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imovie w/ camcorder import... huge files
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Ichiban_jay
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2006-05-17, 23:31

Hi, our family recently decided (30 minutes before bro's concert) to buy a mini dv camcorder to record his final concert.

Well, I connected the camcorder to my powerbook with firewire and launched imovie 6 and it asks me what format to save in. I tried both DV and MPEG-4 (two that sounded familiar). While importing, I noticed that the save file balloons in size, about a gig of space per minute recorded, is this normal?!

Anyways, my real question is, what is the optimal file type I should be saving the imovie project in for archival quality and to save hard drive space. Should I just burn it onto a DVD and just delete the project? Or should I burn a DVD copy and export imovie's clips as well?

I think were are going to return this camcorder and get a better one that has a higher effective CCD. Will that affect file sizes when I import them?

What a crazy strange new world of home movie making! I'm glad Apple's here to help, or else I probably would just explode from craziness... I'm already going mad trying to find the right camcorder, one that isn't too expensive and does good video in low light conditions most importantly.

We bought a Panasonic PV-GS36... But I think we're going to just buy the top of the line Panasonic PV-GS500 because it has 3 CCD. Unless there is any other better ones for the buck?

Thanks in advance!!!
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BlueRabbit
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2006-05-18, 01:47

Back when I was making a movie for school last year I think the files took up about ten gigs per hour of video. Something definitely seems bigger than it should be. I'm pretty sure I used DV, by the way.
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Brave Ulysses
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2006-05-18, 01:50

I think its roughly 3.6 MB/sec or so for DV so do the math.

it takes up a lot of space. You should use DV for archival. Burn it to DVD when you want to save it and free up space.

Last edited by Brave Ulysses : 2006-05-18 at 02:33.
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Ebby
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2006-05-18, 02:26

4.5MB/s actually. A gig a minute is too large, but I think 6 GB/tape (60 min) is my typical average. I only use DV from cameras, but you should use your camera's native format.

^^ One more quality post from the desk of Ebby. ^^
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Brave Ulysses
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2006-05-18, 02:33

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ebby
4.5MB/s actually. A gig a minute is too large, but I think 6 GB/tape (60 min) is my typical average. I only use DV from cameras, but you should use your camera's native format.
3.6MB/sec actually

Quote:
A 60-minute MiniDV tape will hold approximately 13 Gigabytes of data in this form of usage as the DV video format has a constant data rate of 3.6 Megabytes per second (3.6 MB/s x 60 seconds x 60 minutes = 12,960 MB per hour, divided by 1024 = 12.66 GB per hour).
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV
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Ebby
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2006-05-18, 02:45

I am seriously getting a little worried of my mental recall. I haven't made these kinds of simple mistakes for years and all of a sudden I've done that a LOT this past 2 months. This is rather unsettling.

I think I'm going to avoid solving problems for the time being.

^^ One more quality post from the desk of Ebby. ^^
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Ichiban_jay
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2006-05-18, 20:24

Ah great thanks! So I'm looking at about 20 gb for 90 minutes worth of video... Boy... I guess I'll just burn them onto DVD's and delete the file... Perhaps burn two copies just in case. That's crazy how much space it takes.
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