Transferring video from internal disk to external

[thurber27]

Hello:
I am teaching a high school film course with a production element. Being old, I am much more familiar with film than I am with digital video, so I am learning along with the students. We are working with a Canon HV30, a Macbook, a 500 GB hard drive, and Final Cut Express.
My first (basic) question: I have captured my first test project (actually a 1 minute scene) successfully onto my Mac's internal hard drive. I now want to put it in my external drive. Do I simply chose this project in the browser and then do a Save as to my external drive? What I want is to know that the original media is on my external, not my internal.
My second question: I am NOT capturing directly to my external drive because I am using my Firewire cable (and my mac's only firewire hub) to connect from the macbook to the camera, then using a USB cable to connect from computer to external drive. Is it okay to use a USB cable to do this? I've read something about data possibly being choppy when transfered via USB. Or do I need to first use my Firewire to capture from camera, then unplug this, and go out and get another Firewire cable to save to my external disk?
http://www.hv20.com/images/smilies2/hv20-smilie77.gif
Thanks for any help!

[PadawanGeek]

Just do a copy and paste from your internal to external hard drive.

Transferring over USB is fine. I have a USB external hard drive and its great.

[thurber27]

Thank you for your help. And again, please forgive me if my questions seem obvious. But here it goes:
1. I don't seem to be able copy and paste my project to my external drive because when I copy the project and then try to go paste it into my external drive, my Finder menu doesn't give me Paste as an option - only Select all. What am I doing wrong?
2. If I just copy and paste, doesn't that mean that my original media hasn't been moved exclusively to my external drive, but now exists in both my internal and external drives? And won't that present me with problems once I (very shortly) exceed the memory limits of my internal drive?
Again, thank you very much for any help you can provide.
http://www.hv20.com/images/smilies2/hv20-smilie03.gif

[PadawanGeek]

Try doing cmd+P for paste


If you COPY and paste, the file will be on both drives
If you CUT and paste, the file will only be where you paste it to.

[koolpenguin89]

You don't copy and paste, you drag the item to the new folder you want it in. If you want it to stay in both folders then you have to make a duplicate first before dragging the file to the new folder.

Dylan

[PadawanGeek]

You don't copy and paste, you drag the item to the new folder you want it in. If you want it to stay in both folders then you have to make a duplicate first before dragging the file to the new folder.

Dylan

Copy and pasting a file is the same as dragging it from one folder to another.