Tip - External Hard Drive with Laptop

  • Thread starter Thread starter PapaJohn \(MVP\)
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PapaJohn \(MVP\)

Does an external hard drive work with a laptop and Movie Maker 2? And is a
firewire connection better than USB2?

My Toshiba laptop has a 60GB 6400 rpm hard drive... if it's well tuned up, I
can capture video to it from my digital camcorder and export files back to
the camcorder... exporting is more demanding than capturing.... but free
space on a 60 GB drive for movie projects is pretty limiting.

I bought an internal 7200 rpm Western Digital 180 GB hard drive, and put it
into an external case with a USB2 connection.... my laptop has both USB2 and
firewire connections but I opted for the USB2 case.... It is now my default
drive to capture to, to render large movies to, and to store the files to
copy to my digital camcorder.

When I went to bed last night I left the laptop running.... rendering a one
hour video to a DV-AVI file on the external drive.... when I got up this
morning I copied the file to my mini-DV camcorder using the WinDV
utility.... no glitches in the rendering or copying... playback on the
camcorder is fine.

So, yes you can use external drives for video work with your laptop....
using either USB2 or firewire connections.... get as many external drives as
you need as your need for hard drive space expands.

--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 and Photo Story 3 - www.papajohn.org
Photo Story 2 - www.photostory.papajohn.org
..
 
The simple statement made many times previously that rendering a video in
Movie Maker is not time dependent or speed of resource dependent would have
done far better than the uninteresting story about you going to
bed.......far to much detail of the useless type...the facts are that.it
would have made NO difference to quality if the drive had been connected
with a USB 1 connection to a computer with a P1 processor. Rendering is not
time/speed of equipment dependent..

With regard to well tuned up...well we have all heard your remarks about
the ONLY software in the world (RAXCO's Perfect Disk) that has the top
Microsoft seal of approval for defragmenting hard drives, so exactly what
YOU mean by tuned up is anyone's guess. For those interested...the XP
defragmenter DOES NOT defragment the free space on your drive....its a bit
of a poor program. I wonder if anyone from Microsoft with the relevant
knowledge read those remarks about Perfect Disk???? If they did, I wonder
what they thought of the MVP program

With respect to your remark that exporting is more demanding than
importing...sorry you are totally wrong with that as well. Exporting a
file, the process of moving it from one place to another is about the least
intensive operation Movie Maker can do, because its XP that is actually
doing the job you see.....if you are referring to the transfer back to a DV
camera...and using your own quoted figures....all your computer has to do
is move 13GB to a port address in 3,600 seconds...One Hour. A very basic
computer can do that. So as the "export" does not include rendering (That's
already occurred by that time), what else is YOUR computer doing that
requires it to have been "Well Tuned Up"....I'm thinking here of those
thousands of file fragments you referred too a while back.

By the way...the speed of the spindle on your hard drive is not a measure
of the speed of the hard drive......the ms seek time IS relevant as is the
sustained read or write speed in Mb/s. Your hard drive would have to have a
read speed of roughly less than 4Mb/s to fail to transfer the data back to
the camera....that would make it an old...very old hard drive. Most modern
drives run sustained transfer speeds of more than 50Mb/s, most recent
drives are a lot faster.

Perhaps you need to set the Priority of Movie Maker a little higher Eh!!

--
John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at www.the-kellys.org
----
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
Mr Kelly:

I for one am tired of your rants and raves. My mother taught me that if I
didn't have something good to say about someone, then don't say anything at
all. If that means that I didn't learn well, so be it.

I come to this newsgroup for constructive advice, not to hear one person
"dis" another.

Sometimes, you give out sage advice, but more and more, it seems to be
turning into a vendetta. Don't you have anything better to do?

T


 
Mr Brewer

If you do not like hearing the truth about this MVP then I suggest you add
me to your kill file. We will all sleep better afterwards...I will anyway
of course.

As far as your mothers teachings go...well you are not adhering to that
advice are you?

In the meantime, every time this so called professional makes an incorrect
statement, especially when it carries the lustrous title of "Tip Of The
Day" from an MVP, I will point out why it is an error and ensure that
people also discover that he makes these "errors" on a regular basis by
pointing them towards a few of the more recent ones.

Or perhaps...maybe you would like me to list them all each time...unlike
papajohgns claim that he posts on a regular basis in FIFTY TWO NEWSGROUPS
in an attempt to confirm that because of that he must be right, I can only
claim that there are a lot of them...and I do mean a lot....sounds like an
idea that...do a catalog.....

What do you think???

This person would charge you US $50 dollars to sort out a complex Movie
Maker project....he would charge you US $20 a year to read his weekly
newsletter....from what I have seen of those sent me by others, well lets
say they are a laugh and contain some whopping errors and on at least one
occasion a straight lie.

Are you happy then to have these issues ignored...are you content in your
ignorance...would you have those who do not know any better (the people we
try to help in here) take that advice...like one person recently...he took
advice found on his website and ended up in a worse state. He asked for
help in here stating what the advice given to him was. The advice was both
dangerous and WRONG Would you like to hear the papajohn response??
Basically it was along the lines of, "I can't say whether the advice you
took from my site is good or bad, I do not understand those things, you
take the advice as is with no liabilities" Papajohn believes that he has no
responsibility to the people he is supposed to be helping out...but he will
be quite happy to take some money from you.........

Thank you for giving me a reason to post the above.
--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
Check out free video hosting at www.the-kellys.org
----
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work
 
Folks: one other advantage also of external drives is that you are using an
outboard drive you are not increasing the internal heat in the laptop doing
heavy disk i/o when you are pumping the little 60 gig drive for an
extended period of time there will be a heat rise....

with the advent of large drives we do not have to worry about shifting
stuff out of our active workspace..... gee I remember the horror days or the
20 meg drive...anytime you wanted to start something new you would back all
the old stuff off.....

ed.
 
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