since.
I have about 30 MiniDV tapes of my sons growing up. Because we don't want them playing around with tapes and the camcorder, I'm pulling them all onto the iMac. At about 10GB each, I don't think it's a great idea to keep them all on the main drive. Here are a few questions. I appreciate the help in advance. As I told my wife, "I know photos. I don't 'do' video" :dunno I've imported them into iMovie HD, and can export form there.
A few questions:
* If I want to put the clips in a format that I can import to itunes and ply on my ipod/ apple TV, what do i need to export them as?
* Is there a lossless compression format for these? or is DV as low as we go? If so, does it make sense to put them on an external HD that I just use for video?
* Anyone have any other tips that I should be thinking about?
The last time i edits a video was in 2002 when I used a "massive" 30GB HD on a Pentium and ULead software...
Thanks in advance.
Keith
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=110402&highlight=import
I have about 30 MiniDV tapes of my sons growing up. Because we don't want them playing around with tapes and the camcorder, I'm pulling them all onto the iMac. At about 10GB each, I don't think it's a great idea to keep them all on the main drive. Here are a few questions. I appreciate the help in advance. As I told my wife, "I know photos. I don't 'do' video" :dunno I've imported them into iMovie HD, and can export form there.
A few questions:
* If I want to put the clips in a format that I can import to itunes and ply on my ipod/ apple TV, what do i need to export them as?
* Is there a lossless compression format for these? or is DV as low as we go? If so, does it make sense to put them on an external HD that I just use for video?
* Anyone have any other tips that I should be thinking about?
The last time i edits a video was in 2002 when I used a "massive" 30GB HD on a Pentium and ULead software...
Thanks in advance.
Keith
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=110402&highlight=import
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My main tip (as someone who has lost footage for lack of following my own advice) is: once you've got everything captured, make sure you back it up.
iPod/iTunes/AppleTV use a form of the H.264 format. Since they are all Apple products, iMovie (at least the current version I have) has direct export options to the exact format those Apple devices need. There are also free utilities around the Web that can convert.
Lossless video is HUGE. MiniDV is already compressed, just enough so that you don't notice any quality loss for editing. (Pro DV formats are higher quality by being somewhat less compressed, so they're larger files.) If you convert to lossless, you will only make the files much, much bigger. Yes, you can keep a hard drive for video. But it would be good to have a clone of that drive so you don't lose everything at once. Or you can consider your tapes as backup. Luckily, today's cheap 1TB drives can store a whole lot of 10GB video files. Just be thankful those didn't come from a 1080p HD camera...you'd run out of space so much faster.