Compressing files

[Havalilsi]

I have a 120Gig external hard drive, a 200 Gig in my shutttle and 60 Gigs in my laptop and they're all full of videos. I have about 15 Gigs of space left between the 3. I was told I could compress the raw files and save them to a disc to be rendered later when I get the time. The videos are captured via fire wire with windv to a hard drive. Each one is anywhere from 19 Gigs to 30 Gigs. Most of the how to compress posts I found spoke of small files. How can I compress these large files?

[junkmalle]

Anything you do to compress your DV AVI files will end up losing quality and make them harder to edit. It's best to archive them as-is (cut them into 4 GB chunks and burn to data DVD) if possible. But you could convert to MPEG 2 or MPEG 4.

If you convert them to MPEG 2 with DVD compatible settings they'll be ready to burn to DVD. You can squish them down to about 1/3 their size (about 8000 kbps) without much loss of quality and still be fairly editable.

MPEG 4 (Xvid, Divx, etc) can squish them more but they'll be even harder to edit and less compatible with DVD players.

[Havalilsi]

Hmm I was afraid there was no easy way out. I can't get Encore to burn my render my projects fully. I'm definitely in a world of hurt now.
Thanks for the help

[edDV]

What is the source quality? Are these high quality camcorder transfers?

13.5 GB DV (1hr.) compresses nicely to a 4.3 GB DVD but as said by junkmalle, you should edit it down first. I usually save my edit back to DV tape and save most of the working bin to DV tape as well.

You will need to spend long hours encoding. You may be better off getting another drive.

[hhhhbk]

just get another hard drive
slap a 250 or 300gb in the shuttle if there is space

if not just get an external one
they are pretty cheap these days

i definitely wouldnt recommend splitting files into 4.3 GB chunks and burning to dvds it would take way too much time and effort

alternatively (if you dont currently have the original footage on DV tape) then saving back to dv tape is not a bad idea if your camera has dv in

[Havalilsi]

Actually the files are 20+ Gigs and 19 or so Gigs edited. Its about a little over an hour each video. I use a really nice Sony Hi-8 Sony camcorder to capture through fire wire to the hard drives. I do have one external and money is tight. I was editing the videos in Premiere then exporting them to Encore but the videos give me problems to render the titles. I get a " progress building Menus Failed" message.

[edDV]

Actually the files are 20+ Gigs and 19 or so Gigs edited. Its about a little over an hour each video. I use a really nice Sony Hi-8 Sony camcorder to capture through fire wire to the hard drives. I do have one external and money is tight.

1 hour of DV should take ~13.5GB.

I keep working projects on various dedicated HDDs. Fortunately, my computer case allows easy swap of drives during project setup. I also have a couple of external drive cases that allow for easy drive swap.