video8 to DVD

[Paul Laviolette]

My video8 analog and digital tapes are getting old so I decided to capture them and save them to DVD. The captured tapes are from 10 gigs to 25 gigs each. To put a two hr tape (24.5 Gigs) onto a DVD I need to shrink it down big time and sure do lose quality. I don't get it because apparently this is the thing to do. A two hr movie on DVD is very crisp so is there a format I don't know about or procedure to maintain the quality? Or do I need to put the two hour tapes on to four DVDs?

[yoda313]

You are using dv-avi for capturing. That is 13.5gb an hour no matter what.

You have to encode to mpeg2 for authoring to dvd if you want it playable in a settop player (you can still chop it up and save as data to dvdrs of course). You can use any number of programs to do that. Avstodvd for one.

If you want to save your dv-avi captures in their original forms you should invest in an external harddrive. Two if you want to ensure redundancy. Than you can save them in their original captured form.

Also only a computer will be able to play back the dv-avi files in their present state. As far as I know there are no settop players that can read dv-avi from a harddrive. Conversion to dvd (mpeg2 than authored) or to another compressed format (h264 for example) will be required.

[Paul Laviolette]

Thanks for the advice. I found a 2TB HD at Future Shop for $99.99 and now only have 100 more tapes to go. I sure hope they will all fit on the thing. For years I have been going over the tapes and use parts in videos I put together but I just can't bring myself to erase them. Even now I'll hang on to the tapes until I croak. The one thing that is eating at me is I put a bundle of stuff on a 500 GB HD before and the HD croaked. Well It's going to be nice to be able to get at all my videos instantly and make more movies.