Archiving home videos

[niritav]

I have several old family videos that I can capture pretty well with Dazzle (I have Studio 9 that came with it). The AVI files are huge, but I don't want to simply burn DVDs, becuase maybe in a few years technology will change, and I want to keep the best resolution possible. I keep searching for info, but everybody writes about capturing and editing, and I need advice about the best way to simply save stuff. Any advice? Thanks!!!

[guns1inger]

The best way to save them at the moment is to protect the original tapes. Cool, dry, dark storage.

After that, you could consider lossless compression on removable HDDs.

However first, define huge. DV is around 13 GB/hour, and that is compressed at around 5:1. Lossless compression might get you 2:1, so you are looking at files in the order of 25 - 30 GB / hour. Uncompressed is double or more again.

[Cole]

To put it simply, go ahead and convert the tapes to DVD for now but keep the tapes. Whatever the future holds for video you can at least convert to the best possible available to you now and when you are able to step up to the next grade then convert them again.

In a small respect I have been there: I have a collection of off-air VHS tapes many of which are of TV programmes that have not and are hightly unlikely to ever be commercially released.

When I started to dabble with video converstion (about five years ago) I converted many to VCD. All these years later I have much better equipment and better software and am now able to convert to much better quality.

However, I will still keep the original tapes as I may, as technology improves, be able to convert to a much better format and with even better quality.

So, convert as best you can now, as I assume you still want to be able to watch them, as we don't know what is coming along next to improve things - after all when I was making my VCDs, DVD Burners were really expensive; my first CD burner cost me a week's wages - but keep the original tapes safe.

[niritav]

Thanks, guns1ilnger and cole! Yes, I, too, converted a lot of stuff years ago with one of the newest machines - it was called Terapin, if I remember correctly. Took many hours, and the results would now be considered pathetic. That's why I don't want to go through all that again. I probably have about 50 hours of video - some DV, but a lot of them from about 10 years ago - the small VHS tapes. I have a 1 Tbyte external drive - would you recommend saving on it? If so - which is prefereble: AVI or mpeg? Is there any book or article you would recommend? I'm pretty good on the computer, but specialize in statistics and not graphics/video.