Best Archival Format?

LR2003 wrote on 12/25/2009, 12:33 PM
What is the best archival format for edited video from a avchd camcorder? I am trying to determine the file format that will have the most compatibility across all operating systems and programs in the future. I had thought the Sony AVC - AVCHD 1920x 1080 NTSC saved as a m2ts file was the best, but I have been having sync issues lately as described at this thread.

So now I am thinking about the MainConcept MPEG2 - HDV 1080-60i template. Only downside is that the resolution is 1440x1080i instead of 1920x080i, but I don't know if that will really matter with my consumer Sony CX100 camcorder. File sizes are also a bit bigger, but that does not matter much to me.

What do others use? I am also thinking about using the Sony AVC - AVCHD 1920x 1080 NTSC saved as a mp4 file.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/25/2009, 1:02 PM
The best archival format is the original video files from your camcorder -- just copy them to where you wish to keep them.

Re-encoding your files to another lossy format is not "archiving" by any means. What that does is degrade quality and waste a lot of your time without any benefits at all.

Re-encoding to "lossless" intermediates or uncompressed also does not change the quality, it only increases the file sizes dramatically at the expense of your storage space.

AVCHD is a format that will be around for a long, long time. The thread you linked is about some rendering quirks, which not everyone is having, and which should not affect you at all, since rendering AVCHD to AVCHD would be an excercise in well, . . . redundancy.
Eugenia wrote on 12/25/2009, 2:09 PM
If you ONLY want to save the final edited video, then use an intermediate format. I'd suggest either Cineform ($99), or AVID DNxHD (free). Both work with Mac and Windows, and DNxHD also works with ffmpeg under Linux.

If your final video is not really that much smaller than the source footage's length (meaning, that you didn't edit/trim the clips too much), do as musicvid suggested and keep the AVCHD files themselves. Buy two external HDD drives and copy them there (two, for safety).