Convert all MiniDV tapes to computer and say good bye to those tapes

[hashshashin1212]

Thank you for the good advice.
I put my fished edited project on miniDV as suggested. I do not want to edit it again. I would like to make another copy on a hard drive for convenience. Using this convenient copy, I may want to just watch it, distribute to a DVD, Web, or other media in the future. I would like to use some compression. What is recommended?

The reason I was thinking of H.264/AVC is because I heard it was good for High Def. And it is a new standard. What I don't know about, is some good settings to use. The two settings I would like recommendations for is the kbps and the profile settings Levels. I used H.264/AVC Main profile at Level 3 and got a file larger than the original.

I'm in the same boat. I have a collection of Mini DV tapes from the last 10 years. I already have all the video in a HDD and I plan to make DVDs for handing out but I want to keep Apple TV friendly files of those video for quick access from my Apple TV.
Has anybody have a solution?. I'm not only looking for a way to get those DV files to iTunes and Apple TV, but also the best data rate with out lossing quality?
Thanks in adavance.

[FatFattie]

Just for the record if anyone's dealing with this issue on Mac -- trying to capture either/both MiniDV SD or MiniDV HD tapes, there is some info here as of 2012...

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/345702-capturing-minidv-tapes?p=2181073&viewfull=1#post2181073

Yes, you should DEFINITELY save your original .dv files.

(It sounds like in the Windows world, those are saved in some sort of wrapper - but it's just the same .dv file inside, so that sounds right.)

It is extremely annoying that (today) there are no media players that play .dv files directly - a real nuisance! Bizarrely most media players play .m2t files (from MiniDV-HD tapes) directly, but not the .dv files (from MiniDV-SD tapes).

Of course .dv files play perfectly on a Mac or I would guess a Windows machine, so you have to sort of use a whole computer as a media player, to directly play .dv files -- annoying!!

(Or you can batch process them to another whole batch of compressed files, keep your .dv files for long-term archive and have the other batch of mpegs or whatever for convenience playing on any cheap media player.)

Regarding hard drives someone mentioned -

yeah they only last a few years at best, and you REALLY SHOULD keep TWO (2) hard drives at all time.

Factually: all hard drives fail. That's that. They must fail, will eventually fail, and are designed to eventually fail. If you are keeping all your files on one hard drive ........... unfortunately it will eventually fail!! It might happen this year, or in three years, but it has to happen. It will fail and all your info will be lost. Tough but true! So you need to keep two copies. When one fails, you have the other to copy.

2TB drives cost about $100 as of writing. We just keep everything on a pair of 2TB drives, each in a different house. (Relative's house or whatever.) Every say 2 years I replace one of or the other of the drives (ie, just copy all the .dv / .m2t files over to a new drive).

Statistically this system will work OK for some 100s of years. (Eventually, both drives will fail at the same time - it has to happen eventually - and that will be the end of it.)

It's an interesting thought that it costs roughly $100 PER YEAR, forever, to keep about 2TB of data safely ! (Of course, the price of storage will probably continue to drop, and perhaps the reliability will increase, but that's the current price ... about $100 per year per TB !)

If you had say 10 or 20 worth of 2TB drives of movies, it would really add up in price. So, every couple of years you'd be saying to yourself "Hell, I better replace those drives they're getting old" .... and you'd have to buy 10 new drives for $1000. Tough.

[blueox]

Well, I own the Sony PC9-E MiniDV camcorder, quite expensive back in 2001, and since then I have recorded 100 miniDV tapes more or less. I am taking good care of them, storing in a solid carton box in room temperature avoiding moisture and magnetic waves, as the tapes are valuable for family.
I have temporarily stored the .dv files on a Toshiba 3TB hard disk, as a part of the rest family pictures and videos since the 90s. The 3TB disk was a must have, as I shot video with a Canon T4i DSLR at 18mpixels.
I have managed to take the .dv videooff the tapes and transfer it to PC using the Visual Studio software. It seems to me outdated but does the work quite well I can say.

Now about storing for years, I know the hard disks will fail, but I would recommend burning the original .dv files on Blue Ray DVDs of 50Gb each. It is a more cheap solution comparing buying hard disks every once in a while.

My question is what would be the best conversion format to make the size of the files smaller. The quality of the movies being produced by MiniDV types was low compared to nowadays standards, so instead of keeping a 25000kbps file quality,
we could reduce it to 2000-3000kbps to save space. What do you think?

[smrpix]

I know the hard disks will fail, but I would recommend burning the original .dv files on Blue Ray DVDs of 50Gb each. It is a more cheap solution comparing buying hard disks every once in a while.

Currently, Hard drives are LESS expensive than 50GB Blu Rays for comparable space and far more stable. (25GB blu rays do have a slight price edge -- for now.) You would want to replace the Blu Rays as often or more than the HDDs. Also, because of their size limitations, Blu Ray is less convenient.

My question is what would be the best conversion format to make the size of the files smaller...instead of keeping a 25000kbps file quality, we could reduce it to 2000-3000kbps to save space. What do you think?

Don't do it. Keep the original DV files. Once gone they can never be fully recovered.

[_Al_]

keep the originals,

get another 3T hardisk or delete some movies if you have more hardisks already and make some room for your DV avi's

[Brad]

And/or an online storage solution. Preferably and...

[rumplestiltskin]

+1 for the "more hard drives" suggestion. Whatever you buy, buy two so you may create a backup of the first drive. Do a sector scan prior to using the drive for storage; this will reveal any bad sectors and permit you to return the drive for a new one rather than discovering the problem later and be forced to exchange it for a refurb.

[blueox]

Thank you all for the suggestions! The main reason wanting to convert all the tapes is that the DV files won't play properly on VLC player (they play but can't random browse properly), or the media players (Playon HD mini won't play them, and WD Live media player won't recognize any of them). So there is a big need to convert them to a compatible format. Most formats are recognized by the players though.
I am currently converting them on MP4 format at 10k bitrate. The sizes are small and the noise not noticeable, except if the TV costs 1.000euros+ ($1,300+).

[_Al_]

convert for playback but store original, give QTGMC a try, convert your's DVavi's into 50p mp4:

download DVavi_to_mp4.zip, unzip, follow Read_Me.txt for instructions

using QTGMC takes more time to encode but resulting files are excellent, no interlace artifacts watching it on cheap LCD screen, TV