Format Opinions

[mjgreer]

I'm capturing video from a VCR and plan on saving the videos on DVD.

What recommendations would any more experience video editors give me, as to which format to capture in, and which is the best to save to DVD?

-Mike

[hech54]

DVD is MPEG2 and can only be MPEG2.

[JVRaines]

DVD is on the way out. Save losslessly-compressed AVIs in Huffyuv or Lagarith codec to multiple hard drives. Some archivists prefer lossless FFV1 codec in MKV files. If the storage budget is pinched and you have a huge number of tapes, use DV codec instead. If you have a larger budget, archive them to LTO data tape.

[redwudz]

For more information about the DVD format: https://www.videohelp.com/dvd

@mjgreer, I'm assuming you haven't bought a capture device yet, as that will likely determine the possible capture formats.

[usually_quiet]

I'm capturing video from a VCR and plan on saving the videos on DVD.

What recommendations would any more experience video editors give me, as to which format to capture in, and which is the best to save to DVD?

-Mike

The video and audio formats used for capture and the end format can be different. Most here recommend lossless formats for capture. (HuffYUV or UT Video Codec for video, and LPCM in an AVI container.) File sizes are huge, up to 30GB per hour but lossless capture provides the opportunity for filtering and correcting the video, before you convert to an end format like MPEG-2 or H,264.

If you just want to get it done quickly without a lot of effort, don't care about correcting defects in your captures for the best possible result, and don't care about having the opportunity to use two-pass encoding to your chosen end format, then you can capture direct to MPEG-2.

If someone wants to make the DVD playable with a DVD player, then the only choices are MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 for video (MPEG -2 is better) and LPCM/WAV, Dolby Digital/AC3 or MPEG-1 layer 2/MP2 for audio (AC3 is preferred). Note that the video and audio must conform to the DVD spec, and have to be authored and burned to disc according to the DVD spec as well.

Anything that will physically fit can be burned to a DVD as data. Some Blu-ray players will play a variety of different types of video data files from burned DVDs, although not as many as a computer.

[mjgreer]

Redwudz,

My video capture device is a Diamond Multimedia One-Touch Video Capture.

-Mike