Suggestions for storing DV-video

[Raga]

What do you folks do with your DV-video? I mean, besides just keeping it on tapes or keeping it in DV-format. I would like to get it compressed down somewhat for easy storage (ideally, to less than half the size of the original or more), yet retaining a quality almost as good as in the original. Source video comes from my camcorder. Suggestions on codecs to be used, any other suggestions? (And I am right now not in a position in which I can just keep it all on tapes here, so as much as I appreciate the preachers who'd like to tell that to me, that's not what I'm looking for.)

[thecoalman]

Personally I split them up into 4.2 gig files and burn them as data DVD's.

[Raga]

That means you get around 20 minutes stored per DVD. I'd love to get an hour or so stored on a single DVD, that should be somewhat enough for clips on one theme. Otherwise I'm going to end up with a hell in keeping track of what's where on all those discs.

[thecoalman]

I only burn them on DVDR's so I mark them with a marker and rubberband sets together.

[henshaw]

The way I store it is I burn it straight to DVD with my standalone DVD recorder, Liteon LVW-5006. it has a DV input (also has line in video and audio sockets) so I can record it as a dvd in realtime, gives excellent results. It creastes a dvd player compatible disc, therefore any editing you need to do will have to be done on a pc

[edDV]

Personally I split them up into 4.2 gig files and burn them as data DVD's.

Although DVDR media is cheap, it takes alot of time to burn these DVDs and they are not playable even on a computer. 32x DVDR players would be required.

I'm just holding on to my tapes until Blu-ray DVD (25GB/layer) becomes affordable, then I will dub my tapes.

[edDV]

The way I store it is I burn it straight to DVD with my standalone DVD recorder, Liteon LVW-5006. it has a DV input (also has line in video and audio sockets) so I can record it as a dvd in realtime, gives excellent results. It creastes a dvd player compatible disc, therefore any editing you need to do will have to be done on a pc

You are tossing 75% of the quality that way. In the future when we are all watching large screen HDTV, we will be glad that we saved our DV originals.

[vhelp]

I don't have a DVD Recorder unit, but I can't say that they go high enough in
bitrate to qualify for arvhival purposes (onless that's your only option)
I think that these units go to 9k bits a most (since DVD is 9.8k) but if the
option to burn the original DV avi file(s) to DVD-RW disks are not an option
either, then you could try encoding to MPEG-2 at highest bitrate your encoder
will allow. I know that TMPGenc allows as high as 15k bitrates, so that is
what I would do.
.
If you go this MEPG-2 route, I wuold not apply any filtering to your source.
Keep them untouched, so that at least, you have a chance to apply them later,
when things are better, like your skills/knowledge, or the equipments and
things change (for the better) and your second chance of finally producing
decent DVD videos

Based on DV (assuming whatever the source might be ie, Cable; TV; DV footage etc)
Whatever your source is TV; Film; Interlace etc, it's best to encode to by
using Interlace in all steps to a final MPEG-2 for storage/archival purposes
to DVD disk (for later finalizing to DVD)
In fact, I would just go and encode everything w/ Interlace ticked on, and
remember to not apply any filtering in the archival stage.
.
And, when encoding to MPEG, (and in addition to highest bitrate your encoder
will allow) remember to use CBR mode.., not VBR for this phase. You should be
able to get 1 hour at 9k bitrates w/ CBR, and on DL burners, you should probably
get 2 hours worth, but w/ higher bitrate like 15k, your probably need 3 disks
to fill 1 hours worth of footage, unless you have DL burner. Anyways.

Some good MPEG encoders (that I've used) are:

* TMPGenc
* CCE
* Procoder

-vhelp 3010

[edDV]

But with MiniDV tapes down to less than $3/hr. why do all that processing and DVD copying?

One could also save to HDD for around $6/hr. That number is falling fast.

[thecoalman]

Although DVDR media is cheap, it takes alot of time to burn these DVDs and they are not playable even on a computer. 32x DVDR players would be required.

Didn't say I was palying them from DVD just storing them, I have all my footage on tape too but I don't trust it. Besides there is nothing wrong with 2 copies if you have the time and spare change.

[vhelp]

My response above was based on an assumption that the user ran out of
options, and the MPEG-2 was the best alternative..

* space wise, and
* quality wise

I still have lots of DV tapes laying around full of home footage and old satellite captures (recorded to DV tapes) However. I've turned to other
ways of dealing w/ my Capture sources and Processing them to finalized
MPEG's
But, I keep the miniDV tapes as my main original backups.

FWIW.. I kind of feel that these tapes I have on hand (in storage now) are
IMO, approaching the "age" that I don't want to re-use them anymores.
They are at their final (resting) stage of their use.
.
My future DV footaging will obviously be done on new miniDV tapes, as
they come, in my DV footaging.

-vhelp 3011

[Raga]

So you would all recommend MPEG-2 over XviD? I suppose so, for all I hear about the abilities in higher bitrates. At which rates does the difference in quality begin to show?

[edDV]

You are archiving these so that you and others can be watching them in a few years on a large HDTV. Why would you want to reduce the resolution?

If you keep the camera and edit masters in DV format, you will be able to reauthor them with future encoders that will make them appear quite good on a HDTV.

I'm thinking important family videos here, not Alias reruns.

[Raga]

I am also thinking that having them as files will have them more conveniently accessible when necessary, as importing them from DV-tapes is only possible in real time with current consumer equipment, while files from DVDs you can copy substantially faster.

[LordVader]

i heard about a formule, where using some DATA compressors in a specific chain, you can reduce the size of a DV file up to 40% less.

my english is horrible, so i'll not have to much luck on google.

Why don't you guys take a look, and help me too.

cause i don't beleive in miniDV tapes as storage.

[LordVader]

i also heard that if you store your dv tapes in the refridgerator, in ten years you'll find your data in high def. :P

[edDV]

i heard about a formule, where using some DATA compressors in a specific chain, you can reduce the size of a DV file up to 40% less.

my english is horrible, so i'll not have to much luck on google.

Why don't you guys take a look, and help me too.

cause i don't beleive in miniDV tapes as storage.

I bet one must pay a large encode/decode processing time penalty for further lossless DV compression. MiniDV tapes are cheap, why don't you believe in them?

[LordVader]

i don't beleive in tapes, thanks to lot of topics talking about data corruption, during transferring processes.

i know we can't beleive everything we read, but there was also a comment about what a DV compression codec from the original camcorders, do to your video, when transferred back to the tape.

maybe it's not happening anything at all. But i just beleive in the files that i can CUT & PASTE.

[Raga]

So I ended up packing them up in interlaced XviD with Quantizer3, fed in from AviSynth through Convolution3D. (3D applied separately for odd & even fields.) That seems to produce the results I am looking for, with only very little quality loss. (The original footage isn't that super quality to begin with.) The results were better than with MPEG2 for the equivalent file size.

Of course this may not work at all for someone else, depending on what his source footage is, but I'm mentioning nevertheless. Might work for someone else, and this would then save his trouble.

[edDV]

i don't beleive in tapes, thanks to lot of topics talking about data corruption, during transferring processes.

i know we can't beleive everything we read, but there was also a comment about what a DV compression codec from the original camcorders, do to your video, when transferred back to the tape.

maybe it's not happening anything at all. But i just beleive in the files that i can CUT & PASTE.

Transferring the data in the file to tape is just that, data transfer. It doesn't encode.

[Raga]

But it's so damn slow... Imagine having a hard drive with ATA3.3... :P

Edit: Fix that decimal, ATA3.3, not 33!

[edDV]

True

[pizzamandk]

Say TheCoalMan, do you burn your files as UDF in Nero (if that's what you're using)?

[ronnylov]

Personally I split them up into 4.2 gig files and burn them as data DVD's.

Although DVDR media is cheap, it takes alot of time to burn these DVDs and they are not playable even on a computer. 32x DVDR players would be required.

I'm just holding on to my tapes until Blu-ray DVD (25GB/layer) becomes affordable, then I will dub my tapes.

I don't understand why not a 3X speed DVDR player would be enough.
1X speed equals 1 hour per disc so 3X speed equals 20 minutes per disc.
I can fit 20 minutes of DV on one DVD-R. If I can burn it in 15 minutes with a 4X DVD-burner it would play in 20 minutes with a 3X reader.

[Raga]

The 1x of CDs isn't the same as 1x of DVDs. 1x CD = 150 KB/s, 1x DVD = 1353 KB/s, sustained data reading rate. Thus 1 DVDx = 9 CDx.

4482 MB for 20 minutes means 3735 KB/s. Therefore A DVD-drive capable of reading 2.75x is enough for playing DV-footage from a DVD.

[edDV]

Yes, except DV is a constant datarate of 25Mb/s plus audio plus metadata at a costant fixed rate which works out to 30-36Mb/s from begining to end and there is no room for buffer.

Now DVD is spec'd in average or even maximum nX speed and this differs for inner and outer tracks and average over the entire disc.

In order to play a full DVDR for the full 20min at realtime w/o error requires a drive with more than 8x. I have a 16x Sony DRU-710A that can't do it so lets just say it needs more than 16x (untested). I'll go try it again.

[Raga]

Let's go by 36Mbits per second, tops. That's the equivalent of 4.5MBytes per second, which is the equivalent of 996 seconds or 16 minutes and 36 seconds. That's exactly 3.33x.

And afaik, when we're talking about this-n-that x, that's the sustained theoretical data rate given, not the maximum burstable data reading rate.

How long does it take for you to burn a full DVD, edDV? How many seconds for 4482MB?

[ronnylov]

Some DVD readers are speed limited when reading burned discs, like my 16X LiteOn LTD-166S which tops at 8X speed but when doing a transfer rate test in Nero CD-DVD speed it gives the minimum read spead of just below 4X at the beginning when reading a good disc.

My NEC-3500A burner gives a minimum read spead (on good discs) of at least 6X, it tops at 16X for DVD-R and DVD+R.

I guess it should be possible to watch it in real-time directly from disc in a computer but I have not tested it either. But this does not really matter to me because I copy all the files to my hard drive (either directly from tape or from the burned backup) before working with them. The DVD is just a DV-file back-up solution.

I suggest storing the DV on both tapes and DVD's. Store each original tape in a safe place after copying them as DV-files to DVD. Store the DVD backups on another safe place and keep the files you are working with on your hard drive. Also make backups on your finnished edited files to tape and DVD as DV files and then make copies for viewing in DVD-Video format. DVD-Video is more convenient when watching the final result (it's an end format not supposed to be edited or converted anymore).

[edDV]

The point is you are on the edge of today's DVDR realtime performance and only the fastest drives will have a chance to play accross the full drive without drops. Risky if you don't want drops.

DVDR drives are spec'd for either burst or average performance not for sustained transfer rate.

[Skith]

but if the
option to burn the original DV avi file(s) to DVD-RW disks are not an option
either, then you could try encoding to MPEG-2 at highest bitrate your encoder
will allow.
-vhelp 3010

Just a technical point... never archive in a rewritable (+/- RW) format. Rewritable optiocal media is very unstable (phase change) and only ment for short term storage. If archiving to optical media, write once (+/- R) is far more stable as it is dye based. At least, when the media (and dye) is produced by a quality manufacturer.