DVD or DivX?

[Dr Cornel]

What is the best option for compress family movies? I have a DV camera, I work with Pinnacle for capture and editing but I'm not sure what compresion to use: Mpeg4 or Mpeg2? Can anyone help me? Thank You!

[Suntan]

Don't mean to be rude Doc, but the only thing you are going to accomplish with this post is a bunch of follow on posts stating MPEG4 is crap use MPEG2 for backup. Then one stating MPEG2 is old and dead use MPEG4. with a couple of posts thrown in asking you questions like: Do you have a DVD burner? Do you expect to share DVDs with you family?...

Start by searching the forum as this kind of question has been asked many many times. At the bare minimum, list your priorities (low total cost, max compatability, max picture quality, etc.)

Oh welcome to the forum.... 8)

-Suntan

[vitualis]

If you want the best compatibility and quite reasonable quality, you should author a DVD (and thus, must be MPEG-2).

If you want something quick and easy and you want to distribute on CDs rather than DVDs and/or you intend playback on the PC and/or you have a DivX capable DVD player, then you should consider encoding in DivX/MPEG-4. You can get very good quality video with MPEG-4 just like MPEG-2 with better compression rates. The main downside is that you won't be able to make menus, etc., as per a DVD.

Regards.

[Dr Cornel]

Thank you Vitualis and thank you Suntan! I have a DVD writter and also a DivX capable DVD player so this is not a problem. My goal is to get highest picture quality even in a bigger space. DVD menus aren't important for me.I know, a family DV camera (I have a JVC 725GR) has their limits but I think the compression is very important. I dont have enough time to learn all about this stuff so an informed advice will be wellcome. Thx again.