Most Efficient AVI Conversion for Editing / Big Screen Playback.

[colleent]

Hello. I've frequented video editor specific forums but this is my first time here and am hoping you can offer some general advice about converting from AVI.

We have a few dozen Video 8 and HI 8 tapes we're going to send off to a vendor to be digitized. We could include a terabyte drive and have them transferred as AVI but would prefer a format that results in more manageable file sizes for future editing while preserving the highest possible video quality. The vendor typically converts such tapes to MP4. The edited files are meant to be displayed on a big screen TV so I'm concerned about compression.

I'm guessing this may be too little information for a complete answer, but Is there a better or different format?

For reference the tapes - at least the HI8's - were shot on a Sony CCD-TRV65 Handycam.

Thank you.

[DB83]

AVI is just a container. So you could have uncompressed = very large files, Lossless ie largarith etc, DV = compressed but not as much as, XVID,DIVX

So your first question is the vendor is what type of AVI are they doing.

As for displaying on a tv you must refer the TV's manual since only certain formats/codecs will be supported.

[manono]

I agree. And MP4 isn't really designed for future editing. As you speculated, it's already been heavily compressed once. Future reencoding to the same or different lossy video codec degrades the quality yet again

You're including a big hard drive so I see no reason not to get them back as lossless AVI or, failing that, DV-AVI. Since the service isn't insisting on DVD output, maybe they're actually decent. Lossless or DV-AVI are way better for editing than any large GOP format such as MP4 with H264 video or XviD AVI.

[KarMa]

With lossless it would be around 50-30GB per hour of compressed lossless YUY2 video, compressed with something like Lagarith. And if needed these files could be easily edited in Virtualdub losslessly and then finally compressed with x264 should you wish to share these videos in a more manageable size. Should you have them capture with "MP4", then you certainly could edit that later with something like Vegas, Adobe Premier Pro, or even Avisynth. But these edited videos will be a 2nd generation lossy copy and so worse. Chances are that this is the only time these tapes will ever be captured again and so might as well spend a bit more on data storage going for lossless, data is so cheap these days.

The place that you are sending your tapes, what are their rates?

You're including a big hard drive so I see no reason not to get them back as lossless AVI

OP said that they could, not that they are.

[colleent]

Many thanks all. I appreciate your help.
DB83 - Regarding displaying on a TV I left out one important part. I use Corel to edit video which is converted to MPEG when rendered for DVD. It's the finished DVD that's displayed. I've been working with AVCHD formats in Corel from HD tapes and more recently HD hard drive Canon cameras but haven't successfully worked from Video8/HI8 AVI shot on the Sony. I just transferred the AVI tapes to VCR without editing. Now I want to digitize those originals.

manono and KarMa - As you said, it is the second conversion to MPEG that is concerning - especially starting from an original source that isn't great to begin with.

KarMa - Lossless archiving the tapes is a good idea. I think our last terabyte external drive was about $50 so I'm not too concerned about storage cost. (Remember when not so long ago $1 / MB for RAM was a good deal?) I'm really most concerned about being able to edit. Virtualdub sounds familiar. I may have tried this and not had much luck but that would have been a long time ago so I'll have a look. Thank you.

I'm not sure if you're referring to bit rate or how much he charges. For the quantity of tapes we want to convert (~35) the place we're considering charges $10/ tape plus shipping and the cost of a drive or $5 to upload to cloud storage.

I have no idea what bit rate has to do with video conversion but he said the MP4 bit rate is 221 kbps. I don't know if he dropped a number but the lowest Corel will allow is 1024 kbps and most of the other files I've used are 2000 or more. We may try one or two tapes to see how they look.

Thanks again all.

[DB83]

Bitrates for mp4- h264 are quite different than for DVD-mpeg2. 1024 (assuming that is for dvd) is ridiculously low and the minimum should be 4000 kbps. That gives you approx. 2 hours on one single sided disk.

AVCHD can be displayed on a tv but your disk would have to be played on a Blu-ray player.

[Cornucopia]

A reputable, professional transfer place would allow for you to get something like a 5 minute, watermarked sample transferred for free, so that you could determine for yourself whether their stated options were the level of quality you required, or if not, how much would need to be improved.

But it sounds to me so far that both their and your expectations of needed bitrate are a couple of orders of magnitude short of what is actually required in reality.

To restate: the pro workflow is to lose as little as possible of the original quality all along the way, until the final last step of distribution (where quality choice is determined more by the medium/device/audience).
This usually takes the form for prosumers (like I assume yourself) in the manner of...
1. Cam at highest bitrate lossy format available for the model
2. Upconvert to lossless or near-lossless for editing/compositing/fx (or using straight unconverted copies if simple work)
3. Save same as master (or lossless in case of simple work)
4. Convert copies each for the various formats needed (dvd, bd, youtube, mobile mp4, etc).

Notice there is only 2 stages where real, substantial loss occurs: at the 1st stage in camera (unavoidable) and the final conversion. Adding any more stages is undesirable, inefficient, and shortsighted.

Scott

[Bernix]

I'm curious, can you post some Mediainfo reports of files that you received from "that company"? 221 kbps, probably they did it in constant bitrate, seems to me be ridiculous. It is probably good enough for audio, probably...

You're including a big hard drive so I see no reason not to get them back as lossless AVI or, failing that, DV-AVI.

I would expect it same way.

Bernix

[colleent]

This has certainly been hugely helpful. Many thanks.

I've never heard the term prosumer but understand and appreciate the sentiment. Thank you Scott. I've learned what I needed along the way to create our home videos and basically follow the workflow you described. Sound advice to get a water marked sample, but at this point I believe I'll trust myself to take care of the transfer. It will take awhile once I get it set up but I think I'll be more satisfied in the end.

DB83 If I'm doing the math correctly 221 kbps can't be correct. He said a 1 hour disk would be about 1 GB so he must have dropped a digit - closer to 2000 kbps?

Bernix I haven't received any files from the vendor. We were trading emails and I questioned the bit rate he uses based on comments on his web site about resolution. I questioned him about it and he didn't correct himself so assumed it was correct.

Thanks again!

[lordsmurf]

You need to be careful.

A lot of "vendors" are not run by media/video professionals. That lack education or experience in truly professional video settings. Converting videos was a make-money scheme for them, and nothing more. Those operations are rife with myths, misunderstandings, and lack of knowledge.

1 hour = 1gb would mean 4-hour DVD mode on a DVD recorder. And sadly, I've seen that sort of "work" before.

I'd be curious to see the site. I can spot a hack quite easily. PM it to me.

[lordsmurf]

After having been PM'd, this is clearly some hack/quack operation,

- encoding low-quality unknown-codec "MP4" (and it seems that the "vendor" doesn't even know that MP4 is a wrapper, not a format!)
- non-compliant 640x480 resolution
- unrealistic turn-around times (translation: ultra-cheap processing method!)
- local "dropoff" to a Sears parking lot
- person has zero experience in video, simply an admitted eBay/Google "expert"

If you want quality, stay far, far away. Easily the most hack operation I've ever seen, and I've seen some doozies in my day!

If you want garbage quality, you can get your own $25 Chinese USB junk and any old flea-market VCR like he's seemingly done.