How to compress DV avi

[marti252]

Sry if the subject is allready discussed.

I want to fit 1h raw home made video into one dvd(4,7GB) in avi format. Right now, when i capture through DV, i get 12GB/h.
How can I do it without loseing much quality, that later when I find time I can edit it.

I have adobe premiere, vega, pinnacle

Tnx in advance

Martin

[poisondeathray]

I want to fit 1h raw home made video into one dvd(4,7GB) in avi format

What do you mean? DVD playable on DVD player (MPEG2), or as a data disc for PC? Or do you mean xvid/avi playable on DVD players that support xvid/divx?

If you don't want to lose quality, leave it as DV-AVI for editing. Converting it to a lossy format for editing, and then re-encoding again is a bad idea.

[marti252]

I want to fit 1h raw home made video into one dvd(4,7GB) in avi format

What do you mean? DVD playable on DVD player (MPEG2), or as a data disc for PC? Or do you mean xvid/avi playable on DVD players that support xvid/divx?

I want to leave it as data disc with .avi on it. Because 12GB/h is alot of discs i thought compressing it to less woudn't be so quality loseing. I want to make it just smaller, no encoding, so I can edit it later on.

[Ai Haibara]

If you want to compress it to fit in less space, you have to re-encode. There's not really many ways around it, if you want to fit it on smaller media, unless you want to do things like use an archiver (ZIP, RAR, etc.) and create a multi-volume archive, or split it into multiple segments (and have the fun of trying to rejoin it later).

It might be easier just to find a large-enough USB flash drive or external drive and store it on that.

[marti252]

It might be easier just to find a large-enough USB flash drive or external drive and store it on that.

Well, the reason, why im trying to store it is because i want to reuse my 8mm tapes. And cause i have like hundred of them, then the usb is not the best choice .

But when i have to encode it, what encoder i should use so that when i want to edit in the future its with fewest quality losses. i think my camera is NTSC, but i would use PAL for showing it

[guns1inger]

Tapes are cheap - buy more. There is no way you can re-encode to fit without losing quality and the ability to easily edit the footage at a later date.

[marti252]

Tapes are cheap - buy more. There is no way you can re-encode to fit without losing quality and the ability to easily edit the footage at a later date.

Well, tapes are 20x more expensive than dvd-s

[filmboss80]

To store DV-AVI files to DVD data discs, you'd need at least 7 discs for every 2 hours. Does one 2-hour tape cost that much more than 7 blank DVDs?

You cannot compress DV-AVI further. You would have to encode to MPEG-2, Divx, etc. to make it smaller, but that would degrade the quality and defeat your editing purposes.

How important is the footage to you? If it is something you want to keep, then don't be such a cheapskate. Reusing tapes can also cause dropouts on the tape itself, which can lead to poorer recordings and extra head wear on your camcorder.

[marti252]

To store DV-AVI files to DVD data discs, you'd need at least 7 discs for every 2 hours. Does one 2-hour tape cost that much more than 7 blank DVDs?

Well 1 hour digital8 costs $12 in Estonia, (I know, that from BestBuy you'll get 4with$20) 7 blank DVD-s $3,5. So its big difference and the other thing is also the fast access to video. Its time consuming to find it from tapes.

But thanks for information

I wonder if I can use cheaper 8mm tapes instead of digital8/hi8?

[filmboss80]

Considering that it is Digital8 (and until your most recent post, I wasn't sure about which 8mm format you were using), it appears that your best option (for now) is to just transfer each hour of DV-AVI footage to 4 data DVD discs. That's a lot of discs to store, but the alternatives (like HUGE hard disk drives) may be more expensive for you.

But no, don't compress the avi files any further.

[marti252]

Considering that it is Digital8 (and until your most recent post, I wasn't sure about which 8mm format you were using), it appears that your best option (for now) is to just transfer each hour of DV-AVI footage to 4 data DVD discs. That's a lot of discs to store, but the alternatives (like HUGE hard disk drives) may be more expensive for you.

But no, don't compress the avi files any further.

OR you can order 100 HI-8 tapes from hong kong via ebay at 2-3$ a piece :P

[edDV]

Rather than transfer to new tapes, just buy new tapes.

I also have a large collection of Hi8/Digital8 tapes. Some are important, others I can edit down.

For more important tapes, I dub DV to a hard drive and keep the original tape in storage. Very important tapes get dubbed to two hard drives with one stored off site.

For less important older tapes, I encode to MPeg2 but still store the tape.

For less important newer tapes, I encode to MPeg2 (with backup) and wipe the tape for reuse.

I don't know what hard drives cost in Estonia, but here 1.5TB drives go on sale for around $100. 1.5TB will back up about 100 Digital8 tapes.

[johns0]

Buy a bigger hdd or even a second hdd to store the files.