after final product, can you extract it later?

[newbie04]

i'm trying to grasp i guess the 'bigger picture'.

so you capture a show from tv, its in DV format, you edit it etc. , and then burn/author as a VCD or DVD whatever.

ok so my question is after you do all that, you got this disc with your show on it and can play it on your dvd player. so what if you want to make copies? create clips to post the web? maybe redo it and insert menus etc.? can you do that? how? also will there be great quality loss??

because i have a bunch of DV files and they are quite large, and i would like to delete them, but then i am wondering will the disc i burned be all i need if i want to do anything later and if i will suffer in quality loss.

i don't understand the process in that area. otherwise, would it be better to just make data discs for all the files until one has time to 'get it right' and do all the editing/authoring etc. to make the final product of a VCD or DVD etc. ?

i need enlightenment. thanks!

[ZippyP.]

ok so my question is after you do all that, you got this disc with your show on it and can play it on your dvd player. so what if you want to make copies? create clips to post the web? maybe redo it and insert menus etc.? can you do that? how? also will there be great quality loss??

Mpeg is generally regarded as a "final" format, one that is the finished product. You can copy a DVD, extract the mpegs (or clips) and redo menus without any quality loss whatsoever.

You can do certain amounts of re-editting without quality loss as well, but only simple cutting and splicing. If you add special effects (fades, scene changes) or titles...in other words if you make changes in the video itself, then the video will be re-encoded which causes quality loss. A good mpeg editter will only re-encode the parts that have changed. How much loss? It depends on the program, the settings and how much perfection you demand. The loss may or may not be significant to you but it exists because of the re-compression which occurs.

How to go about doing all that stuff? Well, the guides section has most of it in detail.

For the preservation of precious footage it's best to keep a copy of the original tapes as DV is too large to store adequately on a DVD.

Hope tht helps.