iMovie '08 impressions, library size problems

At 4:23 AM -0700 8/22/07, Nik Friedman TeBockhorst wrote:
>Unfortunately, that comprehensive video library is GIGANTIC. I've only
>owned a camera for a year and I use it sparingly, but my Movies folder
>is up to over 20GB!
>
>I certainly could upgrade my hard drive (about $200 for a 250GB
>MacBook drive), or get some beefy external storage (not a whole lot
>cheaper, and rather inconvenient).

I certainly agree that external storage is a lot less convenient than
internal storage. But it is NOT true that it is not a whole lot
cheaper.

Looking at DealMac.com, I see:

* 750GB external (eSATA/USB2) for $220. That's 1/3 the price per GB.
     That's around the same price, and a lot more storage.

* 500GB NAS for $240. That's about 1/2 the price per GB.
     Just hook it up to your network, so it's not as inconvenient as
most external storage.

* 250GB external (eSATA/USB2) for $80.
     That's less money, and less than 1/2 the price per GB.

* 160GB portable external (USB2) for $83.
     Easy to carry with you a little more than 1/2 the price per GB.
And less money.


There's no question that nothing is as convenient as internal storage
in machine itself. But other options ARE "a whole lot cheaper" and
are not necessarily that much less convenient. And I didn't even get
into buying your own enclosure and drive to save even more money.

(Of course, if you have a new AirPort Basestation, any USB drive is a
NAS drive. That's how I do it.)
--
=Alex Hoffman
Leadership, Policy & Politics
Teachers College, Columbia University

On 22-Aug-2007, at 05:23, Nik Friedman TeBockhorst wrote:
> Unfortunately, that comprehensive video library is GIGANTIC. I've only
> owned a camera for a year and I use it sparingly, but my Movies folder
> is up to over 20GB!

Hee hee, tee hee hee, 20GB! Hahahaha, Guffaw Guffaw Guffaw!

Erm.. Sorry, really. But 20GB? Really? I have a 27GB iMove 06
project from ONE TRIP.

DV video is large, that's all there is to it.

> I certainly could upgrade my hard drive (about $200 for a 250GB
> MacBook drive), or get some beefy external storage (not a whole lot
> cheaper, and rather inconvenient). But I'm wondering if there's some
> good suggestions on other ways to reduce the size of video.

Erm, I saw a 500GB external for $99 (after rebates) just a couple of
weeks ago. Searching froogle I see a few at $115-150 without rebates.
I usually check dealmac.com for pricing, they currently list an
external 750GB for $220, but a similar 750GB external was recently
available for ~$160. I bought 3 internal 500GB SATA drives recently
for $109 each (paying an extra $10 for Seagate over Western Digital)
and I could easily get a case for one of those for $30 to make it
external. Storage is cheap.

And no, there really is no way to reduce the size of the video and
keep it for iMovie's use. iMovie needs DV (unless that too has
changed in iMovie '08). If you are DONE with some video, then you
can certainly export to a compressed format and keep THAT, but you
lose the opportunity to edit the file.

On Aug 22, 2007, at 11:05 AM, Alexander Hoffman wrote:

> * 500GB NAS for $240. That's about 1/2 the price per GB.
> Just hook it up to your network, so it's not as inconvenient as
> most external storage.

And then deal with the networking, which is a showstopper for many.
But then, we're here to help Uncle Harry, aren't we (individually).

   --John

On 8/22/07, Google Kreme <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
> Hee hee, tee hee hee, 20GB! Hahahaha, Guffaw Guffaw Guffaw!
>
> Erm.. Sorry, really. But 20GB? Really? I have a 27GB iMove 06
> project from ONE TRIP.

Yeah. I'm not an avid videographer. Frankly, I found it too time
consuming to import the DV, add it to iMovie projects, export, etc.
iMovie 08 makes this so very much faster and easier that I'm getting a
real itch to do more.

But your comment only underscores what a problem this will be as time goes on.

> And no, there really is no way to reduce the size of the video and
> keep it for iMovie's use. iMovie needs DV (unless that too has
> changed in iMovie '08).

This HAS changed in iMovie 08. You can import movie files directly (in
any format Quicktime can handle, as far as I can tell -- not sure
about video via plug-ins such as Perian or Flip4Mac WMV) and use them
in video projects. It even takes digicam videos in iPhoto and makes
them available for projects!

I've been playing around with encoding my DV in H.264 format for just
this purpose. By just using the default H.264 export (16 bit PCM
audio, full size video and "high" quality compression), I get files
that are about 30MB/minute rather than 150MB/minute. Quite an
impressive reduction! Quality looks pretty good too -- unless I'm
examining the video very closely indeed, it looks indistinguishable
from the original. Audio is excellent as well.

I'm no whiz at compression, so I'm not sure what are the best export
settings to use. For example, would want to de-interlace the video (it
seems to drop the size and looks no different) or what other gotchas
are in there when compressing the video? (Anyone on the list care to
weigh in on this?)

To my mind, this is pretty much on the same level as storing JPEGs in
iPhoto rather than RAW/TIFF files. There are some trade-offs in
quality, but if my final output doesn't have to be Hollywood quality,
it's looking like a reasonable option.

--
--Nik (nikinik.net)

On 23/08/2007, at 6:05 AM, Alexander Hoffman wrote:

> (Of course, if you have a new AirPort Basestation, any USB drive is a
> NAS drive. That's how I do it.)

        Is it fast enough for iMovie though? I've always been skeptical of
using network storage for iMovie. I remember my old G3 iMac couldn't
even handle the screen saver running while iMovie was importing,
granted that's probably more of a limitation in the old machine than
anything. There is nothing worse than getting halfway though 90mins
of imported footage to have something go wrong with iMovie and have
to start all over again.

Jason

On 23-Aug-2007, at 09:24, Nik Friedman TeBockhorst wrote:
> I've been playing around with encoding my DV in H.264 format for just
> this purpose. By just using the default H.264 export (16 bit PCM
> audio, full size video and "high" quality compression), I get files
> that are about 30MB/minute rather than 150MB/minute. Quite an
> impressive reduction! Quality looks pretty good too -- unless I'm
> examining the video very closely indeed, it looks indistinguishable
> from the original. Audio is excellent as well.

That's great news, and I look forward to reimporting a bunch of stuff.

I'm no video expert, but I like the settings I use in Handbrake for
converting DVDs to iTunes compatible files:

x264 (h.264 Main)
Average bitrate: 1500kps
Anamorphic: ON
Deinterlace: ON
bframes=3:ref=1:subme=5:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:no-dct-
decimate=1:trellis=2

I don't even pretend to know what all of those mean, but Handbrake
has a default setting for "apple TV" that I reduce from 2500 to
1500kbps and things look fine. I just did the kids' new DVD of TNMT
and it came out at just about 1GB exactly and it looks great. How
much of that translates to iMovie I don't know yet, it will probably
be October before I have enough time to look at the new iMovie 7.0.

I just posted an applet that converts all the DV videos in your iMovie
'08 library into H.264 video. You can set the level of compression,
and your original videos are set aside so you can archive them later.

I'm using the "Better" settings and seeing a 70% reduction in the size
of my library.

Download it here and let me know what you think:

<http://inik.net/node/168>

--
--Nik (nikinik.net)

I was all set to get iLife '08, which has the new iMovie, when the Apple Store staffer warned me to look into the OS & hardware requirements. I was chagrined - the iMac G5 1.8 GHz processor does not qualify, nor does my Powerbook G4. I didn't check all that closely, but all the other iLife '08 components would work. From what little I saw of the Apple Store demo iMovie now looks much like Final Cut Express - it should be real fun to be able to use iMovie '08. Might even have to run out and get the latest iMac ($2500 ?).

John Ferman jwfermanties2.net

On 23 Aug 2007, at 4.24 pm, Nik Friedman TeBockhorst wrote:

> I'm no whiz at compression, so I'm not sure what are the best export
> settings to use. For example, would want to de-interlace the video (it
> seems to drop the size and looks no different) or what other gotchas
> are in there when compressing the video? (Anyone on the list care to
> weigh in on this?)

You don't want to de-interlace unless either

     (a) you're only ever going to display it on a computer or
similarly progressive display device (e.g. one of those LCD
'televisions'); or

     (b) your camera records footage in progressive mode.

If you don't want your video to look weird on an interlaced display
device, such as a normal (CRT-based) television, you shouldn't de-
interlace it.

How sensible a job of de-interlacing the QuickTime/iMovie export
settings do, I'm not sure. I've always found the best tool for such
tasks (in terms of output quality, though not necessarily in terms of
speed) is JESDeinterlacer. The documentation accompanying it also
gives a good, detailed explanation of the issues and terminology
relating to interlacing and computer video.

<http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeschot/home.html>

David

Doesnt the external drive need to be firewire? And I tried to move the movies over to a firewire drive I had attached and iMovie would not see them. Any ideas?

Also with just a few movies downloaded my movies file is over 217 G....I have dozens more I want to add.

On 9/3/07, wstaffforever <wstaffforevermac.com> wrote:
> Doesnt the external drive need to be firewire? And I tried to move the movies over to a firewire drive I had attached and iMovie would not see them. Any ideas?

External drive can be whatever you want. I've put some on a USB2
drive. The trick is you need to choose "Import Movies" and then tell
it to import them TO the drive. Use the option to "move" the movies if
they're already on that drive.

> Also with just a few movies downloaded my movies file is over 217 G....I have dozens more I want to add.

Yup. Size is a real problem. That's why I built the compression
script. It makes a huge difference.


-- Nik