Best way to store DV video files?

[bwenwsu]

Hi, all,

I have more 20+ hours family DV WinDV-captured AVI files that need to be stored well for future use. Currently, I burn them to DVDR (~4GB for 20 mins AVI), which uses about 60 DVDR. I am wondering whether I could encode them to MPEG2 using highest bitrate and 2-pass VBR, which reduce the size to about 1/5th. In the future, I can use these MPEG2 to edit or re-encode to lower bitrate if necessary. The point is I care about both, smaller size and better quality as much as I can. Is this a good idea? or anyone has better ideas? Thanks in advance!

Bowen

[guns1inger]

Put your DV tapes in a box in a cool, dry, dark place, and get them out again in the future when you need them - this is the best option.

If you believe you need ready access to the footage, the next best option is a big external drive (or removable HDD bays), in DV format (300GB will hold over 20 hours)

If you really intend to use this footage again in the future, don't use a lossy compression. Chances are that once HD plyaer really do become consumer items (still probably year or two away realistically), there will be upscaling capture devices that will do a great job with your original DV tapes, but not so good with mpeg compressed footage - if anything they will just should up the compression flaws instead.

I would just look after the tapes.