Re-capture from DVD

davdee wrote on 12/12/2004, 8:03 PM
I have VMS and am very happy with it. I am considering purchase of a DVD Burner. Can I use the DVD result as a storage medium as well as a viewing medium? That is, if I send the video output (that was AVI) to a DVD burner, can I delete the original AVI files and just use the resulting DVD as the data source? Can I get a DVD output back to AVI to re-manipulate in VMS?

Thanks
Davdee
Australia

Comments

allyn wrote on 12/12/2004, 8:56 PM
you can burn the avi files onto the dvd in data format (rather than rendering them to mpeg-2 and burning it as a movie).

the biggest downside is a dvd is relatively small compared to mini-dv tape. a dvd only holds about 20 minutes of video in avi format (4.7GB). a dual-layer dvd will hold about 40 minutes (8.5GB) but so far the media is prohibitively expensive.

but if you're buying a burner, make sure you get a dual-layer one so that you'll be able to burn the 8.5GB disks when they come down in price..
gogiants wrote on 12/12/2004, 10:39 PM
The point about archiving .avi's to a data DVD is a good one.

Then again, while what you originally asked about is possible, it's not necessarily a good idea. DVDs formatted for viewing on standalone players are by definition compressed into MPEG-2; MPEG-2 is a bad format for re-editing since it is a lossy format.

For true lossless backup the best price performer is mini-DV tape. For ease of playback then DVDs are great. I'm guessing lots of people do what I do, which is to both burn to DVD and keep a copy on mini-DV tape just in case I ever want to go back in and re-edit.
HiddenDrive wrote on 12/13/2004, 3:52 AM
What about getting the info back off a DVD for use in another project?
IanG wrote on 12/13/2004, 6:35 AM
Just copy the .vob files and rename them .mpg

Ian G.
Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/13/2004, 7:52 AM
I second gogiants' motion that MPEGs are not meant for re-editing. You're asking for more trouble than it's worth (including flickering video, possibly incompatible audio formats). There are technical reasons for this but I don't need to go into them. Just trust me. You don't want to edit a file once it's been burned to DVD (and you probably don't want to edit video from a DVD vidcam either).

Sending the files back to videotape as a DV-AVI is still the best and most economical way to store video files.