Hello: I have captured a bunch of tapes from my Canon DV recorder to PC using Premier Elements and all my files have been stored in an uncompressed .avi format. These files are HUGE and I have over 300 GB of disk space used so far... What I want to know is, what format should I compress these to? Besides saving space, maintaining good quality, and using a format that will be supported for the next few decades (is that possible?) my main concern is that I want a format that be of any limitation for multiple purposes. What I mean is that I will store all these tapes in a box somewhere, delete all these .avi's and then transfer these compressed files to my Windows Home Server for many uses: viewing on PC's, editing to make mixes, share on YouTube, mix DVD's, and stream to my Xbox 360 (or any other Windows Media Expander). I was thinking DIVX or XVID, Any suggestions? Thanks!
I am encoding everything to h.264 I believe this one is going to be around for quite some time. It encodes to a very small file size, and pound for pound, has a better picture than divx or xvid.
Thank you, I had seen that h.264 is supported by the Xbox 360 and was just reading up on this in fact. I think this will work well for my needs. I am downloading Super to see how it encodes these files; but would you recommend any other encoders? Thanks!
I keep my DV AVI original files forever. If you compress it to anything else there will be a loss of quiality. I can't think of anything worse than trying to use DIVX or XVID. Why don't you do your own test? Take 20 minutes of DV AVI video, compress it to DIVX or XVID (or whatever) and then try to edit it. if you are pleased with the results, then consider me incorrect. Rich
The encoder I use is Nero Recode. It isn't free though. But I like it's "ease of use", and I get very good results.
Dapsone: I understand where you are coming from. 1. I keep all my tapes. 2. All my DV goes onto an external USB HDD. 3. Then I also copy that DV onto yest another external USB HDD for "working". 4. I hate to recapture tape. I have a fear for example some day my Digital8 will die in the middle of capture for example. 5. I start working on my "working"video. And in some cases I am almost 5 years behind. To try and distribute this is what I basically do. a. I encode to .WMV. I can give this to almost anyone and they can play it on their computer. I can upload this to YouTube and get decent results (Yes, I did the 15 or so tests to see how YouTube works). I also upload to Vimeo.com which has some advantages over YouTube. I have no use for DivX or Xvid. I have tried to use them three times over the years. It just does not work in my situation. b. I encode to MPEG-2 for DVD's. c. If I ever get all that done, I keep at least one backup DVD and one high quality 3 mbps .WMV file. If it did extensive editing on the DV-AVI, I use it to replace the original DV-AVI on the first HDD. d. I do not trust DVD's for storage. Sorry, that has been my experience, and I have heard all the explanations. I just don't like to walk down dark alleys either... I have not done all of the above for the last five years. That is what I am doing now and wish I had done before. Yea, I have the family and friends issue. And I do some real bad video for some friends which they love. Here is one of my worse which people still want copies of http://vimeo.com/665092 ... I enjoy editing. I have been making "Home Movies" on and off since about 1969. It has gotten cheaper, easier etc... I hope that answered your questions. I'm sure others will have different procedures... Rich
Thanks for the advice, you definitely seem to have experience with exactly the situation I am in, and that's important. Ironically, today I sat down to start a capture and found one of my tapes (actually mine and not someone elses) that is messed up.. that distresses me a bit and makes your point regarding fear of having to recapture a tape a reality. I think I'll start shopping for some external disk drives As for the DIVX/XVID idea, I have been reading around today and I think the h.264 (in MP4 I think) would be a much better idea. I think I'll do some experimenting between that and WMV. I know MP4 would work well with me, but others won't have the appropriate decoders, etc. installed, and so I agree that wmv would be easier for distribution to friends/family. At least I already know how to work with WMV very well from some prior experience.. Thanks!
