Archiving Home Videos

safari_tim wrote on 4/23/2002, 4:48 PM

I have been turning my little movies into VCDs. So I have been archiving the files as mpeg 1 vcd complient. For back up storage on CD's.

This way if the VCD gets bad, I can easily burn another one and still archive the video off my limited harddrive space.

Is this a good way or should I be using a different encoding for the storage. I do not plan on editing or changing them again. Just want a backup if needed.

-Tim

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 4/23/2002, 5:49 PM

The best format to store them in would be DV .avi files, however, you can only fit about 3 minutes on a CD this way. If your videos are this short and you don't mind using a whole lot of CDs, then go for it. If your videos are longer than that, then you'll have to use a more severe compression like MPEG. If you want to get the best image possible (least compression), then use this formula for finding your bitrate:

650MB CDs: (89,000 / length of video in minutes) - audio bitrate
700MB CDs: (95,000 / length of video in minutes) - audio bitrate

This may come up with something too high for VCD encoding though, so if you don't want to encode your file twice, then just use the maximum VCD bitrate. Also, if you make your backup copies as MPEG files at a higher bitrate than is allowed for VCD, then you'll have to re-render MPEG to MPEG to recreate the VCD, and this is bound to cause problems.

safari_tim wrote on 4/23/2002, 6:51 PM

I just use the NTSC VCD template. Should I be modifiying this somehow for better results?

Whats the difference between the default and the NTSC VCD?