miniDV and video8 home movie tapes to blu-ray

[eichelman]

I have a bunch of avi files of of these home movies.

Should I burn them onto DVD-9, getting about 2 hours on each DVD? Or should I use something like multiAVCHD
to make Blu-Ray Disks?

I know Blu-Ray wont improve the quality, but will I be able to put more minutes of home movies on the
Blu-Ray? I thinking about costs also

Fred

[edDV]

I have a bunch of avi files of of these home movies.

Should I burn them onto DVD-9, getting about 2 hours on each DVD? Or should I use something like multiAVCHD
to make Blu-Ray Disks?

I know Blu-Ray wont improve the quality, but will I be able to put more minutes of home movies on the
Blu-Ray? I thinking about costs also

Fred

What kind of avi? What codec and bit rate?

Two ways to get more minutes: more compression (lower quality) or larger capacity disc (DVDR9 or BD/BE).

[eichelman]

I used Windows Movie Maker and saved as DV-avi, which I think is not compressed.
So If I use MPEG2 to make a DVD, then I am not losing noticeable quality, right? Can I make a BD using
MPEG2 also, allowing me how many hours?

[edDV]

I used Windows Movie Maker and saved as DV-avi, which I think is not compressed.
So If I use MPEG2 to make a DVD, then I am not losing noticeable quality, right? Can I make a BD using
MPEG2 also, allowing me how many hours?

Keep the DV-AVI files as your archive. Encoding further to MPeg2 or h.264 will lower quality but will be OK for playback.

If this DVD needs to play on a DVD player, you need to keep to MPeg2 DVD spec (e.g. max video bit rate 9800 Kb/s) but Blu-Ray players usually allow more (~16000 Kb/s max) if you want highest quality. But it sounds like you want more minutes over quality so experiment with lower bit rates or h.264 encoding. I'd suggest ~ 8000 Kb/s MPeg2 video + 224 Kb/s audio. That would get you 2hr 15 min on a DVDR-9 or ~ 6.7 hrs on a BD 25.

Don't over-compress shaky home camcorder material. It doesn't compress well. Deinterlace is highly destructive so keep to 720x480i. The player will handle deinterlace better.

[eichelman]

This sounds like very good advice, consistent to what I have heard elsewhere, but not all put together. My "archive" is 1 TB full, I hate to back that up,
so I guess I will just keep the original tapes as backup for now.

My AVSINfo.exe is not working, when I try to run multiAVCHD, so I will have to read more about it and figure it out, Thanks much,

Now I need to see if buying one BD 25 is worth buying 3 DVDR-9s, and where to buy them from. I will check the forums.
Thanks,
Fred