A post from the past After so many years using my old minidv camera I have many tapes that it is time to convert to digital.. Problem is that the size of each tape is enormous when i capture them on pc. The quality already is far from perfect but when I try to encode it becomes even worst.. Can anyone suggest me a way (program) to decrease the size of the video without loosing quality. Ideally I would like to be able to record a 60-90min tape to a DVD...
There's an active Capture/Encoding forum at Videohelp - I would start there. http://forum.videohelp.com/forums/10-Capturing
If you are capturing as a DV-AVI file, which is the best, one hour of video will be 12-14 GB on your hard drive. The video will be lossless, meaning it will be exactly as it is on the tape. If you are serious about keeping your videos at the best quality, then get a large hard drive.
so there is no way to make it smaller without loosing quality? even the quality now is not perfect now..
Are you set on putting the tape contents onto a computer? I've had better luck putting them onto DVDs and storing them that way. No tape degradation to worry about.
Do you really think that DVDs don't deteriorate? They most certainly can, especially if you burn to a low quality DVD. And, how are you putting your movies on a DVD? As data, DVD compliant files, or something else?
ignore the noob person talks out of the proverbial. http://forums.afterdawn.com/t.cfm/f-164/can_i_rip_dvds_to_my_computer-911065/