Hi Sammy, if your project has turned out to be in the region of 9GB, then I would say it's of a reasonable length to justify it's own drive. DV files themselves only require about 3-4MB/ sec as a streaming file size/ information rate and a hard drive can provide around 30-40MB/ sec depending on drive speed etc etc. So in the big picture, the movie won't stress the hard drive by itself at all and as Rounik pointed out, DV files don't need uncompressing so it won't tax the CPU too much either to playback. The thing is though, if you put your movie file on to the same drive as the project, which holds lots of audio files, samples, impulse responses for reverb etc, then you are asking the hard drive to find all of these files as well as continuously playback the video file and all without dropping frames. Excluding what buffering does, it's kind of like asking a CD player to playback 3 or 4 songs at the same time which in turn is asking the laser to be in 3 or 4 places at the same time so.... not a good idea. It makes sense to use a separate drive, external or not, just to make your computer's life easier to run everything. At least that way you know you have set your project file up the best it can be with what you have. PhotoJPEG is another format that doesn't need uncompressing and is on par with DV files for playback. My 2c anyway. Cheers, John

Thanks for your help with this. One thing: if I put the video on a separate drive, doesn't Logic still copy it to a folder with the rest of the project info? How do I tell it to only refer to the external drive?

Hi Sammy, You can choose not to copy the movie file to your Project folder. This way you can store the movie files(s) on your External drive and Logic will run them from there. Select this option in the Advanced Options for 'Include Assets' in the Save / Save as... dialogue window. Thanks Rounik

I love having the voices of experience to use as a resource! Managed to go through the Compressor tutorial, which told me a bit about the PhotoJPG format, which ends up being 1/3 the size of the DV... Then I got the video on another drive working perfectly... My next astounding lack of know-how is incredibly basic, and I feel foolish asking, but something's amiss... The key command for turning the cycle mode on and off doesn't seem to work. The "/" is listed as the one to do this, but it just brings up a "go to location" window. Any thoughts? And while we're in this area, have any of you used those keyboards that are made specifically for Logic? I've read about a couple of types, some full keyboards and others just an overlay. I'm still using Logic 8 for now, but are the basic commands common for 9?

Hi Sammy, Really glad you've got the video working nicely with Logic. I'm going to recommend the PhotoJPG format in the future to clients... I'm sure they'll appreciate 1/3rd size over DV! Some of the standard default key commands have been changed in Logic 9. But one of the best things about Logic is how you can customize key commands. This is discussed in Logic 101... but basically, open the Key Commands window: Logic Pro > Preferences > Key commands (Option-K) and type in Cycle in the top right search field. You'll probably find it's been switched to the key 'C'. If you wish to change it, select it in the list and click on 'Learn by key label' and type your preferred key combination. You'll probably find another key command exists on your preferred key, but you can overwrite it and change that to something else if you wish. I don't use Keyboard overlays. Thought about it for a while, but found that as I switch between FCP and Logic so frequently it's better for me to customise the commands I use most frequently so it's easy for me to remember. :) Rounik

Hi Guys, good to know that PhotoJPEG is that much smaller than DV! It is an extremely efficient codec though and I know Logic likes it. As Rounik said, as long as the movie isn't ticked to be included with the assets, the movie file will stay put and be referenced from wherever you say it to :) Cheers, j