Do encrypted drives capture just as fast?
 

If the final destination of a video capture from analog is an external USB drive, will it save the data just as quickly and reliably if the drive is encrypted vs if it wasn't?

Going from camcorder to TBC to Tevion capture device to Mac with an external (encrypted) 5tb Seagate.

No real difference between encrypted vs non-encrypted? Or is the process of encrypting on the fly cause for a delay that could muck up newly acquired video?

Maybe depending on you system but do not count on it. Encryption takes some time. USB ports can be shared by multiple devices and thus operate at less than max speed for any given device. USP storage devices come in various speeds as well. The only way to know for sure for your specific system is to try it.

You cannot capture to USB drives. The connection is not sustained, you will drop frames.

With Mac, use Firewire 400/800 or Thunderbolt. Firewire is sustained, Thunderbolt is fast enough to (usually) not really matter (like eSATA).

Encryption adds another layer of delay, more dropped frames or abort.

I have always stayed away from capturing to an external USB drive, but I have recently used it with no issues.
My low-end Thinkpad with AMDAthlon P-360 and an aging Toshiba external drive and I was getting excellent caps with no drops/inserts. I was surprised. The drive itself has some disconnect issues and I keep the caps under an hour. I'm going to experiment with other external HDs I have, but as a general rule, I still agree that external drives are to be avoided.

Same here, it's not something I'd recommend but we have done it here occasionally without any detriment.

I would say it's a case of 'Just because you can, doesn't mean you should but it's certainly doable on modern hardware, albeit probably not the smartest thing to do for consistent results.

Oh man, you gotta be kidding me. This is new news to me. I finally made peace with going to Costco and loading up on as many as a dozen Seagate 5tb USB drives at $90 a pop so I can digitize my hundreds of HI8 tapes ... and now I find that I need yet another special drive to capture to before I can transfer the captured video data to cheaper USB drives.

Well ... better I find out now rather than later as I'm actually capturing and mysteriously experiencing drops.

Thanks for the info.

I should probably just ask right now ... would anyone care to recommend the ideal "capture drive" for a 2013 iMac? I don't think I have firewire, but I do have thunderbolt.

I assume what I'm looking for then is a solid state thunderbolt drive - with enough space to capture at least three or four Hi8 tapes before moving the data over to cheaper USB drives?

If you already have the drives in hand, with one unboxed, give it a try. The issues become the data rate you need, the reliable write speed of the drives you have on your system, whether you have effective write caching enabled, and what else is going on in your system.

My take is:
USB 1.x is too slow.
USB 2.x is marginal at best but might work for compressed SD video
USB 3.x should work for compressed NTSC SD video.

Be sure all other non essential processes in the computer are off.
Be sure nothing else is connected to the USB port set you are using.

As a quick test I connected a USB 3.0 thumb drive to a WIN 10 PC USB 3 port and captured a HDMI HD feed and then composite SD video to it using a BMD Intensity Pro capture card and Media Express configured to stop capture at dropped frames. No issue encountered in a 10 minute capture to Motion JPEG file at a bit rate around 50 Mbps. I repeated the test with a WD Passport with similar results. However, uncompressed capture dropped frames. As EPA says, your mileage will be different.

A thought: If the reason for the USB drives is to archive the material, maybe capture it to an internal high speed drive then copy to the USP drive for archive.

I have a nicer suggestion. USE A NORMAL COMPUTER, which means with normal drives. Upgrading the drive of modern mac is a pain, if you have an old mac then just upgrade your internal drive to like 1TB, that should give you enough captures before having to move the files to the external drive. Or if you use normal computer, it's easy to find cheap drives so you can just use the internal drive directly, and copy later to external.

Or you might want to spend like 100$ on a cheap used old laptop (pro laptops as they can live for long), a thinkpad ideally, or maybe an elitbook or something. Use it for capture only, capture on internal drive, move files to external and voila. When you are done, sell it

In general it is not good to try capture to the system drive. Most operating systems have enough going in to induce dropped frames every now and them when saving to the system drive..

Yes, some pro laptops like mine (vostro, probook , elitebook, thinkpad, etc) have dual drives and can be found for not so expensive. These are good for this.

I've read the same thing about capturing to my Mac's one onboard drive. That drive is busy with the OS and whatever software needs to be running and isn't reliable for constant throughput of captured video data. I don't know much about capturing analog video to date, but I do know that if the computer has only one drive, then I need an external.

So I'm still thinking a 1TB thunderbolt SSD is ideal for me, unless someone educates me otherwise. I capture a couple of Hi8 tapes, then transfer to cheapie 5tb externals.

I assume too, unless someone educates me otherwise, that, for my purposes, all 1TB thunderbolt SSDs are essentially identical.

Capturing to your OS SSD drive might be better than an external SATA one (from my own very limited and humble experience)

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Porta...s%2C128&sr=8-4

that is 300 Bucks... if you gonna spend some money, 100-200$ will get you a good 2012 pro laptop with dual drives. Install windows 7 or even XP and you have a suitable computer for capture. Your capture computer does need to be your main computer.

Capturing to SSD is rarely suggested. The fragmented burst/cache nature of SSD doesn't mix well with the continuous long data of a realtime capture. You'd need a non-cheap NAND version, but then you'd be wasting lifespan on a capture.

I'd much rather have a hard drive, even a 2.5" 5400rpm, in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

Keep those 5tb Seagates for data copy. You need to be careful about heat on those, don't let temps run up, the drive will fail. These drives are bad for capturing to, but great to store files.

Man, LS. Where do you learn all this stuff? Such a wealth of knowledge.

Okay, plain ol' (new) Thunderbolt drive will do the job. Thanks.

Experience. Decades worth. :)

I don't know if you can shuck those cheap Seagates, but worth investigating.

Ha! I had to google shucking hard drives to figure out what you're referring to. New to me.

Nope. I plan to just buy a thunderbolt drive for capture and then transfer to the cheap Seagates every night. That'll just be the routine for an estimated 30TB of video.

Although I still can't figure out why I'm monitoring video in real time at about two frames per second, while the finished capture is coming out fine and plays back properly. Yet another thing causing a hold-up in this project.

Next step: Try different capture software to see if it resolves the monitoring issue.

Man, will this project EVER get underway?

Man, this is getting complicated. I'm now searching for Thunderbolt drives. They are either SSDs, which LS does not recommend ... or they are screaming expensive - two to three or even four times as expensive as a USB drive.

Does anyone know of a mechanical Thunderbolt drive that's ideal for capturing uninterrupted 2-hour tapes that doesn't break the bank?

:question:

I know NOTHING about Macs but OWC maybe? It looks like they make a wide range of ext. drives and bare enclosures at more reasonable prices. Which ports does your Mac have, Firewire 800, Thunderbolt 1, 2 or 3? From my minimal research, it looks like a TB 3 drive might not work with a TB 1 port on the computer so do investigate carefully: Look here

I also know nothing about OWC but it looks promising.:)
Hope this is useful,
BW