DV to AVCHD (or similar formats) and keep timecodes

[tmorrow411]

I'm thinking about converted my DV AVI files to some sort of H.264 based camcorder format (i.e. AVCHD) * BUT * I want it to copy over the TIME/DATE CODES that is stored in the DV files to the AVCHD files.

Is this technically possible?. I'm assuming that the H.264 camcorder files, such as AVCHD, stores timecodes.

[Baldrick]

I don't think you will find such a software.

Maybe just extract the timecode to a separate subtitle file and then convert to any other compressed video format.

[tmorrow411]

Thanks Baldrick. I have already started going down that path, but I thought I'd ask.

[ron spencer]

why would you want to do this? Just keep your DV on tape or hardrive (cheap cheap now). Seems no sense to me

[poisondeathray]

^Also, why would you convert SD=>HD ? The upscaling is bound to give you bad interpolated results even with super complex algorithms that take days to complete

Unless you meant keep SD frame size, just use h264 to reduce the size?

Even then, the interlaced content is bound to give you issues, unless you use very high quality deinterlacing methods (like tempgaussmc_beta1), but they take forever to process. Interlaced h264 content is not handled very well at this point (both encoding and decoding)

[tmorrow411]

Though storage is cheaper now days... To backup all my VHS, Hi8, Digital8 and other tapes, I've calculated that I will need about 4 TB plus another 4 TB to backup the first 4 TB. Even todays costs, thats still about $700-$900 plus external storage to hold the drives. I doubt I'll ever have that kind of money to spend on this.

If I convert them to h.264 then I'm hoping that they'll be a 40% their original size. So I just cut my storage needs in half.

I was going to keep them in their current SD format (720x480) and keep the interlacing. Interlacing is why I skipped MP4 ASP (divx/xvid). I thought that h.264 could handle interlacing.

VHS tapes in EP mode would hold 6 hours of video. This translates to 78 GB of disk space for '1' tape in DV format. And I have many years of VHS tapes. So that doesn't take long to eat up TBs of disk space.

Also all my new equipment is in AVCHD, so I was just wanting everything converted over so I'm not dealing with different formats. Which will be easy on the VHS DV, since I'm not capturing the timedate codes. My Digital8 has them, so I was hoping to keep them.

Thanks again.

[ron spencer]

you will need a fast machine to do this...so you will need to spend $ anyway...hdd still best way to go. you can get 1 TB for $89 on sale, so cost is not that much