Hi, my first post as a newbie. I'm seeking a solution for the following scenario: I edit digital video on a Mac using Final Cut Pro. I author DVD's of the edited version using Adobe Encore. To do this, I must dump my edited project (from Mac) onto mini-DV, then imput the info into my PC for DVD authoring. Aside from the extra time and resources needed to do this (short time limit on mini's which then need to be edited together in the PC) the extra glitches and artifacting I pick up along the way is annoying.

I know many of the external firewire drives are compatable with both Mac and PC...on an "either/or" basis. I'd sure like to know if any large quantity external hard drive is capable of hot swapping between the two systems the way my mini-DV camera can. I understand that the different operating systems (OSX & Windows XP) play a big role in the way files are read.

Can anyone help with a solution?
Thanks,
Randy Moss
rmoss1@socal.rr.com

Randy,
I have one of these external cases and I use it with my G5's, the other guy who does our After Effects works has one as well and he has a Windows setup. We swap drives all the time. I format the drive on the G5 and then he can read and write to the drive. I think he also has some Mac Driver software on his PC.

Here is the link:
http://www.ratocsystems.com/english/products/subpages/frmdk1.html

The one featured here is one that goes into a PC but I have several external USB 2.0 and one firewire case. When I need more drive space I just buy another ATA hard drive and empty case. This is very handy for me since I just put the hard drive into my bag and then take the project home with me.

hope this helps.

out of cusiosity, wouldn't it be simpler to use DVD Studio Pro, that way you can keep everything on the Mac?
If not, I swap an 80gb firewire drive between my Mac and PC. It's Mac formatted, but I have a program on my PC that lets it read Mac formatted hard drives.

You can of course format it as a pc drive and the Mac should have no problem reading it as well: probably easier than needing special software to read a Mac volume on a pc.

The only problem with formating as a DOS disk is that the performance may be impacted on the Mac such that it won't work for capturing or playing files without dropping frames. But if you just want to use it to move your files between the two machines that should work fine.

boyd, have you actually experienced an issue like that?... because firewire data streams are not dependant on the disk architecture.

Yes, a few years ago I got a firewire drive and started using it right out of the box, then experienced problems in FCP. I noticed it was PC formatted, so I reformatted under MacOS and the problems went away. Now granted, this was maybe 3 years ago on a single processor G4, so maybe these problems are less of an issue with newer versions of MacOSX and faster machines?

Seems to me that the way the OS accesses the drive has to have some impact on performance since it isn't just the data transfer time, but also time to read the directory and seek the correct sector. For example, I've also had problems when formatting a drive as MacOSX with disk journaling enabled. No problems capturing, but frames were consistently dropped when printing to video. Reformatting with journaling turned off fixed the problem. So in this case, two different versions of the same operating system affected performance within FCP...

You have to take into account that all of the D2D devices available at the moment are formated DOS FAT 32. With all the problems the FS-4 is having, dropped frames on my G4 DP 1.42 GHz or my G4 DP 450 MHz, is not one of them.

For that reason, I am assuming that when one would use any FW HDD formated as DOS FAT 32, there wouldn't be a problem (except maybe for the 2 (or is it 4) Gigabyte file size limitation). But you could get around that by exporting your films in chunks.

Ahh, I didn't know that a DOS formatted HD would perform differently than a Mac OS formatted HD- but it does make perfect sense.

I use external drives formatted with FAT32 all the time and I've had no issues. I think maybe it may have been an issue some years ago but not anymore. I think soem people like to think that unless it has apple stamped on it somewhere, whether it be the filesystem or the mouse, it just won't wonk with macs properly. This is not the case...

Leaving the drive formatted as FAT32 is the most flexible and you can plug it into anything (with a firewire or USB port)...

Donie

I had this exact problem (like yours, OP). The best solution was a little application called MacDrive. It's a shareware program with a fully functional 30-day trial.

All the app does is that, when installed, enables you to use a mac-formatted external disk on a PC. It'll show up in My Computer along your other hard disks. MacDrive has tons of other features too, but I haven't tried them out.

Anyway. Take a look at http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/ for your free trial. The product is 50 bucks for a full license.

Try it out. Think you'll find it does what you need :)

EDIT: I've used FAT32 formatted disks before without any problems. But from time to time I get disks formatted for macintosh, and then the app is very usefull. Also I do think I'm getting better performance in OSX - haven't tested it by the numbers though.

Keep in mind that FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit. If you edit and master a single long file (anything past about 18 minutes of DV) then it won't work with a FAT32 partition. We see this often in Serious Magic DV Rack support, where some people use DV Rack for capturing single long clips (in some cases, over an hour.)

The solution is to reformat the external drive to NTFS (for PC-based editors) or Mac HFS+ format (for FCP editors) and use MacDrive, as mentioned above.

The solution is to reformat the external drive to NTFS (for PC-based editors) or Mac HFS+ format (for FCP editors) and use MacDrive, as mentioned above.

Does the MacDrive solution work for DVRack with HDV Powerpack also? I was curious if it would be possible to record on my PC laptop to an external harddrive and then bring that hard drive to my Mac for editing. It appears that can be done, correct? Any caveats or known issues?

Yes, DV Rack can record to an external drive. Just create a new project, and save the project to the external drive. If you use MacDrive, the external drive can be Mac (HFS+) formatted, so it'll work better with FCP.

I always export out of my editing program in DVD ready MPEG2 as a highquality .mpg file.

If it is under 1 hour, i export as 8MBPS / LPCM audio
It it is over 1 hour, i export as 6MBPS / LPCM audio
etc...

This way when I make my DVD/Menus in my DVD program, it doesnt have to reencode before it burns. It skips over the already compliant files and just splits then into the VOB file format, skipping a conversion step thus saving quality. So making the DVD after I have finished editing only takes about 15 minutes to make the VOB files and burn because all it has to render is the DVD menu since it can skip over the already compliant MPEG files since that is all VOB files are (MPEG2 files)

That is the best method in my experience since from beginning to end you only have one export, and zero reconversions.

::: Connor

It's my understanding that a PC with the right software can see the Mac's firewire output as a digital video device via the capture program.
Correct me if I am wrong but would it not be possible to simply "print to" the PC's capture program from the FCP timeline with the finished DV file?

Apologies if this sounds ridiculous.

I would say format on a PC using FAT32 filesystem.
Make sure that you set the cluster size to the largest possible value (64K, I think). This makes a big difference when writing large files. I don't think many standard PC formatting utilities support setting large cluster sizes. You may need to use a program like Partition Magic for that.


If it is under 1 hour, i export as 8MBPS / LPCM audio
It it is over 1 hour, i export as 6MBPS / LPCM audio
etc...

Why not AC3 for audio? LPCM audio is very space-hungry; DVD doesn't allow for that.