I need advice on virtually lossless codecs for archiving

[schmoppa]

Hello!

This forum and website has been a godsend, and has helped sort a few things out for me. Nonetheless, I feel overwealmed in my endeavors to digitize a LOT of Hi8 and regular 8mm movie tapes from many years past (probably the same as many people here).

I have a Hi8 player that has a DV over firewire connection.

I want to be able to burn, as losslessly as possible, this video and audio to DVDs. I'd also like, if the size constraints allow me, to archive the video on tape storage; obviously I would want it at virtually lossless quality - a few hundred GB of storage won't be too much of a stretch for me.

I'm fairly familiar with ripping my CDs, CBR, VBR and the various quality settings; I assume it's sort-of analogous to video editing, but it seems much more complicated. Plus you get into whether to de-interlace (I don't even know if Hi8 is interlaced, and if it is, whether it is sent through the ieee1394 still interlaced in DV or what. see, it gets complicated!)

I would want to be able to go back to the raw footage and edit them into watchable movies, so this is why I need a virtually lossless compression... DV format takes up too much space (13GB/hour or so?), especially considering how many tapes I have.

(example of why I would want to go back and re-edit the raw footage: how many times did my Dad forget to stop filming during our European vacations and film the ground for a few minutes? and when he was filming at the right time, he often would walk with the camera in his hand though not looking in the viewfinder, pointing at what he thought was a nice view, but instead it was the sky or maybe building rain drains; hence the title of our makebelieve, joking documentary was "Gutters and Drains of Europe").

The point is, I really want to archive the video on these tapes "as-is" (virtually losslessly) for posterity, and since video tape degrades, the obvious choice is digitization.

I also would like to create efficient-sized yet good quality clips of these movies to share on the Internet.

My questions:

1. What audio and video codecs should I use to achieve virtually lossless compression for archiving and later editing? And what settings should I use?

2.Capture at 720 or a lower resolution for Hi8? Does it matter?

3. I'm thinking of getting Premiere or Vegas Video (or a Ulead product), what's the general consensus on which is "best?" (I know, it's subjective, tough question to answer)

4. so do I just capture the DV straight (13GB) or use software compression as the DV is coming through?

5. What about codecs (and settings) for good quality but reasonably sized movie clips for Internet usage?

6.. Any other advice you could give? Anything!


Obviously this is a huge subject. I know very little about, though, so if nothing else, please point me in the right direction!

The last thing I expect is anybody to do a lot of research FOR me. What I'd like is some helpful advice to get me going in the right direction, to give me an idea of the constraints and issues to consider.

Thanks!!!




(check the icon for my computer setup)

[Will Hay]

... DV format takes up too much space (13GB/hour or so?)

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

so do I just capture the DV straight (13GB) or use software compression as the DV is coming through?

Lossless video 'capture' is going to take more space than DV, and software compression via DV (which I've never heard of) if further compression.
You need to decide on what works best for you.
For me, 'capturing' via my ADVC-100 and firewire, editing, authoring and burning and then making up both my resultant mpeg and authored VIDEO_TS folder (the actual DVD disk I use in my standalone) is enough.
Will Hay

[mmasw]

I don't have the equipment you have so I'm not sure...but isn't the DV video you have already stored on HI8 tape?

perhaps bulk purchase of Hi8 tape?

seems like any tape storage process that is "lossless" will eat up a hell of a lot of tape, whether it is DV, HuffYuv, MJpeg, or uncompressed RGB.
I'd guess that of those, DV at 13 gb/hour might be the most "compressed" With a little tinkering and compromise you might be able to save space converting to HuffyYuv.

the best long term storage option may be creating the dvd's as fast as you can.

if you're rich, I guess you could buy several dozen 200GB hard drives. Send me the Hard drives before you use them and I'll test them for you to make sure they work.

[schmoppa]

... DV format takes up too much space (13GB/hour or so?)

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

so do I just capture the DV straight (13GB) or use software compression as the DV is coming through?

Lossless video 'capture' is going to take more space than DV, and software compression via DV (which I've never heard of) if further compression.
You need to decide on what works best for you.
For me, 'capturing' via my ADVC-100 and firewire, editing, authoring and burning and then making up both my resultant mpeg and authored VIDEO_TS folder (the actual DVD disk I use in my standalone) is enough.
Will Hay

Ok - this is my limited understanding: DV is a format that takes up about 13GB/hour of footage. It is a little compressed, but not much. Wave sound files are analogous in that it is a sound format that takes up a lot os space, so you can compress it into another format (mp3 or ogg, for instance). I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to get some compression of DV into smaller format but virtually maintain the quality of the original DV.

I guess I don't understand why you say I'm contradicting myself. My question was whether I should just copy the DV to the hard drive, and then work on it, or just encode the DV feed into a smaller format real time as it comes in from the player.

[schmoppa]

I don't have the equipment you have so I'm not sure...but isn't the DV video you have already stored on HI8 tape?

perhaps bulk purchase of Hi8 tape?

seems like any tape storage process that is "lossless" will eat up a hell of a lot of tape, whether it is DV, HuffYuv, MJpeg, or uncompressed RGB.
I'd guess that of those, DV at 13 gb/hour might be the most "compressed" With a little tinkering and compromise you might be able to save space converting to HuffyYuv.

the best long term storage option may be creating the dvd's as fast as you can.

if you're rich, I guess you could buy several dozen 200GB hard drives. Send me the Hard drives before you use them and I'll test them for you to make sure they work.

I don't have DV video. I have Hi8 (analog ) video. I have a Hi8 player with a ieee1394 (iLink) connection. Through THAT is where I get DV. I suppose I could also just hook up the analog connectors and get a hardware encoder. But I want to see if I can do what I want to do with DV.

Like I said in my original post, the tape storage (EXABYTE VXA) of a few hundred gigs of video isn't a big problem. And VXA tape is great for archival purposes.

I have to say that I didn't really appreciate your flippant comment about "testing" new drives for me. I may be a vid-iot, but I know a lot about computer hardware in general.

[BJ_M]

best choice: leave it as DV , which has a 5:1 compression .....

it is your best choice for size vs. quality and your time ..

second best choice if you need to save a lot of room .... high bit rate (10meg/sec) all I frame or IPPP frame mpeg2 with ac3 audio ...

or compress to mjeg codec or huffyuv with ogg or mp3 audio

or couple other choices -- depends on your time and NLE choices

[mmasw]

I don't have DV video. I have Hi8 (analog ) video. I have a Hi8 player with a ieee1394 (iLink) connection. Through THAT is where I get DV. I suppose I could also just hook up the analog connectors and get a hardware encoder. But I want to see if I can do what I want to do with DV.

Like I said in my original post, the tape storage (EXABYTE VXA) of a few hundred gigs of video isn't a big problem. And VXA tape is great for archival purposes.

that was my point....you'll already have DV video. Any video you convert to from that will tend to have some loss of quality, and if you convert to some of the "lossless" codecs, you probably wouldn't save much space. Simply then, you could archive the DV to the VXA tape, and eliminate the time and effort necessary to archive to an intermediate codec between the DV and dvd compliant mpg2. But maybe that's not possible, ergo my comment about not having your equipment.

I have to say that I didn't really appreciate your flippant comment about "testing" new drives for me. I may be a vid-iot, but I know a lot about computer hardware in general.

1st...you didn't "have" to say....you chose to say...

and 2nd...then you probably won't like this comment : Lighten up a bit willya.....don't be a wit-iot

[schmoppa]

I don't have DV video. I have Hi8 (analog ) video. I have a Hi8 player with a ieee1394 (iLink) connection. Through THAT is where I get DV. I suppose I could also just hook up the analog connectors and get a hardware encoder. But I want to see if I can do what I want to do with DV.

Like I said in my original post, the tape storage (EXABYTE VXA) of a few hundred gigs of video isn't a big problem. And VXA tape is great for archival purposes.

that was my point....you'll already have DV video. Any video you convert to from that will tend to have some loss of quality, and if you convert to some of the "lossless" codecs, you probably wouldn't save much space. Simply then, you could archive the DV to the VXA tape, and eliminate the time and effort necessary to archive to an intermediate codec between the DV and dvd compliant mpg2. But maybe that's not possible, ergo my comment about not having your equipment.

this is a good point. I guess I didn't understand what you were saying. I will have to see how many VXA tapes it would take to archive all of my video in DV.

I was thinking about compression in the shower just now, and I would guess that you can get away with more compression in audio than in video, in that the eyes will pick up on compression more than the ears will. But that is just a guess.

Another thought I had, and this may be crazy, but create DV from the Hi8 format, then record back to the D8 player in DV. How good are these tapes for archiving digital video?

I have to say that I didn't really appreciate your flippant comment about "testing" new drives for me. I may be a vid-iot, but I know a lot about computer hardware in general.

1st...you didn't "have" to say....you chose to say...

and 2nd...then you probably won't like this comment : Lighten up a bit willya.....don't be a wit-iot

Newsflash: people don't like being insulted, even if it was an inferred insult. Usually when people make a dumb joke like that on an Internet forum, they play it off with a smiley to show that it was written in good nature. You didn't. It was inferred at first, but then you insulted me further, because if I disagree with you, then I'm a "wit-iot?" That's kind of an egotistical perspective on life. What's the point of posting something like that?

I did appreciate your helpful comments, but lay off of the "clever" jabs. Such things have no place in a mature forum like this.

[mmasw]

Newsflash: people don't like being insulted, even if it was an inferred insult.

I wrote this :

"I guess you could buy several dozen 200GB hard drives. Send me the Hard drives before you use them and I'll test them for you to make sure they work."


if you find that statement to be an insult, then internet forums are no place for you. You may stretch your thin skin out so as to percieve I was "inferring " something insulting....that's your perogative. It wasn't an insult, but if you need for it to be...fine....not my problem.

Usually when people make a dumb joke like that on an Internet forum, they play it off with a smiley to show that it was written in good nature.

oh....I see. On Schmoppa World the presense of a smiley face is the contolling gauge of whether or not an insult was "inferred", no matter how assinine the context.

how's this: Bite me

. You didn't. It was inferred at first, but then you insulted me further, because if I disagree with you, then I'm a "wit-iot?".

you need to take a few deep breaths....you called yourself a vid-iot...I changed 2 letters, and suddenly I'm Dr Mengele

That's kind of an egotistical perspective on life.

man.....you have definitely leaped head-first, screaming hysterically into the deep-end if you believe that my use of the term "wit-iot" somehow qualifies you to quantify my ego in relation to my "life perspective"

In my previous post I told you to lighten up....first you need to get a grip.

What's the point of posting something like that?.

well for chrissakes....it was for my own amusement, of course!

I did appreciate your helpful comments, but lay off of the "clever" jabs. Such things have no place in a mature forum like this.

oh my god!....a mature forum like this??

there are 3 or 4 food fights a day here. There are polls like " who is kinder: your proctologist or your dentist?" or "Fast Food: eat it or weld it to your ass?" or "Is Britney Spears an android?"

People sometimes display maturity here and sometimes they don't. Same with me. You may think you have, but IMHO thin-skinned petulance isn't a sign of maturity.

[schmoppa]

Look, all I said was that I didn't appreciate your flippant comment in your first post. Then you spewed out all of this diarrhea, though I definitely took the bait. Still, who has the thin skin? Did you really feel that a response was necessary? You enjoy getting a rise out of people? You just had to get that retort in?

Maybe, if you really weren't trying to be a smart ass, you could have clarified what you meant by the hard drive comment. If I misunderstood what you meant by that, then I apologize. It was, however, a very vague comment, but the bottom line is that seemed like you were implying that I am dumb. I thought at first that maybe it was a joke, but it seemed more like a somewhat mean-spirited comment. That’s why I said I didn’t appreciate it, no big deal, right?

That was my whole point about the smilies: they go far towards clearing ambiguities in otherwise vague comments, ambiguities that can be taken in the wrong way.

“bite me? "

Jesus. No ambiguity there, despite the “smily” misdirection. I stand corrected, you are right, this isn’t a mature board, when this is how someone seeking help is treated. Bait him and laugh when he responds.

You keep telling me what to do; stop it, it’s patronizing and (yet more) insulting. Stop thinking you are taking the high ground in this; this thread reflects just as poorly on you as it does on me. I’m just upset that 4 out of my first 6 or so posts in this forum have been fighting a mini flame war, and that I probably won’t receive any more help because the thread is now derailed.

So who wins this Internet Special Olympics race to the finish?

PS: By the way, exactly how does one qualify one's self to "quantify" another's ego?

[sacajaweeda]

[Matteo693]

It's threads like this that make this the Number #1 Forum on the internet. I love it!!! Keep it up, fellas!

[holistic]

best choice: leave it as DV , which has a 5:1 compression .....

it is your best choice for size vs. quality and your time ..

second best choice if you need to save a lot of room .... high bit rate (10meg/sec) all I frame or IPPP frame mpeg2 with ac3 audio ...

.....etc

BJ_M has given you the answer you need - perhaps not the one you want.

I do however disagree with all I frame @10 meg/sec. - seems too low a rate - but just my opinion.

][

[mmasw]

You enjoy getting a rise out of people? You just had to get that retort in?

yeah....and this one too

Maybe, if you really weren't trying to be a smart ass, you could have clarified what you meant by the hard drive comment. If I misunderstood what you meant by that, then I apologize. It was, however, a very vague comment, but the bottom line is that seemed like you were implying that I am dumb. I thought at first that maybe it was a joke, but it seemed more like a somewhat mean-spirited comment. That;s why I said I didn;t appreciate it, no big deal, right?

it was certainly no big deal when I said it....your obsessive fixation on it is rather troubling though.

Stop thinking you are taking the high ground in this;

I haven't thought that a single time. If I had been traveling the high ground, you and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to become bestest buddies down here in the lowlands.

this thread reflects just as poorly on you as it does on me.

you know....I kind of doubt that, but it's possible.....but then....I really don't care.

I;m just upset that 4 out of my first 6 or so posts in this forum have been fighting a mini flame war, and that I probably won;t receive any more help because the thread is now derailed.

well now, what the hell does that tell you!!?? You apparently have an affinity for flame wars, and guys with real thin skins seem to have the same affinity.

As far as "help" for your issue....you recieved plenty....even from me.

let's review: you have a shitpot of Hi8 tapes that you are thinking of archiving. You will stream them into your computer as DV. Your notion that you should convert the DV into some other 'lossless' codec has been substantially dispelled because the DV codec itself is actually perfect for archiving if that's the route you want to take. I and others have suggested that you simply leave them as hi8 as long as you can so you don't go through the time and expense of bringing them onto your computer and then back off again, all so later on you can repeat so as to make dvd's. If you're worried about the shelf life of the Hi8 tapes then start archiving the oldest tapes first.

So who wins this Internet Special Olympics race to the finish?

there is no finish....there is only the race (you're behind by the way)

[disturbed1]

I have a Hi8 player that has a DV over firewire connection.

I want to be able to burn, as losslessly as possible, this video and audio to DVDs.

I do a bit of Hi8 to DVD tranfers. I can only offer my oppinion and methods.

My questions:

1. What audio and video codecs should I use to achieve virtually lossless compression for archiving and later editing? And what settings should I use?

I use a pinnacle DC30+, and capture at 704x480 7100KB/s MJPEG with PCM audio. This is the max limit for that card. I get ~70 minutes in 30 gigs.

2.Capture at 720 or a lower resolution for Hi8? Does it matter?

You mentioned a final product of DVD, you should capture near/at the final resolution. This will save time and quality loss through resizing. 720x480 is fine for Hi8. Most Hi8 players transfer at 400+ lines of resolution so use a S-Video cable for best results.

3. I'm thinking of getting Premiere or Vegas Video (or a Ulead product), what's the general consensus on which is "best?" (I know, it's subjective, tough question to answer)

I like Vegas. Though Premiere came bundled with my DC30, I installed used a few times, and uninstalled. Vegas is easier to use IMO

4. so do I just capture the DV straight (13GB) or use software compression as the DV is coming through?

If you're using DV, capture straight to DV, edit than encode. It's easy to edit and work with DV. When you edit DV, only the portions that have filters/effects need to be rendered. This of course depends on what hardware/software you use. Canopus and Matrox have some nice bundles, as does ADS. I personally didn't like the quality of the AD conversion (Hi8 to DV), the color didn't look as rich nor detailed enough compared to my analouge captures. Material shot with a DV cam is the opposite. Analouge captures look crappy but DV transfers are golden. Could be an equiptment thing though

5. What about codecs (and settings) for good quality but reasonably sized movie clips for Internet usage?

Capture at the highest resolution highest data rate. Since you mentioned mp3s, imagine compressing a wav to 384, then that mp3 down to 192. The quality is no where near what a wav compressed straight to 192 would be.

Depends on your target format and what you want. Real, Quick Time, and WMV are all possible. Real and WMV could be the easiest to use and have free encoders for streaming media. I personally like Real Video, and use this with a BT8x8 card with decent results.

With DVD you have really one choice, MPEG2. Which is a highly compressed format. With wide ranging encoders, from bad to pretty good. None are the absolute best, that's why there are so many CCE vs. TMPG vs. Mainconcpt vs. Procoder threads. Those 4 are considered to be among the top. Audio can be PCM (space hog) or AC3, comparable to mp3 in terms of compresion quality, though I think AC3 sounds higher quality at the same given bitrate compared to mp3.

6.. Any other advice you could give? Anything!

Buy a training manual for which ever editing system you decide to use.

[Will Hay]

Ok - this is my limited understanding: DV is a format that takes up about 13GB/hour of footage. It is a little compressed, but not much. Wave sound files are analogous in that it is a sound format that takes up a lot os space, so you can compress it into another format (mp3 or ogg, for instance). I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to get some compression of DV into smaller format but virtually maintain the quality of the original DV.

I guess I don't understand why you say I'm contradicting myself. My question was whether I should just copy the DV to the hard drive, and then work on it, or just encode the DV feed into a smaller format real time as it comes in from the player.

You were talking about archiving to a lossless format, which to me means preserving the quality as near to the original as possible.
Perhaps you didn't word it well, or I didn't understand it, but my point is simply that you need to decide on a format in which to 'capture', be it DV whatever, and then decide if you want to keep the raw footage.
I don't, and like you say it takes up a large amount of space.
DV is not a large amount of space, and maybe the way to go for you is to edit on your pc and then save back to Hi 8 tapes.

Man, a flame thread and I can't believe I missed it, I'm ashamed :blushed:
Will Hay

[BJ_M]

best choice: leave it as DV , which has a 5:1 compression .....

it is your best choice for size vs. quality and your time ..

second best choice if you need to save a lot of room .... high bit rate (10meg/sec) all I frame or IPPP frame mpeg2 with ac3 audio ...

.....etc

BJ_M has given you the answer you need - perhaps not the one you want.

I do however disagree with all I frame @10 meg/sec. - seems too low a rate - but just my opinion.

][

its slightly low -- depends on the encoder quality ... but much more than that -- might as well stick with DV (which was the point -- which seems to have been ignored) , why IPPP is a better choice

[schmoppa]

not ignoring things, just was ignorant. I didn't realize that DV is already 5:1 compression. So that makes it 65GB/hour for raw video?

I'm just learning here, hence the need for some direction. I was just trying to get things straight in my own head.

And since my Hi8 player has DV output or just analog outputs, my choices are just use the DV feed, or get a hardware encoder.

I assume that the DV feed is still the better of the options?

[Will Hay]

And since my Hi8 player has DV output or just analog outputs, my choices are just use the DV feed, or get a hardware encoder.

The final sizer will still be 13gb/hr, I have both, I only use the hardware for analogue to digital conversion.

I assume that the DV feed is still the better of the options?

What makes you think that?
Will Hay

[schmoppa]

And since my Hi8 player has DV output or just analog outputs, my choices are just use the DV feed, or get a hardware encoder.

The final sizer will still be 13gb/hr, I have both, I only use the hardware for analogue to digital conversion.

I assume that the DV feed is still the better of the options?

What makes you think that?
Will Hay

I suppose because I don't know jack about this stuff. Are you saying that I could do better by getting a hardware encoder and hooking up the analog inputs? DV or not, I want there to be little loss, and I'm probably ok with dealing with a ton of storage.

[Will Hay]

Personally I don't think there'a a lot in it, so don't invest in anything you don't need to.
Bottom line, I challlenge anyone to tell me my methods produce any less quality than my source but then why would it, I transfer via firewire and convert at 720 x 576 (PAL) 8000CBR.
You need to read up a little, sounds to me like you're tying yourself up in knots un-neccassarily
You may end up going to the far end of a fart when you don't need to.
As I've already said, I archive the resultant mpeg2 file and the VIDEO_TS structure and anyway, who's to say any of this shit is going to work in 50 years?

I suppose because I don't know jack about this stuff. Are you saying that I could do better by getting a hardware encoder and hooking up the analog inputs? DV or not, I want there to be little loss, and I'm probably ok with dealing with a ton of storage.

You see, you keep saying this, but then you turn around and say 13gb/hr is too big.
Uncompressed raw footage is huge.
You're wasting your time trying to archive uncompressed, my MiniDV DV footage is superb, and as already mentioned is 5:1 (I didn't know this).
Will Hay

[junkmalle]

Most video capture devices will capture a maximum of 720x480 (NTSC). At three bytes per pixel (RGB), 30 frames per second, 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, that's 720x480x3x30x60x60, or about 112 GB/hour of video.

Most hardware actually captures in something like YUY2 format because that is closer to what's actually in a NTSC video signal. That reduces the number of bytes per pixel to 2 (instead of 3 for RGB). So an umcompressed YUY2 file will be 720x480x2x30x60x60, or about 75 GB/hour.

There is a lossless codec called HUFFYUV that is designed to compress YUY2 video. It gets about 2:1 compression. So that 75 GB/hour YUY2 file will be reduced to 35 GB/hour.

DV compression starts with something close to YUY2 and compresses the data to about 13 GB/hour.

Coming from Hi8 I don't think you'll see much difference between RGB, YUY2, and DV (AVI) captures. Since you already have the ability to capture DV you might as well use that.

If you want to reduce the size even more you'll likely want to use MPG2. You will lose a bit of the video quality but if you stick with high bit rates (8000 KB/sec or thereabouts, variable bitrate will usually be better than fixed bitrate) the reduction won't be too great. That will reduce the files to about 4GB/hour.

DIVX/XVID/MPG4 will get you maybe another 2x reduction in file size (over MPG2) at about the same quality.

[indolikaa]

Uncompressed raw footage is huge. You're wasting your time trying to archive uncompressed,

True.

If you have, say, an Exabyte autoloader, a shitload of tape cartridges and a lot of free time, I could see an argument for uncompressed archiving. But only for the same reason people climb big rocks: because they can.

If space isn't an issue, capture with WinDV or VirtualDub as a DV.avi-based file. Both programs are free, and you could then downmaster the source to something burnable and see if the DV CODECs lossy nature will even be an issue. It never was for me, and some of my source material was mastered to DV from original digital broadcast master tapes.

[schmoppa]

Uncompressed raw footage is huge. You're wasting your time trying to archive uncompressed,

True.

If you have, say, an Exabyte autoloader, a shitload of tape cartridges and a lot of free time, I could see an argument for uncompressed archiving. But only for the same reason people climb big rocks: because they can.

If space isn't an issue, capture with WinDV or VirtualDub as a DV.avi-based file. Both programs are free, and you could then downmaster the source to something burnable and see if the DV CODECs lossy nature will even be an issue. It never was for me, and some of my source material was mastered to DV from original digital broadcast master tapes.

The free time aspect isn't a big deal... you transfer the DV to the computer (realtime, but not like you have to sit there the whole time). Then you backup (takes a while also, but again you don't have to sit there and watch it). So it will take many days, but most of the time it can happen unsupervised...

Can someone answer whether Hi8 tape degrades much over time? Is it not worth archiving/digitizing something that will survive anyways? I figure it's not a great way to store it, but I don't know for sure.

[indolikaa]

I have a ton of Hi8 tapes recorded in the early 1990s. None of them are showing any problems so far. I suspect they'll outlive some of my VHS tapes, many of which are 20+ years and still working fine. I was always under the impression that Hi8 tapes were a little more fragile than VHS tapes, but I've seen nothing yet that would convince me this is true...

[Will Hay]

Hi indo, how was the vacation?

Most video capture devices will capture a maximum of 720x480 (NTSC). At three bytes per pixel (RGB), 30 frames per second, 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, that's 720x480x3x30x60x60, or about 112 GB/hour of video.

Most hardware actually captures in something like YUY2 format because that is closer to what's actually in a NTSC video signal. That reduces the number of bytes per pixel to 2 (instead of 3 for RGB). So an umcompressed YUY2 file will be 720x480x2x30x60x60, or about 75 GB/hour.

There is a lossless codec called HUFFYUV that is designed to compress YUY2 video. It gets about 2:1 compression. So that 75 GB/hour YUY2 file will be reduced to 35 GB/hour.

DV compression starts with something close to YUY2 and compresses the data to about 13 GB/hour.

Coming from Hi8 I don't think you'll see much difference between RGB, YUY2, and DV (AVI) captures. Since you already have the ability to capture DV you might as well use that.

If you want to reduce the size even more you'll likely want to use MPG2. You will lose a bit of the video quality but if you stick with high bit rates (8000 KB/sec or thereabouts, variable bitrate will usually be better than fixed bitrate) the reduction won't be too great. That will reduce the files to about 4GB/hour.

DIVX/XVID/MPG4 will get you maybe another 2x reduction in file size (over MPG2) at about the same quality.

junkmalle,

excellent post, thank you, helped me too (so much so that I've saved it, for future reference.
One thing, I've never quite understood why HUFFYUV is called lossless, when quite clearly is is
Will Hay

[indolikaa]

Hello Will.

Vacation going well, had a few spare hours near a computer and look where I ended up.

[BJ_M]

Hi indo, how was the vacation?



junkmalle,
:salut:
excellent post, thank you, helped me too (so much so that I've saved it, for future reference.
One thing, I've never quite understood why HUFFYUV is called lossless, when quite clearly is is :)
Will Hay

HUFFYUV is lossless only in RGB mode , it is lossy (slightly) in YUV ..

as to why its called lossless -- just because something is compressed , doesn't mean that it automatically becomes lossless.. the best analogy to this is zip or rar compression , when you uncompress it , nothing is lost..

[andie41]

Although I do believe Hi8 and VHS tapes deteriorate over time, this is not the most important issue to me. My biggest concern is what hardware will I have available to play these tapes in the future. I currently have two Hi8 cameras and a SVHS VCR sitting in the closet unuseable (dried capacitors and other problems), and I have purchased a third camera to transfer my tapes to DV and then DVD. Of course there is no assurance as to the longevity of the DVD's.

Great thread - highly entertaining, as well as informative.

[junkmalle]

Will,

Glad I was able to help out a little bit.

I've never quite understood why HUFFYUV is called lossless

The actual compression/decompression of HUFFYUV is lossless. It starts with YUV2 data and compresses it. When it decompresses, the output is exactly the same is the original YUV2 data. HUFFYUV uses the same Huffman compression algorithms as ZIP and RAR files. As you know, what comes out of those archives MUST be the same thing that went in.

Whether YUV2 is lossy will depend on how you look at it. All analog to digital conversion is lossy. It is impossible to perfectly represent any analog signal as a string of digits. So, in that sense analog to YUY2 is lossy.

Many video capture devices output in YUY2 format because that is closest to what's actually in an the analog video signal. If you save your data in the same YUV2 format that the card captured there is no further "loss" of data in the saving process -- reading back the data later on gives you the exact same YUY2 data your capture device produced.