Transferring an .avi file to external storage device without dropping frames

Hi

I am in the process of transferring footage from mini-DV to my PC. As the files sizes are so large I would like to save them to my external hard drive.

However, I tried this last night and when I tried to play back a file I had transferred it was extremely jerky and in slow motion.

My external HD (Maxtor) is connected to my PC via USB - is this causing the problem? It doesn't have a fire wire connection unfortunately.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could avoid this? Or is it unavoidable? I don't have a DVD burner - I wonder whether I need to invest in one. Hope not - have spent a bloody fortune lately!

 

Hi,

USB (both versions 1 & 2) do not have enough sustained speed to allow smooth playback of video in real-time.

You would have to use either a firewire drive (although theoretically marginally slower than USB2.0, the speed is constant) with 7200rpm sustained.

Another option would be to copy the files from your video scratch drive to your system drive as you come to use them, but this is cumbersome and if you forget to delete files adfter you've used them can be a pain.

You could partition your main drive?.

Dependng on the software you use, you may have to disconnect your camcorder when you playback the footage, or use the camcorder as a monitor window.

In higher end packages you can choose to have the footage playback on both the desktop and an external monitor (depending on things like RAM availability and the capability of your video card).