AVI Compression

[anca]

I am new to this DVD ing etc. i have just bought a digital camera and DVD rw +/- drive. When i DL footage to my PC it is an uncompressed AVI format. if I have, say an hours worth of footage, due to the sheer size it is impossible to store it until I have enough to fill up an entire DVD. (it is not practicle to get a large HD). What would be the best format to compress it in, thereby by maintainiing quality when burningto DVD. It seems that TMPGEnc is most poeples favorite. However I have no idea what to do with the two files it produces after conversion.

Help

[Richard_G]

When you say you have bought a digital camera, I assume you mean camcorder as you are talking about avi files. As it is digital I assume you are transferring to computer using Firewire as DV avi which is around 13Gb per hour. If you are capturing by some other method then you can end up with huge files, uncompressed video can be anything up to 100Gb per hour!

If you are going to write it to DVD as DVD format eventually, you will need to convert it to mpeg2 using Tmpgenc or something similiar. If you transfer a small section at a time, convert, delete the avi and then transfer the next bit, etc, that will do the job. Your simplest answer is to fit a larger hard drive. If it is formatted as NTFS then you can transfer your whole lot in one go. If you can't fit one internally, you could look into an external Firewire hard drive although I know some people have had problems with them.

Without knowing how you have configured Tmpgenc, I don't know what the two files are that you have ended up with so can't tell you what you need to do with them.

[BJ_M]

sounds like you need a dv to mpeg2 realtime encoder (hardware or software)...

as mentioned above -- what you have IS compressed avi ... uncompressed is much larger...


you will to author (and burn) the resulting mpeg file to make a dvd ...


or just go out and buy a dvd recorder w/ firewire input

[ZippyP.]

...it is not practicle to get a large HD.

Then video capture and conversion is not practical on your computer.

[SenorDogoLoco]

Convert to MPG, then use a DVD RW disc to store the "raw" MPGs (as a data DVD) until you are ready to Author/burn. You will not have a DVD that is playable in a DVD player, but you do have storage that is not taking up your HD and you have not wasted a piece of media, since you are using a RW disk.

[RabidDog]

If you cant store one hours worth of footage you may as well sell the camera. Buy a hard disk, even 40gb will do! Then tell us what camera and some more technical details from the manual. vague stuff is no good.

[GeoPappas]

As it is digital I assume you are transferring to computer using Firewire as DV avi which is around 13Gb per hour. If you are capturing by some other method then you can end up with huge files, uncompressed video can be anything up to 100Gb per hour!

My understanding was that capturing from DV camcorder to computer via Firewire into a DV Type 1 or 2 file (i.e., AVI) was the uncompressed, original format!

Are you saying that capturing to DV Type 1 or 2 is compressed?

If so, then how can you capture it "uncompressed"?

[FOO]

You can capture uncompressed with an analog capture card

[Craig Tucker]

Are you saying that capturing to DV Type 1 or 2 is compressed?

Yes it is compressed using the DV codec, when it is recorded on the DV camcorder it is compressed.

If so, then how can you capture it "uncompressed"?

You could use an analogue capture card to capture it uncompressed, but there is no point, it will not look better than the source.

When you transfer DV via firewire, you simply take a file from your camcorder and transfer it to your hard drive, there is no capturing or compression taking place. The compression has already been done by your camcorder.

[willy_annand]

if I have, say an hours worth of footage, due to the sheer size it is impossible to store it until I have enough to fill up an entire DVD. (it is not practicle to get a large HD).

To author a full DVD you need about 13-14 GB of free space before you start.

1. You need up to 4.38GB of space for the MPEG files.
2. You need up to 4.38GB of space for the temp files.
2. You need up to 4.38GB of free space for the VIDEO_TS folder.

If you are capturing video that you need to edit (remove unwanted bits, add titles or sound) DO NOT capture to MPEG. Two reasons for that, it is painfully slow to work with and everytime you re-encode MPEG, you lose quality.

When I started my company (one division converts old VHS tapes to DVD-R for preservation as the life span of a VHS tape is 10-15 years) I had two 40GB drives on my machine. Windows and my program files were on "C", that took up about 16GB. The second 40GB drive was used for video editing.

Very quickly I realised if I wanted to edit a 2 hour production, that I would need more space. I now have replaced the second 40GB with a 120 GB. (the other two slots on the IDE chain are CDRW and DVD Writer).

Someimes I even find 120GB restricting when the program is close to "full DVD" capacity.

Also, if you want any kind of speed in your conversions, don't even think of using anything less than a 2GHz machine.

I was using an Athlon 1.6GHz machine with 384MB RAM. It was taking 8-9 hours per hour of video to convert it. I could convert it faster, but the quality loss was too great for my clients.

Since moving to a P4c 2.6GHz machine with 1GB Dual Channel RAM I cannot believe the speed increase. Now I do 1 hour quality encoding in about 2 hours.

Hope this helps.

[GeoPappas]

Are you saying that capturing to DV Type 1 or 2 is compressed?

Yes it is compressed using the DV codec, when it is recorded on the DV camcorder it is compressed.

Are all DV camcorder codecs compatible? Is it a standard?

That is, can you take a DV tape from one DV camcorder and put it in another one?

Or do some companies have proprietary DV camcorder codecs?