On 11 Apr 1999 08:55:32 PDT, videoguy@concentric.net (Gary Bettan) wrote:

[...most deleted...]
>>- Can reliable DV capture be done with 7200 rmp UDMA, even on inner tracks?

>Here is how we call it. The inner 20% of many UDMA drives can cause
>problems for DV compressed video. But the problem may be just a few
>frames dropped and hardly noticable.
>
>The following stats are based on the outer 80% of an UDMA drive.
>
>For videos up to 10 minutes long, UDMA drives are fantastic for DV
>editing. Up to 15 minutes is usually no problem at all, but soem
>frames may drop. 15-20 minutes is the yellow zone. This is where many
>users report some dropped frames. But still, this is not unuseable
>video, just a few frames. At over 20 minutes most users will find they
>drop some frames. But once again, the video is useable, just some
>slight playback problems.
>
>Where you run into problems is if you have a video over 10 minutes
>long on an UDMA drive that is over 80% full. At that point playback
>problems may make the video unuseable.
[....]

My experience with building and using several mini-DV
editing computers (we are now beginning to offer turn-key
systems...) using the IBM Deskstar series UDMA 8 and 16-gig
5400rpm drives has been that there are NO dropped frames,
regardless of the capture length, and whether or not the
drives are nearly filled (so long as the drives are not
fragmented - though this is less critical for
video-dedicated drives than for drives that also contain
the computer programs [I don't recommend using the
program drive for video capture/play, but it can work...]).