Archive my camcorder footage

[jpc82]

I have a JVC Everio GZ-MG20 camcorder which captures to MPEG2 video. I pasted the audio/video info for the file bellow.

I want to take the 4GB's worth of files and convert them to smaller Xvid files to save on space, but still have the same quality. I am trying SUPER at the moment but I can't figure out how to get it to do multipass conversion with XviD. I can converting some of the files to 6000kbps Xvid with 192AAC audio to see how it turns out

What would you guys suggest?


Video: MPEG2 Video 720x480 (16:9) 29.97fps 9200Kbps [Video]
Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz stereo 384Kbps [Audio]
Subtitle: DVD Subpicture [Subtitle]

[pijetro]

convert them to smaller Xvid files to save on space, but still have the same quality

Is Xvid gonna be your final format forever and ever amen??
Be sure that it supports interlacing (since your source is the same)..

Personally, i'd either back them up to hard drives, or optical drives..Keeping the original footage in its' native form is always the best bet against quality degredation...

[JimboS]

??? Why not put them on a 20 cent DVD????????????
Why all the problems?????????
Why shrink and do this and that???????????

[redwudz]

If you really want Xvid, '6000kbps Xvid" is major overkill. Xvid doesn't need anywhere near that bitrate to be more or less 'equivalent' to MPEG quality. 2000kbps should be way more than enough most of the time.

And we do have bitrate calculators that will work for Xvid. https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/bitrate-calculators That will give you required bitrates VS your media size.

What I would suggest is you look into AutoGK or FairUse Wizard. They should convert your files easily to Xvid format, and give you some room for adjustments. Either are not much harder than SUPER and should give better results.

If you want to have a little more control, try VirtualDub Mod and the Xvid codec. Then you should be able to use any settings you want. I would keep the AC3 audio, if that's what you have. It's fairly compact, not as much as MP3, but the quality should be better. If you want to use MP3 with a program like VDM, you may need to install AC3 ACM Decompressor, along with the Lame MP3 codec.

Try a short Representative video clip using different bitrates. You can also set the Xvid codec for 2 pass VBR encoding, which will give you a small filesize and decent quality.

Do a little experimenting and try some different settings till you get a setup and the results you like.

[jpc82]

I will be keeping the original files as my main backups on DVD however I don't 100% trust dvd's. Thats why I want to make significantly smaller files which retain as much quality as possible that I can store on my fileserver. This way if the dvd's ever fail I have a secondary backup, and I also have easier access to the files.

I thought about using VirtualDub or other more flexible converters. The issue I have with them is that I have tons of small files (over 40) that need to be converted (each scene is a new file). Thats why I want something that provides easy batch conversion like SUPER.

I found a program called WinMenc which uses Mencoder as a backend to convert the files. Has anyone ever used it and if so how is it?

Also, if you can suggest a program something that provides excellent deinterlacing would be a big plus