Using 1 hard drive to render movies??

bamafamily wrote on 2/10/2005, 7:18 AM

Hey All,

I am getting way behind in editing my movies. I have a stack of tapes that I need to get done but cant find the time at home. What I was going to do was to use my USB2 external 200GB hard drive and my 2.4Ghz laptop at work to do the time intensive stuff so I could watch it.. If I import my AVI files onto the hard drive, make my edits and then render to the same drive, how much longer will it take than using 2 hard drives on my home computer?? example below
---------------------------
Home Computer:
AVI imported to HD#1
Edits done on that file on HD #1
Rendered out to HD #2
--------------------------'
Laptop Computer
AVI imported to external USB2.0 hard drive #1
Edits done on HD #1
Rendered back out to HD#1
---------------------------

Would partitioning the external drive into 2 partitions help?
I suppose I could render the AVI file back out to my laptop hd, but it is only a 5400RPM drive

thx
Mark

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/10/2005, 7:27 AM

Partitioning won't help much at all. The speed benefit only happens when using physically separate drives. My guess is that the speed increase working with one drive won't be drastic. In any case, it will be a LOT faster than not doing anything until you get back home again.

Suggestion: do some editing on your laptop when you get the opportunity, then copy the finished edits back to the home computer and let it happily render away all day while you're editing the next project on the laptop.

bamafamily wrote on 2/10/2005, 8:08 AM

Ahhh...Now theres a model of efficiency..
I would have to understand how to copy the edits from the laptop back to the main computer.
I dont know if directory structure, temp files, etc. have to be identical or not, but it is a good starting place....thx
Mark

gogiants wrote on 2/10/2005, 9:50 AM

You'd just need to copy over the source files and the .vf file to your home computer. Once you open up the .vf file, Movie Studio will prompt you that you're "missing" source files. You can then either identify the new location one by one (tedious for large amounts of files) or let Movie Studio use the same location for all "missing" source files. Assuming you've copied all of the source files to a single root directory on your home machine, this should work well.

Even easier would be if you have all your source files on the external hard drive. Do your editing on your laptop, and then when you're ready to render, hook up your external hard drive to your home computer, copy the .vf project file to your home computer, and let it render away. If you assign the same drive letter to the external drive on both your laptop and your home computer, then it should just work. Otherwise, use the technique described above.

bamafamily wrote on 2/10/2005, 4:46 PM

thx for the help..I am trying to justify changing my 40GB external drive into a 200GB for $75...
I could just do it and justify it later....

Mark

gogiants wrote on 2/10/2005, 6:06 PM

Here's the one I used: Isn't it worth $75 to make sure all of your treasured family memories are backed up and safe?

Of course, having justified it that way, no need to actually use it as a backup drive!