Managing video files and backing up, advice please

[sinar]

Hi,

I’m very new to video, mostly being into still photography, but I’m quite interested in trying out film making. I’m currently using a Panasonic G2, but hope to have a Panasonic GH2 soon.

I’ve recently started to learn video editing, I’m using Final Cut Express, and will probably move on to Final Cut Pro X before I start to get more serious.

As video files can be quite large and I only have one internal hard drive (I have an iMac) I’m trying to think of how to manage the big files and how to back them up.

Currently, with my photos, I copy the raw images directly from the card onto an external hard drive (in folders with subject and date name)

I then import from the card into Lightroom, where they are stored on my computers hard drive, I then use Time Machine to make a back up of those files, so I always have one copy of my unedited pictures, and two copies of my edited images on hard drives.

How can i replicate this, without using my internal hard drive? (as I don’t have enough space)

I’m thinking of copying my raw video footage from my card to an external hard drive, as I do my photos, then bringing them in from the card into FCE, storing them on an external hard drive? perhaps one with Raid 1 configuration so I have an automatic back up?

Would i need to do anything else? or is there a better way of doing it? I’d be using a FW 800 hard drive.

Ideally I’d like to use portable hard drives (as I hate cables and the fan noise of desktop hard drives), but I'm not sure how feasible that would be, is there anyway I get away with using these? would they be too slow for editing 1080p? could I just import my clips on to a single FW800 portable HD, and then use either Time Machine or some other software to make an automatic incremental back up of it?

Thanks for reading

Julie

 

[AlanSmithee]

I have FCP and haven't used FCE so I can't say how much would be the same. But I use an external firewire HD to upload my raw footage from the camera (HDV tape). I then convert the files to ProRes 422. I delete the originals off the drive since they are now archived on tap.

I copy the ProRes editing files over to my computer's hard drive and start a project. Editing in FCP means you can more than double the actual footage size with scratch files that you can define where they will be stored. When the project is finished, I clean out the scratch files (FCP has a management tool for that) and the original footage files off my computer's hard drive. I copy the project files over the external dirve for a backup and let Time Machine (also a separate external HD) backup that project too.

With this method I just keep one full video project on my computer's HD at a time with the ProRes version's of the raw footage backed up on only one external drive so far with the other project files and the end results of the video project backed up both the raw capture external HD and the Time Machine's external HD.