I've just finished shooting a documentary project in HD format. The project was shot with a Sony PMW-EX1. There is about 600 GB of material currently stored on an external LaCie 1TB USB 2.0 hard drive which will be delivered to me in a couple of days. I will be working with this material using Vegas 9 - to view, log and possibly make a couple of rough assemblies - before going to edit the material with an editor.


The question is if I will be able to work on the project using this hard drive. I know that it is recommended to use hard drives with SATA, e-SATA or firewire connections rather than USB 2.0. But before I make my case and demand that the material should all be transferred to a new hard drive with different interface (which will have to be bought) - I really need to know exactly what the consequences would be if I were to try and edit the material on Vegas using the LaCie drive.

Here is a page with the information on the LaCie drive:
LaCie - Desktop Hard Disk - Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=11050)

Looking forward to your replies...

Thanks!

I edit my footage using a western digital mybook external usb2 harddrive so I would say it should not be a problem, if you were the only one accessing the drive.

Ditto on that. I use a lot of external USB hard drives at work with no problems at all.

Has anyone edited a three/four camera shoot using Ultimate S muliticam of HD footage on a USB drive? Does that work as well?

thanks for the replies.
so i'll wait for the LaCie USB drive to arrive and try it out.

thanks!

If you had the option of using eSATA that would of course be the best way to go.

Grab one of these: Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5” & 3.5” USB 2.0 & eSATA - External Enclosures (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071)

Put a standard SATA drive in and plug it in with the included eSATA connector. Then store the drives in a plastic case like this:
WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - Protective Hard Drive Cases (http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php)

You can actually use this method to edit and store your footage.

-Jonathan

If you had the option of using eSATA that would of course be the best way to go.

Grab one of these: Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5” & 3.5” USB 2.0 & eSATA - External Enclosures (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071)

Put a standard SATA drive in and plug it in with the included eSATA connector. Then store the drives in a plastic case like this:
WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - Protective Hard Drive Cases (http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php)

You can actually use this method to edit and store your footage.

-Jonathan

Hey Jonathan, thanks for the info. Yah, actually I already have an external hard drive similar to the setup you described. But there's another project sitting on that drive currently.
Anyway, the usb drive was delivered to me, I made a few tests... and so far it seems to be ok.

thanks!

Has anyone edited a three/four camera shoot using Ultimate S muliticam of HD footage on a USB drive? Does that work as well?

I have. But I didn't use Ultimate S. I used only the Sony Vegas 8.0c multicam feature. All four hdv files (hv-20, hv-30, A1, hc3). It's no different as editing it from a local internal drive. It's ok. It's just that if the final video is long (e.g. 15 min and up), it does take a while to get the timeline all freshen up during startup or initial load. Other than that I don't see much difference from a local access vs an external usb 2.0 drive.

BTW, I used a Q8200 Oc'd to 3.0ghz 4gb RAM, ati hd 3850, win-xp 32-bit sp-2 setup and the data is on an external Seagate 1.5TB usb 2.0 drive.