How to archive digitised Hi8 tapes? Other than MPEG2 and DV!

[midlum]

Hi,

I'm digitising my Hi8-tapes using the Pinnacle DC10+ capturing card.
I want to archive the files on DVD. But the MJPEG-files are very large.

Several threads on the forum give an advice on this subject. Try using high bitrate MPEG2-files or rewrite them as DV on your camcorder.
Unfortunately, I don't have a DV-camcorder.
But I understand the MPEG2-matter.

One question keeps in my mind.
Why don't we use the possibilities of converting the source into (e.g.) a DivX format?

What is the difference (not the technical matter but in terms of image quality and editing) compared to high bitrate MPEG2?
And, because I'm not totally into codecs, aren't there other reasonable codecs.
My basis question: I'm looking for a fine compression and a good quality of the archived file. And I know that this is a contradiction!

Thanks,
Martin
The Netherlands

[lechtin]

Here's the short of it:

Divx: good quality at low bitrates, can only be played on a computer (unless you're one the lucky ones with a Divx-compliant DVD player), don't plan on doing any editing in the future.

MPEG2: good quality, higher bitrates than Divx but much lower than MJPEG, can be authored for DVD players, not usually considered editable, but do-able (expect a lot of audio sync problems)

MJPEG: good quality, editable, large file sizes. Can use lower quality setting for archiving using smaller files, but quality will suffer.

If you really want to try Divx, go ahead, there is a freeware version.

[midlum]

Thanks Lechtin,

One more question.
Why can't I use DivX-coded files for editing?
Have you been there, done that?
I'm gonna give it a try. I'll post my experiences (within a few weeks or so).

Yes, I have a DVD-R compliant player. And a DivX compliant PC.
And lots of time for rendering.

CU

[lechtin]

Divx is a lossy compression, so editing it is like editing compressed jpegs, you just add more artifacts every time you render or re-compress. You may (I mean you will) encounter audio/video sync problems.

I did write "Divx-compliant DVD player", not DVD-R. By that I mean that archiving to Divx may be okay if you can play them strainght in you DVD player, otherwise you WILL have to re-edit or at least convert back to MPEG2 to put your videos on DVD.

[rgs_uk]

You don't need a camcorder to write them as DV. You can use the Panasonic DV codec in VirtualDub??? If you're archiving, you also need to think about which formats are going to be around longest

[Skynet107]

Buy an external hard drive, archive everything to the drive then put it in storage. Reliable and you keep the original content.