Looking to archive some DV cassettes

[rico_23_]

Hope there is a quick answer for my quick question.

I am working with our new Sony DV camera and we are spending alot of money on DV cassettes (we have over 25 cassettes now). We would like to archive the footage at a more inexpensive measure. Current DV tapes are 6.00$.

When uploading (capturing) the footage on computer (Mac and PC) 1 hour of footage = about 20 gigs. So I would need about 4 or 5 DVD-R to capture 1 hour of footage. 1 DVD-R is about 2.00$, therefore more expensive than a DV cassette.

Should I convert to a different format other than true DV? I am afraid of loosing quality when it comes time to edit the pieces into a finished product. The export format would most likely be a DVD, possibly some VHS.

Thanks for you time,
Rico

[bokkasrealm]

"If youre in the U.S. -"

DVD-R's are at least as cheap as a $1.00. One hour of DV should be no larger than 14 GB's unless youre doing something wrong.
The math:
14GB's = 4 4GB DVD-R's
Cost $4.00

Slightly cheaper. You might want to sit on your tapes until Dual layer comes out. Tapes are good for at least 3-5 years I would say.

[Beavis]

Your prices on the miniDV tapes sound a little high. If you buy a number of them on-line you can get them for less. For strictly archiving the raw camcorder footage, a backup tape's the easiest way to go. Depending on your application and capture settings, it's possible you'll have a single DV AVI file that's larger than can fit on one DVD. Another way to go is to find a good deal on a big hard disk and just use that as your backup. If you plan to edit later and make DVD's, etc. you'll want to keep it in the original DV format.

[Muppet Meat]

I would say just leave the footage on the DV Tapes if you want to archive them. A DV tape is about 14 gigs which is pretty dam good compared to other methods.
Dont convert them to mpeg unless you are sure you wont be editing them.
You can only fit like five 60 min DV tapes on a 80 gig hardrive which is really 74.5 after its formatted to NTFS file system.

[rico_23_]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I was from Canada. That is why there is a discrepency in the price. But I am sure that the cost ratio must be relatively equal in the US.

So from what you have posted, it seems that it is in my best interest to just keep the footage on DV cassettes, as I will lose some editing quality from my footage. Right?

I am a teacher in high school, and I can forsee purchasing alot of cassettes. Llike I said, we (the school) have gone through 25 cassettes in as little as 3 months. We would like to create a promotional DVD for our school and we are capturing alot of footage to give us some variety.

Thanks for you replies,
Rico

[Supreme2k]

You could covert to a "lossless" format, like huffyuv or PICVideo MJPEG Codec. You can get your footage own to half or less, with no noticeable loss in quality (your mileage may vary )

[Thorn]

You could covert to a "lossless" format, like huffyuv or PICVideo MJPEG Codec. You can get your footage own to half or less, with no noticeable loss in quality (your mileage may vary )

NO!
Huffyuv is 2:1 compression of raw video, while DV is compressed 5:1. One hour of Huffyuv actually takes about 35 GB. Not a good tradeoff! And Mjpeg is not lossless if you use any of the higher compression. Recompression is always a bad idea for archiving unless you're really in a tight spot for storage space.

I find that I have ~20 minute clips on each tape sometimes, so 1DVD rather than one tape would be a good tradeoff. If you really have a full hour per tape, then it's a tossup. I wouldn't want to spend all the time to archive dozens of tapes onto DVDR, only to have to reassemble them before editing (you'd have to chop the files to split over DVDR).

If you really don't have the time to edit now (or you want to keep everything) then you might just want to bulk order some tapes. They're the easiest way to keep the video, and if you fill them up it's a reasonable price per hour.

I've gotten in the habit of keeping the most important tapes, but for other stuff I edit as soon as I can and reuse the tape a few times.

[pijetro]

Bite the bullet.
As far as archiving, and price go, storing it on MiniDV is the best way to go..

If you wanna get some more crunch per tape, try taping in LP mode..Yes, i know it's not as good as SP, but for steady footage that doesn't require too much detail, it's the next best option...

[Muppet Meat]

Huffyuv is not to be trusted. It doesnt always work. Dont confuse the poor teacher. Huffyuv is ok for all us video mad scientists and our experiments with video.
It would make sense to leave his footage in the original format as is and just leave it on the tapes.
DV AVI format is editable as apposed to anything else.
I have a friend who didnt know what he was doing. He transferred all his footage into MPEG1 and came to me asking how he can author the footage onto DVD-R and I told him good luck with that one. He told me the originals were gone. Oh well, so much for that one.
If you really must save money and tapes. Edit the DV footage now and convert it to MPEG2 with which is made for DVD. Of course this is a not so easy for beginners always.

A decent tool for making MPEG2 for free http://www.tmpgenc.net/

[Muppet Meat]

If MPEG2 can be compared to Pizza. Then DV-AVI can be compared to baking flour.
If you convert all your flour into pizza its ok if all you like is pizza.
But what if you want cookies the next day? Can you put that pizza in a blender with some water? Of course not silly. You need the flour, right?

[guns1inger]

Nice analogy. It looses some impact coming 20 minutes after your last post though

[pijetro]

I like to compare it to water and ice cubes...

Avi is like water.
Pours nice from one glass to another. Pour one half, share, drink through a straw, throw it in someones face, whatever..

Mpeg is like icecubes.
Doesn't pour smoothly, can't split evenly, has a hell of a time fitting through a straw, and well, throw it in somebody's face, and you're up for charges..

[TeeeRex]

pijetro,

I believe that LP mode is identical in resolution and quality to SP mode (video content) - SP just allows you 4 audio tracks over 2 tracks for LP mode. IMO a good trade off - 90 mins (LP) vs 60 mins. (SP)

TeeeRex

[Beavis]

So from what you have posted, it seems that it is in my best interest to just keep the footage on DV cassettes, as I will lose some editing quality from my footage. Right?

You will only lose quality if you convert it to some other format than the DV data that your camcorders generate. Whether you leave it on a tape, burn individual DV AVI's captured via firewire to DVD-R's, or copy it to backup hard drives, it's still the same thing and you haven't lost any quality. Once you convert your finished projects to MPEG for DVD authoring, for instance, you've compressed it a lot and also turned it into a format that's very difficult / problematic when it comes to editing. MPEG is the format you want to use for final distribution of your rendered projects, but nothing in the pipeline before that point.

Be careful with taping in LP mode. Fitting more data on the same physical tape surface area can make it more prone to errors- and it's not uncommon for LP mode tapes to only be playable in the particular camcorder they were taped on. Do some experimentation before taping anything of value in LP.

[rico_23_]

Thank you for all of the replies... They have helped me, and have convinced me that keeping the raw footage is the best way to go !!

Thanks!
Rico

[thefa]

I have read with interest this thread. I understand that the ideal solution is to keep the things on the DV tapes. Fine and clear.

That said, I still would like to keep a backup of my tapes (potentially at the price of not being able to edit them) just in case my tapes would have a problem:
If I'd loose the capability to edit my tapes I would be sorry but if I'd loose the videos (mostly family videos) I would extremely pissed off.

I was thinking that I would capture my tapes and then save them under the WMV format called “High video quality (PAL)” from MS Movie Maker 2.0.

It seems to be the format with the highest bit rate (variable), keeping the 720 size, still compressing aggressively. My test on 2.21 minutes of video (almost 500MB in raw DV) gives 41MB...
This is manageable and would allow me to either store the videos on a set of DVD+R or even store them on a hard drive.

Am I making any sense? Is there a better way of doing this? What would be the most suitable format for that?

Thanks,

François

[videocheez]

I'm in a similar situation and I'm biting the bellet and starting to edit. I'm finding that most of the video is not necessary for telling a story or recreating a scene.
I also purchased a 250GB external hardrive that I will transfer good video for editing at some later date.

I use premier pro's batch capture feature to only capture footage that I will need in the future.

Goodluck,

VC

[gshelley61]

I would certainly keep the original DV tapes if possible. You can buy DV tape at discount warehouse clubs like Costco for cheap now. You could back them up in high-quality MPEG2 on DVD-R's with a decent DVD recorder (XP mode will be 1 hour per disc at full D1 resolution and a high average bitrate). You can then edit the MPEG2 on these discs without re-encoding using Womble MPEG Video Wizard. Plus, you still have the original DV tapes to go to if you want to start with AVI files for some reason (filtering, etc.). BTW, DVD-R's can be purchased in quantity for 50-60 cents these days.

[wwaag]

I'm in the process of archiving my 8/Hi8 home video collection. Here's my procedure. First, I convert to DV and capture footage from each tape. I then do "rough cuts" editing (i.e. eliminating bad footage) and save the footage into "meaningful" clips. I then save these edited clips to DV tape (actually I use Digital 8) for archiving purposes. It takes 2 DV tapes for each 2 hr 8/Hi8 tape.

I also burn these edited DV clips to DVD. You can get roughly 20 min 40 sec of DV on each DVD, so 3 DVDs for each DV tape. It's a second means of archiving, but more importantly, it enables a more rapid and precise means of retrieving your clips for future editing, especially if you want to select clips from different tapes. It takes a bit more time, but is certainly worthwhile for future editing. In terms of cost, 3 blank DVDs are acatually a bit cheaper than a single tape.

wwaag

[thefa]

Thanks to you 3 guys for answering !

I agree with the idea of keeping the DV tapes. I'll be doing so.

I have tried to eliminate bad footages but since it is mostly family video, even when the footages are bad, I just can't take the decision to trash it.

What about the idea of using the best quality output of movie maker : The software is free, seems to be working okay at least for the purpose of just getting one hour of video from one format to the other .

I would get MPEG4 files of (rough estimation) 1,2 GB per hour. It is not clear to me what is the added value for me to go to MPEG2 (okay, once I state that I don't mind being able to read the videos only a PC, it is already the way I'm doing it).

Thanks again for your feedback.

[videocheez]

I have tried to eliminate bad footages but since it is mostly family video, even when the footages are bad, I just can't take the decision to trash it.

What about the idea of using the best quality output of movie maker : The software is free, seems to be working okay at least for the purpose of just getting one hour of video from one format to the other .

I know what you are saying man, It's hard to dump family video since every clip is precious. I got to the point that i was shooting so many events that it was getting crazy and as much as it hurts, I started cutting out some portions that I would have saved if i had unlimited space.

With regard to Movie Maker. I have been doing this a lot using windows movie maker 2. I am very impressed with the quality. At first i used the video broadband output 512kbs. This quality is poor compared to DV. It looks like the video that we used to see 10 years ago on the internet. Recently I started using the output that says best playback on this computer. This quality is great and in my opion quite acceptable. My intent using the 512kbs play back was for streaming video on the internet. Now that most people have broadband they can still stream the higher quality Movie Maker output files. I also tell them that if they can't view it by streaming then just right click opn the link and downlaod it for later viewing.
If youv'e got nothing better to do, right click on the follwing link and take a look at my most recent DV to wmv conversion. It has been compressed from over 1GB to 70MB. I was impressed with the quality

http://www.donstevenson.net/family/family_video/-=Tyler%20Crum%20Easter%202004%20in%20...0Angeles=-.avi

Good Luck,

VC

[devlynh]

Since the original question was posted DVD prices have dropped drastically. Current prices for DVD-R in Toronto are about CA$30 for a 25 pack. I have seen some as low as CA$1.00 per DVD-R. +R discs are the same.
This changes the archiving cost to about $3.00 per hour.
Check out www.futureshop.ca across Canada and in Toronto www.canadacomputers.com

[thefa]

Okay, thanks for that.

Conclusion on my side :
I'm now capturing my tapes and generating WMV files in the format called "High video quality (PAL)" (it keeps the 720 size of the DV file).

I'll then for sure will be keeping these "small" files on HDD because it is so much more convenient to have them there available than to have to get the tapes, connect the video camera, rewind the tape etc...

Ideally I'd give up the tapes and store all DV files as is on HDD (and use the tapes as a memory card for a still camera), but I'm not yet ready to buy 2 or 3 250gigs drives to capture all the tapes. Maybe next year...

I'll also make a set of DVD+R to store those small size files in a different house to be sure to be sure..

Thanks.

[energy80s]

I would recommend copying the raw DV material onto 3 DVDRs for each miniDV tape used. This will cost about half the price of DV tapes (currently about a fiver each if bought in bulk or £8 each if bought singley!) This will allow you to re-load the material quickly if you wish to edit it at a later date. Don't go the LP route for DV footage as it is very prone to breakup on playback. The DV codec is the best "bang per buck" codec available for domestic use, so don't go converting it to something else, you will just loose out on quality.

[mikesbytes]

It would be worth the effort to split the file into Scenes and labelling them appropriately. Then you will be in a much better position to use them later, as you will at least know what you have.

[energy80s]

True, although as you are splitting the video into 20 minute chunks, it should pose too much of a problem finding scenes at a later date. Just remember to label the DVDRs correctly!

[singkarak]

Which one will last longer, the DVD-r or the miniDV?

My take is, bad DVD-r, you might lost everything, bad miniDV,
you might lost only portion..

[thor300]

One thing we must admit to ourselves as DV users; home videos are not THAT cool to work with, its not like we need to dig up old tapes all the time. I keep the tapes, but do i need them? The only time i did was when i got a DVD writer, wanted to put all dog videos to 1 DVD instead of using SVCD on DVD. Not exactly VERY important, is it? We should be honest with ourselves and admit that 95% of what we shoot is plain boring and nothing else.

[mikesbytes]

miniDVD's only work on a small number of DVD players, but will work on your PC.

Most people seem to propose either dumping it back to a backup DV tape or storing the DV AVI file on 3 data DVDR's. Both of these solutions will mean no drop in quality from the origional and therefor you will have a proper backup.

Encoding them to MPEG2 for a video DVD's would permit you to save 1 tape to 1 disk, however there will be a small drop in quality which will impact future quality.

I guess the bottom line is that a bad quality backup is better than no backup at all. Suggest you do something with what ever resources you have or can afford to get and go for it.

[thefa]

Me again on this. I'm checking what I can do with the Windows Media Encoder.

It seems that I have more options than with Movie Maker and that I can save the Index of the tape. This is something that was missing with my previous way...

Anyone with an opinion on Windows Media Encoder ?

Thanks.