Okay thanks. Years ago I saved some of my movies onto my hardrive as either .avi or .wmv files. Do you think these formats will last the times or should I start converting them to mp4?

AVI is a container, not a format. So it depends what codec you used inside that AVI. The WMV is going away IMHO, nobody except Microsoft wants to use it.

Okay, thanks for clarifying. I am not running out of harddrive space so not worried if I should store to cloud or not. Wow, a lot of my older stuff is .avi or .wmv files. Sad to see that even electronic files are at risk of losing the ability to be viewed down the road. To me, this is no better than worrying about keeping ancient hardware around to view older film footage.

Eugenia,
Until I obtained my new camcorder, that records to HDD in Mainconcept Mpeg-2, I stored all my edited projects in DV-AVI (from my old miniDV camcorder). I'm hoping that, in the future, if I felt the need to re-vamp these projects, I would be able to pull them into any future editing suites. In your opinion, will I, or my heir(s) be able to do this?
Thanks in anticipation.

Eugenia,

Microsoft controls computers and the world though. :)

Actually, I have a lot of clients who still use WMV for powerpoint and websites.

Dave T2

The word "archiving" conveys a specific meaning. Making sure they are future-proof is actually not the main consideration. The only Windows class of codecs that has been deprecated was MCI, and they are still recoverable with quartz.dll and perhaps an older OS.

Archiving implies retaining the original source without losses, and pixel-for-pixel if is a historic or legally certified archive. So a copy of the original file in its own format, or at least a visually lossless encoder, are the minimum requirements.

Encoding an intraframe codec to another lossy format is not archival, no way, no how.

Okay, in simplier terms then. What format is most likely going to be recognizable by software years from now. If your original file can't be "easlily" read by future OS or software, then what good is it! I'm less concerned about lossy formats than I am about playing the file back.

I have plenty of original DV tapes lying around my house but they don't do me much good now that my DV camcorder is broken!

2) You can buy a used DV camcorder at your local Goodwill or on eBay or Craigslist for as little as $15!

1) No one can predict, but it is certain that the current formats will be around for at least the remainder of your lifetime (and mine). Still not sure what the obsession with longevity is here.

Just worried about say 20 years out. Will that DV camcorder being sold on ebay still be around in 20 years. Maybe. As for digital files, I am already having problems playing back some video files on my current machine so I can only imagine this will be even more problematic years from now as new OS and software get introduced. I guess also I am ready to start consolidating a lot of my older files and taped videos into one single digital format and want to know which file will be best for my new daughter to watch when she grows up. I recently bought one of those audio video capture connectors by Dazzle that I plan to use with Vegas to capture stuff saved to VHS that is in itself over 20 years old. This got me thinking how it will be nice to only have to do this one time. I know 20 years ago I thought VHS was invincible but that isn't the case now.

Nobody knows what will be supported in 20 years. In 5 years, yeah, I would make a large bet, but 20 is too far out. Whatever video format you store, I would be a lot more worried that the digital media will survive 20 years. I think a media failure (or obsolescence) is a much bigger crapshoot than video format obsolescence. The only guard I know against that is to use multiple hard drives, keep drives in multiple locations (I use home, work, & safe deposit box), and keep buying new media (especially new media types) and copy to new devices.

Archiving digital media over decades time is not a one time thing. Would be nice, but I think you should accept the idea it's a continuous process.

You mentioned that you've got footage on DV tapes. Magnetic media degrades over time, as well as being subject to physical destruction. I think the first job is to get that cheapo DV camera, copy everything off of the tapes onto a hard drive (via Firewire or USB for an exact digital copy), then make multiple hard drive copies.

Of course, analog tapes (like VHS) are also degrading over time, although analog does degrade more gracefully than digital. Digitizing analog tapes are also a priority; there are many options for this these days, including some DV cameras that take analog input and stream DV output in real time (no intermediate DV tape involved). I've used that method of capturing from a VHS tape player and Hi8 camcorder, though the files are bigger than necessary given the quality of the source material.

Same goes for any home made DVDs; the dyes used for home DVDs also degrade over time. Make .iso files so you have virtual DVDs on your hard drives that can easily burn to new physical DVD blanks. (I use ImgBurn for .iso/DVD operations.)

Reliable cloud storage is way too expensive to store big digital video collections IMHO, at least now. But, you might consider making low-res well-compressed copies of your media to store in a web server so at least you'll have a copy of the content if a super-disaster occurs, though not in a good format.

As to your original question, for standard definition: DV (Digital Video) format in .AVI containers will be readable for a long time. MPEG2 conforming to the DVD standard will also be readable for a long time; millions of DVDs are still pressed every year so even if DVDs become obsolete, it won't be for a long time and DVD-standard MPEG2 will be readable (IMHO). Though maybe not for 20 years!

For high def, this is still a new field relative to DV and DVD, so it's harder to guess. But using the same logic as for DVDs, I think it makes sense to encode HD to a BluRay-standard file, such as MPEG2 (in a .m2ts container) at a high bitrate (1080i @ 25-30mbps) with PCM audio. Being more recent though, I'd expect to have to reencode within 5-8 years.

In all cases, while it's good to preserve edited movies, it's vital to preserve the original material to preserve quality.

Good luck. Start copying, and don't stop. :-)

External hard drives are cheap. If this is stuff you know you'll want years down the road, store them redundantly on two separate drives. And spin those drives up a couple of times a year to keep them running sweet.

Converting DV to any other format for storage is a bad idea, because of chroma subsampling:
4:1:1 (DV) + 4:2:0 (most 8-bit codecs) = 4:1:0 (which is essentially bad VHS quality).