Looking for archival quality MPEG compression format

[CFog83]

I have been ripping DVDs into MPEGs that I then put on VCD. I make them very high quality so they take up a lot of space. For example, the movie Memento takes up 1 gig. So, after I burn the VCDs I would like to store these somewhere. I don't want to use Divx because it is lossy. But, if is the best way, I cannot get Virtualdub to encode it because I have a hacked codec or soemthing.

[gll99]

I wouldn't consider a 1 gig movie to be extra high quality. Most 1 and 1/2 to 2 hour movies on 2 VCD disks would reach 1 + 1/2 gig.

If you are worried that they will be damaged why not make 2 copies or find a friend who collects like you and each keep a vcd copy.

DIVX, XVID, MPEG4, RM9, WME8 or 9 (WMV + WMA) are the only ones that compress enough and give decent quality.

If you want lossless then you are looking at many gigs per movie minimum 10 gig +.

Where in the world will you store that. Sorry but you must use a lossy codec from the list.

Picvideo is lossy too but I didn't list it because its does not compress enough.

I have many other lossy codecs but I have not tried enough so don't know if they would compress enough to fit the movie on 1 disk. A 2 disk compress would be useless since you may as well just copy your vcd.

I have been impressed with wme and rm9 in recent tests but don't expect to convert back to vcd easily.

[gll99]

Just an afterthought:

After you posed this question it made me examine something I have been wondering about for a long time but always forgot to try. Would compressing a mpeg using a program like winzip make a file smaller.
The answer using only 1 sample of 100mb with winzip 8.1 at maximum compression is a 3% smaller file. When I unzipped the file and played it I saw no obvious negative effects. I have an AVI that is just a bit too large for 1 cd. I will see if the same % is saved with avi files because that would be enough for that particular file to archive on 1 cd without overburn.

It would be interesting to see what other compressors (RAR etc..) achieve.

[Jester700]

Just an afterthought:

After you posed this question it made me examine something I have been wondering about for a long time but always forgot to try. Would compressing a mpeg using a program like winzip make a file smaller.
The answer using only 1 sample of 100mb with winzip 8.1 at maximum compression is a 3% smaller file. When I unzipped the file and played it I saw no obvious negative effects. I have an AVI that is just a bit too large for 1 cd. I will see if the same % is saved with avi files because that would be enough for that particular file to archive on 1 cd without overburn.

It would be interesting to see what other compressors (RAR etc..) achieve.

You can, but as you saw, winzip doesn't do much. That's because MPEGS (and JPGs, and MP3s) are not very "compressible". Redundancy has been squeezed out already to make them the efficient storage formats that they already are.

[CFog83]

OK, so how can I make this a high quality Divx? I mentioned my problem with VirtualDub.

[gll99]

Virtualdub warns you that divx is a hacked codec but does not prevent you from using it. The message only appears the first time you install it and use it. DIVX 5 may choke on it sometimes so I don't use it. In my opinion, DIVX 4.01 to 4.12 are more stable.

You will have to use filters to smooth the video and likely a bitrate of less than 1500 to fit your movie on 1 cd and it will take experimentation since each movie will be different. Remember AVI is a data format meaning that an 80 min cd will only hold a maximum of 700mb and not 800 mb like (s)vcd.

Personally I would cut my files with a freeware file splitter/joiner and burn the large piece on 1 cd. When I had enough smaller pieces from various movies I would put those together on 1 disk. I would write all the info and store a copy of the splitter program on each disk so I could rejoin the pieces at a later date. Forget all that reencoding for the sake of a few extra disks you will have all your original mpeg files.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Have fun!