MPG2 & Other Encoding Options

[pglock]

Some advice please. I've recently completed the marathon task of converting all my family analogue video (children's birthdays/holidays etc) from Hi8 to DV by transferring from Hi8 camcorder to minDV camcorder then importing into iMovie. I've ended up with about 200 GB of files spread across two firewire connected disks.

Now I want to cut the footage down (probably in iMovie) then burn to 'simple' DVDs then compress and archive the original DV files.

I have access to:

iDVD (and all the other iLife apps)
QT Pro
FCP
DVDSP3 (and Compressor)
Cleaner
ffmpegx
and many other shareware tools scattered across macs at home and in the office

As the original source is analogue I want to ensure the mpeg compression gives the highest possible quality. So, to cut to the questions:

1. Which tools should I use to produce the dvds, and at what settings?
2. Is there a lossless compression I can apply to the DV files to reduce the disk space needed that still allows me to edit into new dvds if I want to?

All advice gratefully received

[Capmaster]

Is there a lossless compression I can apply to the DV files

No such a creature. There are low-loss like HuffyUV, but not zero-loss.

I can't help you with the apps since I'm a PC type <ducks> ...but I think you're stuck with the DV (AVI) files as-is until you encode to MPEG2. I don't recommend heavy editing of MPEG. The occasional commercial removal or trimming of extra junk at the beginning or the end of an MPEG is one thing, but getting in and chopping up an MPEG is asking for trouble, even with a frame-accurate editor. AVI is much more tolerant to editing.

Other than DV (AVI) and MPEG for the finished product, I don't think you want to start messing with transcoding to save HD space and restoring to edit. That's time consuming and will always degrade your material.

[SERBIAN]

One little note - He meant QuickTime DV which is true original DV format, not the windows AVI container...

The best option for You is to use DVDSP3, and the easiest is to use iMovie to edit and make chapters and then iDVD to make DVDs...iDVD will make You very good MPEG2 files and You can make fancy menus and buttons very easy...

[Capmaster]

One little note - He meant QuickTime DV which is true original DV format, not the windows AVI container...

Thanks for the assist. My Mac ignorance is blinding

[pglock]

Thanks for the advice guys. Looks like the Apple apps get the vote of confidence for the DVD production. The workflow will be easiest iMovie -> iDVD as that can automatically produce menus with chapter headings.

I've read the discussions about which encoding option to use for iDVD. It seems that under 60 minutes of video is best at 'Best Performance', anything longer than 60 mins has to be encoded at 'Highest Quality'.

On the archiving front, I thought I'd seen somewhere that MJPEG and Pixlet could be set to be lossless codecs, though I haven't played with the options myself. Any ideas?

Regards

Peter

[BJ_M]

MJPEG and Pixlet could be set to be lossless codecs

true


SERBIAN wrote:

One little note - He meant QuickTime DV which is true original DV format, not the windows AVI container...

DV is compressed in the camera and the codec is whatever the camera is -

it only becomes QTDV if he re-encodes it as thus .. so until that point , there is no difference between mac and pc .. QTDV is not very good at all (ask on any DV forum) , but PC MS DV codec is worse (why no one uses it for PC's for NLE applications (better ones) ..


your statement makes no sense --

btw -- i use both Macs and PCs and am not biased one way or he other , though i think apples marketing are big bunch of liars that really like to stretch the truth considerably ..

[thoughton]

[quote="BJ_M"]

btw -- i use both Macs and PCs and am not biased one way or he other , though i think apples marketing are big bunch of liars that really like to stretch the truth considerably ..

You evidently haven't seen that Centrino ad where the guy has a video conference with his wife and kid from his laptop on top of Everest :P

Just as the voiceover gurgles happily about wireless connectivity the camera pans to the laptop screen which is showing a video of the climber's wife and kids (waving happily at daddy).

[BJ_M]

thats a might great sat uplink they must of used -- i bet CNN would like that technology

[SERBIAN]

DV is compressed in the camera and the codec is whatever the camera is -

it only becomes QTDV if he re-encodes it as thus .. so until that point , there is no difference between mac and pc .. QTDV is not very good at all (ask on any DV forum)

Disagree on that, but never mind...The important thing is that we helped the poster of the question...

[BJ_M]

well i bet you agree that MS DV codec is worse :

[pglock]

Just to bring the thread back to my original question And to give some of my conclusions...

I've done a little more playing with settings. As suggested, I started using iMovie/iDVD then set up iDVD for encoding. Unfortunately, the settings available in iDVD only allow for one CBR and one VBR setting.

Most of the iMovie projects, once edited down, are just over one hour (as the original analogue tapes were all 90 minutes) so the 'Best Performance' CBR rate in iDVD would give a file size too big to fit on a DVD-R and the 'Highest Quality' setting gives a very aggressive 2-3 GB output, so I'm missing out on a significant amount of quality.

I've started an encode using a custom Cleaner VBR setting to try to acheive a file size as close as possible to 4 GB then I'll use DVDSP to author the final DVD. It's a much more manual process than I wanted, but at least the quality will be as high as possible and I'll keep the DVD images as my archive rather than look for a lossless codec (there are some, but they cost serious money).

Thnaks for all the suggestions (and an interesting discussion on DV standards).

[SERBIAN]

well i bet you agree that MS DV codec is worse :

hehehehehe...True...