Archiving Video from Tapes

Kikikins wrote on 3/31/2003, 2:20 PM

Is it acceptable to just archive DV tapes in the mpeg-2 format saved to DVDs? Or, should I be archiving the raw DV format somewhere else and just using the mpeg format for DVD projects?

I see that you can now capture directly to mpeg-2, even directly to a DVD disk, but am not sure if I am sacrificing something by doing so.

Thanks for any advice for this newbie!

Kim

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 3/31/2003, 5:52 PM

What you are sacrificing is some quality especially if you even want to re-edit the footage because you will have to recompress it again. I archive all important projects to DV tape especially those I do for community events because people often ask for a copy on VHS and I just take those off the DV master. But for most of my home projects, I just archive to DVD in MPEG2 format. I haven’t tried but I guess I could make VHS tapes from the DVD’s if I needed to.

~jr

Kikikins wrote on 3/31/2003, 6:08 PM

MPEG2 is a fairly lossless compression though, isn't it?? These are only home projects - I'd like to clear off some tapes to reuse, but didn't want to sacrifice too much quality. Sounds like MPEG2 on DVD is the way to go, even if I wanted to reuse in other projects at a later date. Thanks for the help!

Kim