From: "milton_aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: April 25, 2005 12:33:13 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: No space?? - use an external drive



Hi Folks;


For those of you with very little disk space left - you might want to

consider recording directly to an external USB 2 /

FireWire hard drive - if you hvae one.


For 640x480 30 fps streams of 8 bit video, Astro IIDC  requires

sustained transfer rates of 9 megabytes per second and uses 9

megabytes of the theoretical 31.25 FireWire 400 total bandwidth.


A USB 2 hard drive can keep up with this pretty easily (no competition

for bandwidth on disimilar busses) and so far, I've had absolutely no

problem witha FireWire 400 drive either. I daisy chained them together

so that the drive was attached to the Mac and the camera was attached

to the hard drive and it did not drop a single frame at 30 fps while

recording.


At larger video sizes or faster frame rates (the PGR Flea cameras can

deliver 60 fps at 640x480 in 8 bit), you'll either have to use USB 2

or add another FireWire bus (PCI for desktop or CardBus for laptops) 

as there is not enough bandwidth available on a single

FireWire bus to do both.


Hope that helps..


Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@outcastsoft.com

www.outcastsoft.com