Archiving movies to DVD...

johnmeyer wrote on 10/14/2003, 12:21 AM

Jeff,

I've been asking for Sony to provide features in future releases to do exactly what you describe. Unfortunately, many people seem to think that such features would only be used by someone trying to illegally copy commercial DVDs and therefore do not want to see Vegas add features to make it easy to "re-purpose" or re-use your own DVDs that you created. Also, others object to the loss in quality you may get if you use the MPEG2 from the DVD in a future Vegas project, rather than keeping a tape (or many, many DVDs) that contain the original AVI file(s).

Of course, if all you need in the future is the ability to do cuts-only editing of the material on DVD, then no further rendering would be needed, and there would be no further degradation, but only if Sony addd features to make this possible. The way it is now (as I will describe below), the process is not straightforward, and you will suffer a quality loss in any subsequent DVD that you make using material from an existing DVD.

Now, in answer to your questions. When you say you are using "optimization of 8 or better," I assume you are referring to the bitrate setting that you see when you click on the "Optimize" button. If so, you should not set it any higher than 8. This is not a quality button, where 10 is the best, but rather a setting of how many megabits of data will be put on the DVD for each second of playing time. It turns out that the maximum the DVD spec allows is about 8 Mbps, so don't go any higher than this. Since you have reasonably high-quality source material, especially with the Digital8 tape, I would not lower this setting much below 6 Mbps, or you will start to notice the quality drop.

You can combine, now or later, segments that have been compressed using different bitrates.

Re-using the video on the DVDs you create, unless Sony adds features, is not straightforward. It can be done however, and is covered in detail in other posts in this forum. The short version of this is that you can later take one or more of the ".VOB" files from your DVD and drag them to the Vegas timeline. The video will play, but you will get no sound, and the video will be sluggish. To get the audio, you will have to open the VOB file in some other program that can recover the audio, like DVD2AVI and then, using DVD2AVI, convert the AC3 audio to a WAV file. You then import that WAV file into Vegas and line it up with the video. You then edit. When you are finished, you re-render to an MPEG2 file.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/14/2003, 10:07 AM

If you are using DVD as an archival medium and you are concerned about quality, you may be better off sticking a DV tape in your camcorder and simply recoding your Hi 8 and Digital 8 tapes to DV tape. This will give you the highest quality to come back and edit later and DV tapes are around $3.50 each in bulk. What are you paying for DVD-R blanks? And is the small price difference worth risking your memories?

If you want to use DVD’s, I would stop now and recapture a DVD that you’ve made and go through the process of editing it and see if you like the quality you get. That’s the best way to be sure you’ll be happy with the results. The easiest way is to just plug your stand-alone DVD player into your camcorder and capture it back as a DV AVI file. You can also use DVD ripping tools as John Meyer suggested. Tutorials and pointers to these tools can be found on dvdrhelp.com. Only you can determine if you are happy with the quality and you should have a plan now before going any further.

~jr

pconti wrote on 10/14/2003, 11:10 AM

Or... in addition to everything everyone else has suggested, you can also take the DVAVI and using a program like ROXIO, use blank DVD's to store the raw AVI. You have to limit it to around 4 gigs, so depending on the length of you efforts, it may not be practical.

TorS wrote on 10/14/2003, 12:02 PM

John Meyer has elsewhere predicted (and he may very well be right) that sooner or later we will be forced to edit stuff that comes off a DVD, simply because that may then be the only known "original". And for that purpose he has requested facilities in Vegas/DVDA to do it. Let that be.
You, however, have a choice. You want to archive your material in a retrievable and editable way, but obviously not in a 1:1 format. To balance space-saving against quality, I don't think anything can beat the Windows Media format. That's WM9. Set a high bitrate (do some tests and make your decision afterwards) and save the files to DVD or even harddisks - yes, why not, they're cheap enough now. It's better byte for byte quality than DVD, it's editable and it's hard to think it will ever become obsolete to the point of not being retrievable.
Tor

johnmeyer wrote on 10/14/2003, 12:28 PM

TorS,

You know, I'd never thought about hard disk as an archival medium but .. let's see ... a post the other day about a $60 120 GB hard disk at CompUSA ... that's $0.50 per GB ... I can get really good DVD-R blanks for about $2.50 (I can get off-brand much cheaper of course). That's $2.50 for 4.3 GB ... HOLY SMOKES that's $0.58 per GB.

Conclusion: Depending on your assumptions, hard disk can actually be cheaper than DVD-R blanks!

Even if I assume an "everyday" price of $100 for a 120 GB drive, and even if I use cheaper off-brand DVD-R media, the differences still aren't as big as I would have thought.

A hard drive would also save tremendous space (a 120 GB drive can store data equivalent to almost 28 full DVDs.) Since most DVDs are burned to absolute capacity, the actual number of equivalent DVDs is probably close to 35. That takes up a lot of space compared to one hard drive.

You've come up with a VERY interesting idea.

TorS wrote on 10/14/2003, 1:40 PM

Wasn't my idea, though. I think it was SPOT who said the other day he use it to archive clients' stuff. But yes, I picked it up and passed it on because I liked it.
Tor

RichMacDonald wrote on 10/14/2003, 4:49 PM

>Or... in addition to everything everyone else has suggested, you can also take the DVAVI and using a program like ROXIO, use blank DVD's to store the raw AVI. You have to limit it to around 4 gigs, so depending on the length of you efforts, it may not be practical.

It may not be as attractive as the hard drive backup, however, you can eliminate the max 4 gig problem using WinRar. This is like a zip program, however, it can split up a large file(s) or directory into a series of files, each of which can be stored on a DVD and "max out" its capacity. You can also tell WinRar to store extra redundant data and/or create extra PAR files, meaning that if one of your DVDs goes bad, you just need one of the extra redundant ones. That, at least, might be safer than a hard drive sitting in the shelf gathering dust.

pete_h wrote on 10/14/2003, 5:22 PM

Just an opinion, but back-ups have always been by issue since my first IBM PC in 1981.

99% of the time you will never use them..... but when you do need too, you'll be glad you did back-up!

Yes a blank tape only costs about 2 to 3 dollars but what a pain if you actually have to use it. I've opted for burning DVD's with the original DVAVI's that I captured from my tapes.

Rich, WinRar is a wonderful program, and I agree with your method, but I think that 'uncompressed DVAVI's limited to 4 gigs, is the way to go. (If you need to use them, all you have to do is to put the disk in and copy it to your hard drive, rather then decompress via WinRar and hope.....)

LeeV wrote on 10/16/2003, 12:19 PM

Burn a DVD, but also just copy the mpeg2 file to a DVD without all of the DVD menus. This way you can open it back up in Vegas and edit without all of the fuss of rename the vob file to an mpeg2 file and making sure that the audio was included.

RichMacDonald wrote on 10/17/2003, 10:36 AM

>...I think that 'uncompressed DVAVI's limited to 4 gigs, is the way to go.

But there's no automatic way to do this, right? If I have a 5 gig file, how do I convert it to a 4 gig and a 1 gig file?

I agree with you that storing an "unconverted" file is better than a WinRared file. But unless there is some tool I don't know of, it would be a nightmare to have to downsize all my avis.

Oh wait, isn't there an option in vidcap to limit the max size of the captured file? (I don't have vegas on my day job computer, so I can't confirm.) If so, you could always set it to 4 gig.

Ronomy wrote on 10/17/2003, 12:41 PM

I record on a pioneer DVR-7000 in constant bit rate. 9.3Mbps for video. I strip the video and audio to the hard drive. Turn the video into a program stream and import into vegas. I drag the audio in as a separate file. I can edit and re-encode into a VBR Mpeg file in Vegas 4 and do not see any difference between this method and using IEEE 1394 transfer. I evaluate the differences on 118 inch diagonal front projector. The pioneer DVR-7000 makes outstanding recordings of VHS and HI8 due to the digital processing it has to clean up analog video noise and it has time base correction. You should see what HDTV down sampled to NTSC and recorded on the Pioneer looks like. Among the best DVD's I've ever seen compared to any retail DVD. Coupled with Vegas, you can make outstanding looking DVD's of all your formats and save a ton of disk space since everying is in Mpeg format.

AudioIvan wrote on 10/17/2003, 1:06 PM

"It turns out that the maximum the DVD spec allows is about 8 Mbps, so don't go any higher than this"=johnmeyer
@johnmeyer
In the DVD standard, the maximum bitrate of
Video ES is limited to 9.8 Mbps. In the MPEG-2 VIDEO international
standard (ISO/IEC 13818-2), the size of an individual picture is
limited using the concept of “VBV (Video Buffering Verifier)”. In the
concept of VBV, a stream having a 9.8 Mbps bitrate can create GOP
which has a size equivalent to a maximum of 11 Mbps. This perfectly
conforms to the MPEG-2 VIDEO international standard (ISO/IEC
13818-2), but whether it conforms to the 9.8 Mbps restriction of DVD
depends on interpretation. Instantaneous
bitrate in GOP units is controlled to be a maximum of 9.8
Mbps. During VBR operation, 9.8 Mbps is always written to the sequence
header regardless the specified maximum bitrate. 9.8 Mbps is
the maximum bitrate allowed under the DVD standard.And the max bitrate that can be created is 15 Mbps(NOT DVD Compliant Stream)
AudioIvan

Ronomy wrote on 10/17/2003, 1:29 PM

I don't encode my final disks that high. Only the one hour recordings are recorded at 9.3Mbps video only. The Audio is 2 channel AC3 at this video rate so there is more room for the video. Using LPCM audio I agree to stay at 8Mbps video if capuring to your hard drive. The one hour recordings on DVD I am talking about is set by the Pioneer DVR-7000 as the highest quality Constant bit rate setting. The video comes out at 9.3Mbps CBR and 2 channel AC3 at 256kbps.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/17/2003, 8:02 PM

AudioIvan:

My quote: "It turns out that the maximum the DVD spec allows is about 8 Mbps, so don't go any higher than this"

Youre quote: In the DVD standard, the maximum bitrate of Video ES is limited to 9.8 Mbps.

We're talking about two things: I'm talking about average bitrate, you're talking about maximum. I don't disagree with your figure for maximum bitrate.

AudioIvan wrote on 10/18/2003, 10:37 AM

Max Average bitrate of 8 Mbps is too high.In that case you have to have at least 4 Mbps minimum,then as you stated 8 average and 9.5 max which again is out of the DVD Specs.Standard Encoding :DVD=min1.5~2Mbps,average 6~7 and max 9.8 Mbps(excluding audio)If the min. & average are too close not good, if the average & max are too close not good again(your case).Don't take me wrong I'm NOT like "some people" here(I think you know what I mean BB) I just say what I know & what I've learned.
Happy Encoding,
AudioIvan

johnmeyer wrote on 10/18/2003, 10:55 AM

I decided to do a little research, since there are so many different opinions in this thread about bitrates. I tried to find the source document at Philips, since they own many of the patents on CD and DVD. I struck out there, but I did find some very useful documents at www.mpeg.org. I am in no position to question these figures. Here is a quote from one of the documents there, along with the link to that document:

Contrary to popular belief: all DVD players are required to decode video streams up to 9.8 Mbit/sec for indefinite periods of time. The popular average rate of 3.5 Mbit/sec or 4.7 Mbit/sec are merely canonical figures created by the notion that only single sided, single layer discs will hold feature length films. Should Single Sided, Double Layer discs prevail, the average rate would be almost twice as great. ALL DVD PLAYERS MUST SUSTAIN A 9.8 MBIT/SEC VIDEO DECODE RATE!!!!!!! Hardwired (Application Specific Integrated Circuits---ASICs) implementations of MPEG-2 MP@ML decoders are generally capable of handling 15 mbit/sec sustained rates.

Click here to read the entire document.

mpeg.org

Ronomy wrote on 10/18/2003, 11:28 AM

The other posible confusion here is constant bit rate (CBR) and variable bit rate (VBR). If using CBR you only select one bitrate. Max! I wouldn't go below 6Mbps for CBR. Using VBR you need to set min., avg., and max bit rates. Using the defaults in Vegas 4 has worked great for me. 192Kbps min., between 4 and 6Mbps avg. and 8Mbps max. Sometimes when I'm trying to fit more on the disc I will drop Max to 7Mbps and avg down to 3.7 or 3.8Mbps with not too bad results although when archiving my personal video I like to stay at 6Mbps avg. With these settings you can fit 1.5 hours on a disc with AC3 audio. Less if you use LPCM. You may want to keep LPCM if you want to edit later down the road. Otherwise, you will have to convert back into a WAV file to edit the audio. You will loose some audio quality. Although I said the Pioneer DVR-7000 uses 9.3Mbps CBR for the video, I've encoded CBR at 9Mbps before and authoring software like ReelDVD has kicked it back and said the bit rate was too high. So I don't set the max any higher than 8Mbps. The difference between 8 and 9Mbps is not noticable using CBR in my experience so why take the chance and have to re-encode.

LeeV wrote on 10/18/2003, 9:56 PM

However, this is about archived video. If you want to archive it and then pull it back later to do some editing you won't need to use DVDA at all. Just render it in Vegas (with video and audio in two different files) as an MPEG2 and an AC3 file and save it on a DVD disk. The disk will not be used in a standard DVD player. It will only be used as archived footage. In this case you should set the rate as high as Vegas will allow.

AudioIvan wrote on 10/19/2003, 2:29 AM

@ johnmeyer,
Tnx. for the link,nice to see that someone it's not stuck with the VV or DVDA templates(which are based on the MainConcept Encoder).I do like VV & DVDA but for encoding I use ONLY CCE(Cinema Craft Encoder)Basic version $58??? You can't argue about the price.As long as you encode your video properly in CCE, DVDA will never try to recompress your mpeg2 (as discussed on this forum,about recompressing).Everything that I said in my posts it's based on the CCE manual.So far I've never had any problems with my encodes(min1.5~2,avg6~7,max9~...Mbps).I always do 5.1ac3(Ambisonic Audio) for my DVD's.CCE supports encodes up to 15 Mbps(software encoder).Hollywood DVD's are not "software encoded" so in terms of quality our video recordings can get the best facelift with CCE(that is my opinion).
However it is nice disscusion,I like people that share diferent opinions.
AudioIvan

Ronomy wrote on 10/19/2003, 9:20 AM

That's another way of doing it if you want to use higher bit rates. I like to use the highest settings and put a full hour on a DVD without menus for archiving. That way I can at least view them on my player. I do this with my older Hi8 and VHS tapes. I consider my DVCAM tapes to be archive so I don't bother with an archived DVD for the digital tapes. I just make a DVD with menus for normal playback so I don't keep playing the DVCAM tapes over again.

farss wrote on 10/21/2003, 7:51 AM

I'd like to add a word of caution here. I've always assumed that tapes recorded in any digital format to be superior to analogue. This is generally true, there is mostly no generational degradation at least not with DV over fwire, there maybe minor loss with SDI but even that's way superior to say betaSP.

But when it comes to archiving I believe SP or even lowly SVHS has superior properties to DV. I certainly didn't think that until a few days ago until I ws asked to copy some old material from Umatic tapes onto an archival grade media. What I hadn't thought about was that digital video use ME tape and there is much doubt about its long term properties compared to oxide tape. Iknow the domains in ME are much smaller, so perhps there is truth in this statement.

But the other issue is what happens to the recoverability of the video when the tape does degrade. There are many magic boxes that can restore the sort of losses that occur on analogue tapes. Once a digital tape goes over the edge nothing can be done to recover the information or hide the defect as so much of the frame is affected.

Now I cannot really evaluate this myslef, much of it makes sense, I and I'm sure others would like some input from anyone who has real world knowledge on this.

BTW if you've got the budget and you want a medium that will last opto-magnetic using glass substrate is the best thing I've ever seen. DVD should come close but is of fairly limited capacity. Unfortunately opto-magnetic 12" disks and drives are very expensive.

johnmeyer wrote on 10/22/2003, 2:29 AM

But the other issue is what happens to the recoverability of the video when the tape does degrade. There are many magic boxes that can restore the sort of losses that occur on analogue tapes. Once a digital tape goes over the edge nothing can be done to recover the information or hide the defect as so much of the frame is affected.

Farss, I know where you're coming from on this one, but I don't think the problem with digital will be quite as black and white as you assume. The designers of all digital streaming media spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the content could survive lots of media errors. As a result, they built the entire system to "gracefully degrade" in a similar manner to what you are accustomed to with analog media. You see this all the time when you suddenly see a block or glitch on the tape.

As for not having black boxes to try to rescue digital tapes, I admit that I don't know of any, but I can guarantee that it would not be difficult to build software that would help fill in the gaps caused by missing data.