Approximately how much disk space per minute should I expect CineForm to use when capturing at its highest quality setting from an Intensity card?

Thanks!

P.S. Is a single 7200 RPM drive really fast enough?

Peter,

Using CineForm's Filmscan 1 setting (the highest we recommend - internally we call FS2 "overkill") you can expect a compressed data rate of 15 - 20 MB/sec, or about 1GB/hour. The "High" setting will be about 15%-20% smaller.

The variable bitrate nature of our algorithm makes the variable nature of the final result because the size of compressed files is a function of the image "complexity" of the incoming source. The numbers above are for never-before-compressed sources. If you have pre-compressed source (HDV, AVCHD, even D5) your resulting files should be even smaller.

And by 1GB an hour, he means 1GB per MINUTE and therefore 60GB per hour.

Mike, thanks for the correction ;).

BTW, IS a single 7,200 HD really fast enough?

Yes, a modern 7200 RPM drive sustains 35-50MBytes/s