I have searched for info on this topic but not found anything - I bet someone now comes back and points out how bad my search technique is! I use Pinnacle Studio 8 to compile massive AVIs (typically 12 to 15GB) that I have historically written to VHS and/or VCD for family and friends and later archived out to my Sony Digital 8 camera so that I retain a digital master should i want to either use the footage again or simply produce another VHS/VCD. Trouble is that the process is of course real time!! I have recently splashed out on a DVD burner and am now wondering whether there is a better way to archive loss free. It seems to me that I could break the AVIs into 4.7GB chunks and archive to DVD as AVIs - easy but relatively expensive on DVDs Alternatively I could make a DVD movie but as I understand it I would need to rip the video back off the DVD before I could use it with something like DVD Decrypter and then DVD2AVI it to get a format that Studio can read. Tedious but would there also be losses? Is there any other way to compress the data that is loss free and reversable? e.g. MPEG 2 or DIVX? Also, what is the stability of DVDs for this purpose? I have sometimes experienced failure of CDRs that I had used to backup data. Is this a risk with DVDs or is the technology more stable?
IMHO- any time you use any format such as MPEG or DIVX you are using a form of compression. And with compression you lose some of the quality. Now as we see with modern JPEG pictures vs. bitmaps, there is very little loss of quality comparing one format to the other. So I guess I'm of the opinion that digital storage is better. And keep in mind that your camcorder; while digital, is still storing that digital information on an anologue media, and such it is prone to degredation. As for the longevity of DVD-R's, I've heard different timelines from 10 years to 50 years. Now of course that all depends on storage. CD-R and DVD-R media are prone to degredation when exposed to temperature fluctiation and light. Hope this was of some help.
