disk storage space required per format?

[Stuart Campbell]

Hi,

Anyone able to give me a quick comparison of HDD storage space required for HDV 720p v Widescreen DV? all in PAL

If it goes in as HDV it will go via Cineform NEOHD into an intermediate AVI.

Got a short notice project which requires editing over 72 hours of footage in 5 days! I'll be cutting it in segments and bringing each segment back in as a nested project for the final 10 minute DVD.

We only have 600 Gb storage! Agh!

Each segment will be made up of 10 hours of rushes and cut into a 1/2 minute piece.

How much storage space will we need? Any storage space calculators around?

Many thanks
Stuart

[Edward Troxel]

HDV and DV are both the same size - about 13Gig per hour.

[Stuart Campbell]

Many thanks for the rapid reply Edward. That's great stuff.

I'm amazed though that HDV is the same size? I always thought it was much larger!?

[Vito DeFilippo]

HDV is long GOP compression, which brings the data rate way down, even though frame resolution is much higher.

[Stuart Campbell]

Thanks guys, that's great.

I've been editing HDV for over 1 year now. I should know that already aye!? ha ha

Many thanks again.

[Marcus Marchesseault]

Hold on just a sec, pardner. 1080 HDV is the same data rate as DV, but I believe 720P HDV is actually 19mbps instead of 25mbps so it should actually be smaller. The problem may be that Cineform makes larger files than native HDV so you may be looking at something like 40 Gigabytes per hour for your intermediate files. I don't know the exact figures other than 1080 HDV and DV both being about 13Gig/hour but you don't have anywhere near enough drive space to hold 72 hours of Cineform intermediate HD files. You will need to work on your project in sections.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

1080i is approx 13GB per hour
720p is only slightly less.

Cineform intermediates will range between 40-60GBph depending on the quality of DI selected. This workflow is laid out pretty clearly in "The Full HD" book. Storage can really bite your butt if you're not careful and prepared.

[Stuart Campbell]

Wow guys thanks.

Now please excuse the cameraman asking a stupid 'editor' question here, but how come a Cineform Intermediate file is bigger? I thought the whole point of it was to make the native HDV files easier for the edit machine to handle. If the file sizes are so much bigger then how does that make a benefit?

Either way, I don't have the storage capacity here, nor the time to get this all cut so we've farmed out the edit!

Nonetheless, I'm interested in these file sizes!

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Stuart Campbell

how come a Cineform Intermediate file is bigger? I thought the whole point of it was to make the native HDV files easier for the edit machine to handle. If the file sizes are so much bigger then how does that make a benefit?

By making the file BIGGER, every frame is a full frame making it EASIER to edit because it doesn't have to go backwards "X" frames and then build up the current frame from all the frames in-between. Every frame would now be a full frame so it's less work and easier/faster to handle.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

It's all about the codec. AVCHD is extremely compressed footage=small file sizes. No computer can natively edit multiple streams of AVCHD...it needs to be converted to a lighter compression scheme to be more readily decoded. A lighter compression scheme means larger files.
Storage is dirt cheap. CPU cycles for desktop editing are not. Therefore, it's more efficient to deal with the larger file sizes in most cases. There are other benefits to the transcoded file formats as well, particularly if keying or heavy C/C is part of the program.

[Stuart Campbell]

Thanks guys. That makes perfect sense now!