MPEG2 compression

[tocsese]

I am capturing old home movies from VHS by running them through my digital camcorder. I end up having these gigantic AVI files on my hard drive, 30-40 gigs. Can I render them down with mpeg2 and store them on a dvd? What I would like to do is later resave them as AVI and edit at my leisure. Only concerned with arresting their decay on VHS for the moment.

[jak_omo]

you can can capture your staff at DVD quality, my suggestion is capture it with picmotion MJPEG codec at quality 17 or 18, so you get for 1h video a ~5gig avi (sound PCM 44.1 16bit stereo)

[ZippyP.]

You don't want to go avi > mpeg > avi. Quality is lost at each step. If you need more compression and you need to edit, then use something not as lossy and easier to edit than mpeg. Mjpeg sounds like a good suggestion.

[bits]

Is your camcorder miniDV? If so, I suggest the following:

1. Use your camcorder as you have, as a passthrough. What you are doing is using your camcorder to convert analog to Digital Video (DV) and the format is DV avi. DV avi files are around 12.5GB per hour of video. I suggest you use WinDV (freeware) to do the transfer to HD and choose Type 2 avi.
2. Now that the file is DV avi you should be able to send it back to your miniDV camera and record on miniDV tapes, do not convert to mpeg2. I am pretty sure you can get 120minute DV tapes for SP mode. I do not recommend using LP mode. If you do not want to use 120min tapes then cut the large DV avi file into smaller pieces using Virtualdub and then transfer to miniDV as DV avi.

I recommend this option because you will have minimal quality loss and fewer steps. Also, from an archival standpoint, minDV is no better or worse than DVD. Take a few moments and google DVD as an archival media and you will find that it is not this magic media that will last forever!

Now if you want to also burn to DVD then you can either cut the DV avi file into 4GB chunks and burn to lots of DVDs as data files or you can convert to mpeg2 and burn to DVD. Once you convert to mpeg2 you will lose some quality depending on the settings/software you use (the more you compress the more quality loss) and going back to DV avi you will lose some more. If you do go to mpeg2 make sure you use a quality mpeg2 encoding software such as CCE Basic. Most all in one software apps have marginal mpeg2 encoding capability.

[mikiem]

agree on the leaving as DV for best future editing, but wondering if your camera won't just record to tape from analog input from vcr? Would save a couple of steps.

That said, if for some reason DV tape is out of the question, the loss in quality going to mpg2 won't be as bad as it might using higher quality sources than vhs. Or put another way: your quality is already low enough that you might not be able to tell the difference between mpg2 & DV anyway. I'd consider Avisynth filtering before encoding to mpg2 though.

[slacker]

I accomplished your goal by

1. VHS to PC using Sony DV camcorder's analog-digital passthru

2. Editing and correcting using Sony Vegas

3. Printing back out to miniDV tape for archive

4. Encoding to MPEG (8.5 mbps cbr video with 0.448 mbps AC-3 audio)

5. Authoring to DVD for archive

MiniDV tapes come in 60m and 80m varieties (SP). MiniDV tapes are without question superior for archival storage if cost and reliability are key factors in your decision. DVDs are more for actual distribution and everyday viewing. In both cases, use the best media you can get your hands on.

Also, the new prosumer HDV camcorders will also "read" and "write" standard miniDV tapes made today. And until higher capacity discs (blu-ray for example) are mainstream, miniDV is here to stay.

You may want to simply encode and archive both ways like I did for insurance purposes.