DV files are waaay too large?

Okay, I'm buying my first camcorder today. It will be a Sony Handycam DCR-HC62. It's MiniDV.

I read somewhere that DV files are extremely large. So if I record an hour long video, how big will the file be? like 60gb??

I only have about 38gb free on my hard drive, so does this mean I can't make very big movies? If a DVD is only 4.7gb, then I just don't get how this will work....

Please help!

Thanks

EDIT: Should have said before, I will be editing them with iMovie HD '06.

I think iMovie transcodes the clips when importing , so there will be .mov files imported to your hard drive rather than DV

When you make a DVD you compress the footage to MPEG2, not DV, so it will be much smaller. And yes, Imovie converts your DV clips to AIC when capturing, which is why they are so big. I recommend you buy an external hard drive.

Dylan

iMovie takes the DV content straight into a project folder. No conversion, that I'm aware occurs, short of creating .dv container file.

One hour of miniDV footage is approximately 13GB.

Once you have edited it, the easiest way to move the edit to iDVD (in iMovie versions older that iMovie 08) is to use the iDVD option in the Share menu. iDVD then knows where the file is so don't delete or move your iMovie project. iDVD at some point in the process, converts the file to an MPEG2. That hour of video will be converted to a smaller size to fit on a DVD. It will also likely take a long time to re-encode.

You might want to review Apple's online tutorials, supposing you have a high speed internet connection. Click the Help menu in iDVD and chose the Tutorials option.

koolpenguin89 said:

And yes, Imovie converts your DV clips to AIC when capturing...

Click to expand...

That does not happen with miniDV tapes.

koolpenguin89 said:

I recommend you buy an external hard drive.

Click to expand...

I have an external hard drive, but how do I tell iMovie to import the tape to that instead of the internal drive?

When you create the iMovie project (pre 08), you save it to the external drive before importing.

xstep said:

When you create the iMovie project (pre 08), you save it to the external drive before importing.

Click to expand...

Thanks it works!