Comments

Jsnkc wrote on 11/1/2004, 12:23 PM
Do you want to keep the original quality, or as much of it as possible?
sharper007 wrote on 11/1/2004, 12:57 PM
as much as possible
sharper007 wrote on 11/1/2004, 12:59 PM
i would like to maintain a good quality
John_Cline wrote on 11/1/2004, 2:15 PM
Then you should keep them as DV .AVI files.

Hard drives are cheap these days. Just get an external drive on which to store your videos.

John
johnmeyer wrote on 11/1/2004, 2:25 PM
The DV AVI file approach will definitely give you the best quality. Next best would be MPEG-2 files. If you keep the bitrate at about 7,000,000 bps, the quality will be virtually impossible to distinguish from the DV AVI files, given that you are starting with VHS (at least I assume that is the format of your home videos). If you get really good at encoding and are willing to do some slight noise reduction on your videos, you can reduce the bitrate down further. You will have to experiment to find the bitrate that preserves the quality you are willing to accept, but if you use MPEG-2 and use bitrates around 5,000,000, you will be able to fit 4x the video in the same space as DV AVI.
sharper007 wrote on 11/1/2004, 11:28 PM
Thank you very much johnmeyer for the time and effort you put in this answer . This was exactly what i was looking for . the format i was using
was not VHS it is Mini Digital video cassette, but i dont suppose this matters.
once again thank you very much....
beerandchips wrote on 11/2/2004, 8:32 AM
I back up onto DVD saving as just plain data. The files are intact at DV quality. DVD discs are cheap.

My .02 cents
Liam_Vegas wrote on 11/2/2004, 9:33 AM
And... be very aware that once you convert those files to MPEG - or some other format - that it will not be a good idea to try to re-edit them in that format as you will likely begin to lose a great deal of quality. But... if you <really> need that space MPEG2 is probably the best way to go.