Should I edit in AVI/DV or MPEG?

[Holden]

I'm editing captured home videos (Hi8mm SVHS source) and am interested in preserving the best quality I can.

Should I edit the huge AVI/DV files (31GB for 2 hours) and encode the final product? Or should I convert to the highest quality MPEG I can get out of TMPGEnc and edit the resulting MPEG files?

TMPGEnc says it will take 40 hours to convert via 2-pass VBR, highest motion search, but I don't really mind waiting a few days. If I did this, I could keep more than two captured tapes on my PC at once.

I'd rather compress these suckers and edit them in MPEG, but I don't really know the trade-offs involved in editing in the two different formats.

TIA.

Greg

[andkiich]

I'd edit the AVI file, as the editors for that are better, and you'll have less of a chance of having your audio and video get out of sync. Also, why encode 2 hours worth of video when you might only want to use 1 - 1.5 hours of it?

As long as you have the HDD space to edit the AVI, then I'd do it that way.

[lordsmurf]

Edit as in custom wipes/fades/effects? AVI is best.
or
Edit as in remove unwanted footage/commercials? MPEG is best.

[Holden]

I guess I'll stick with AVI.

I do wonder about the dropped frames I'm getting. Capturing one particular home video with various capture software seems to always drop the same number of frames in the same sections. I'm blaming abrupt transitions in the source but wonder if this is causing audio to go out of sync?

I don't want to have to watch these videos in real time to capture short segments with in-sync audio...

[Will Hay]

Firstly, and I appreciate I may be echoing comments already made, unless you are simply clipping or merging then always edit at avi stage.
Secondly, with regards your sync issues, you say you are capturing Hi8 and refer to DV.
My apologies if I've missed something obvious but does this mean you are capturing via a MinDV passthrough/firewire?
What software are you using for capture?
When you lose audio/video sync, is the rest of the footage out of sync or is it just the small part you refer to?
Will

[spectroelectro]

AVI. Always.

[rilles]

My original videos are in mjpeg format - I personally find that converting them to mpeg2 (DVD spec) for editing gives me better results. When I convert them to AVI(XVID,DIVX,3VIX - higest Q settings) I get a large amount of 'blockiness' that I don't see with mpeg2. This perhaps maybe because the original is more mpeg2 conversion friendly?

[FOO]

You are starting with MJPEG.
That edits very well. NEVER encode anthing except the final
edited result to the target format..

What kind of editing are we talking about ? If
it's just cutting & splicing, Edit with Vdub and frameserve
to TMP or CCE.

You want fancy, do it with a NLE in MJPEG.