How do you back up your precious camcorder footage?!?

[Felix_too]

Ok here’s the thing…

I feel I have now got to the stage where I can put together a reasonable little family movie (holiday / birthday etc.) using Pinnacle 9. Whilst I realise most people would then output this straight to a DVD, I have a bit of an issue with this and would very much appreciate your help and opinions.

First some background info…
Almost all of my “movies” are say 3 – 10 minutes in lengths. I have quite a backlog of recent DV footage that still needs to be edited, together with about twenty HI 8 tapes that have never been edited. Although I have already made a start, ultimately I want to use Pinnacle to edit these older HI 8 movies as well and save the edited footage to disk in some format. In addition to all of this, I am still making new movies, which also need to be edited and then stored.

My problem is this…
I take a recently completed movie (say one of my 4 minute edited masterpieces!), add four or five other similar sized “movies” to fill a DVD disk and then burn the disk. I can then put that disk to one side and repeat the operation over and over and over, until I have a number of disks containing a mixture of both new movies and as I edit them, old movies.

I think this is messy and leaves me with a problem!

Ultimately it is very unlikely I will want for example the recent birthday party of my five year old on the same disk as a holiday we had ten years ago. I need a system whereby I can do the editing work required of whatever project takes my fancy at any particular time and then save this safely to disk. Then, at some point in the future, I want to be able to take different projects off of different disks and then recompile then back onto a final disk. For example “MY DAUGHTER’S BIRTYHDAY PARTIES” or “CHRISTMAS PARTIES”. I know these are perhaps not the best examples, but hopefully you can see what I am trying to do.

Now if I make up DVD’s, which of course can be viewed successfully on my DVD player right now, when the time comes to “break apart” the DVD and take individual movies off, this does not seem to be as simple as it could be.

By comparison, if I finish the individual movies and then save them to disks in MPEG2 format, I can do so in any order, at any time. I can even add smaller movies to disks that are already largely full (something you obviously can’t do with a DVD).

But it gets even better…
I can even have say five DVD-RW’s open and as I complete another “birthday” type movie, I can add that to the “birthday” DVD-RW.

Saving the individual movies in MPEG2 format on DVD-RW’s seems to be the ultimate solution to all my worries, but there is one huge problem… I can’t watch them on my DVD player, which is obviously something I would dearly like to be able to do.

Please tell me what you think. Please tell me what you do with your finished moves. I spend so much time editing these things I want to be sure I am doing the right thing. I don’t want to find out a few years from now that I should have been saving the completed movies in a different format for example. I have even contemplated saving the finished movies back to DV tapes, but this must be a step backwards surely!

Any help you can give would be very much appreciated and sorry for waffling on!

Regards... Tony

[daamon]

Hi Felix_too,

So, in short, you want to edit a whole load of stuff from Hi8 and DV tapes to:

1. Be able to watch now on DVD.
2. Be able to store them so that you can arrange them in a meaningful order on each DVD (so the DVDs are chronologically correct).

Here's what I'd do:

1. Do as you do now - author, but to a re-writeable DVD(s).
2. Store the projects as MPEG2s on either a large hard drive (maybe an external one), DVD rewriteable or straight DVD.

I can't think of an easy way whereby you can author and store all at the same time because, as you say, that'd involve somehow ripping out the footage when you want it before re-arranging and just takes time.

[guns1inger]

If you want to edit portions now (e.g. daughter's 5th birthday), but not create the final disk until you have the 6th and 7th birthdays in the can, then you should write a copy back to tape as well. This gives you a little more freedom to reedit down the track with less quality loss than mpeg-2. (Of course, in two years time we will all be using blu-ray or HDDVD, so the question is moot.)

If you don't want to use tape, you should be able to store around 10 - 12 minutes of DV avi footage per DVD (burn it as data) to keep.

[Felix_too]

Now you have me a bit worried...

Are you saying there is a loss of quality when you make an MPEG 2 file? I always thought that MPEG 2 was basically DVD quality, but without the "bits" attached that make it a playable DVD disk?!?

I have already made loads of MPEG 2 movies and saved them to disk, so I can then import them back into Pinnacle Studio 9 when I need to run off a DVD. If, in saving these files as MPEG 2's, I have lost some quality, that really would be a shame.

Keeping the finished movies at as high a quality as I possibly can has always seemed to me to be very important. Would saving the movie back to a tape have given me a better "quality" of finished movie?

PS. Thanks for your help to date.

PPS. The administrators seem to be really worried about Warez... am I missing something? What actually is Warez?

[guns1inger]

mpeg-2 is just an encoding method. DVD's use it, digital television uses. mpeg-2 on it's own is not DVD quality - it is possible to make mpeg-2 look like poor quality vhs is you want to. It's in how you set it up - what settings you use, if you use cbr or vbr encoding etc. The main thing to remember about mpeg-2 is that it is a lossy compression algorythm. It throws away information each time you encode. A good encode will indeed be DVD quality or better (I have seen some very pooor quality commercial DVDs), however if you re-encode it, it will start to loose quality.

The point I was trying to make earlier is that mpeg-2 is not the ideal medium for long term storage IF you intend to edit the footage again down the track.

Saving the movie back to tape will give you better quality if you are going to edit it again later. So will archiving the avi files to DVD as data, or keeping them on an externall harddrive.

If you are editing segments now that will be included in a larger compilation later, and wont be re-edited, then mpeg-2 is probably a good bet.

Warez : any software, audio or video files you may have aquired without paying appropriate license fees for.

[jg0001]

Go with a pile of external harddrives. 250GB min size as they will fill up fast (13GB per hour of DV-AVI footage). You can quite often get INTERNAL drives for about $150-160 for 250GB and pop them into $30 external enclosures. You could also just buy pre-built external drives for closer to $1 per GB.

Effectively, you'll be paying $13 per hour that you store on the harddrive + whatever you paid for the tapes. Keep both.

When DualLayer discs get cheaper, you'll be able to store about 35-40 minutes of DV-AVI to a single disc.

[edDV]

Now you have me a bit worried...

Are you saying there is a loss of quality when you make an MPEG 2 file? I always thought that MPEG 2 was basically DVD quality, but without the "bits" attached that make it a playable DVD disk?!?

I have already made loads of MPEG 2 movies and saved them to disk, so I can then import them back into Pinnacle Studio 9 when I need to run off a DVD. If, in saving these files as MPEG 2's, I have lost some quality, that really would be a shame.

Keeping the finished movies at as high a quality as I possibly can has always seemed to me to be very important. Would saving the movie back to a tape have given me a better "quality" of finished movie?

...

Original camcorder video, like computer data, needs a backup and preservation strategy. I consider the DV format as the ideal for home video material archive.

MPeg2 (DVD quailty) is much lower quality due to higher compression..

I'm in the process of converting all my 8mm film (pro transfer house), Hi8, VHS (via ADVC-100) and DV material to DV tape archives for future use. The film and analog tapes are in rapid decline so my initial emphasis is there.

Due to the short storage capacity of current DVD media (about 20min of DV) and my distrust of HDD as the only backup (from past experience HDDs don't preserve well over time) I see DV tape as the best archive medium for now (next 5-10 yrs of tape life). As large capacity DVDs become available, I will backup these archive DV tapes to DVD in DV format.

When making an edit for a DVD, I capture and edit in DV format and keep a DV edit master on DV tape in addition to a DVD Master. That way I can make better DVD copies in the future as the encoder technology improves.

In the future, when everything is HDTV, current generation MPeg2 DVDs will look substandard to say the least. Now is not the time to skimp on archive quailty when doing film or analog transfers. Keep every bit of resolution that you can.

[ZAPPER]

Felix

It's a cruel world that we live in. The best your movies will ever be, is right now and on the tapes that they are on right now. Everything is working against you. Time will degrade your tapes. How much and how long? Only time will tell. Storage conditions will affect your tapes. Even playing your tapes will hurt them. What is a man to do?

All of the data or information that makes up your movies that will ever exist, is stored on your tape right now as DV AVI (actually I am not sure that is the correct name for it when it is on the tape, but I think that is the name of it when it comes out via firewire). The best thing you could hope for when making a copy or backup, would be an exact duplicate of that source. Don't fret, this technology is here today! (with a catch) If you have a digital cam with the ability to put out with fire wire(IEEE 1394) and a device to catch it, your in luck. There are a few options of where to transfer this source to and that is where some decisions come in. You can transfer it straight to another cam or deck and make another copy of it on tape with almost no loss at all(I say almost no loss because nothing is perfect, but this is close) You can transfer it to your hard drive in your computer(almost perfect again). This is convenient because after all this is where you will be working with it, but do you have the luxury to keep it there? From your computer you can transfer it to almost anywhere still as DV AVI. Like back to tape of a couple differnt types or to an external hard drive or to DVD disk. You can also transfer form your cam direct to some external hard drives.

What is the best? None! Every solution has a trade off or a flaw! None of these have been proven for over 25 years, the technology is still too new. The oldest home movie that I have actually seen was on film and being converted to VHS tape. And film is considered by most to be the worst thing to try and keep. So what is a man to do?

There is no static one time archive solution for digital movies. The best we can do is save as pure a copy of that source as we can and copy that copy again in time and so on and so on. It is a dynamic solution and the best we have right now.

The most cost effective I think is tape to tape. One hour of DV for three or four bucks. This is maybe the most prone to loss I think because of the mechanics of the tape touching the tape heads and the most moving parts.

The most durable and flexible, I think, is external hard drive filled to capacity and put back in its box for storage. But I don't really know how long a hard drive will last in a box. The hard drive in my pc is over five years old and been on every day and night. The cost of this is hard to guess do to the wide size range of drives and their enclosures. But you could lower the cost by buying one enclosure and swapping out internal drives as needed. This I think would be easier than opening your PC to swap drives and cheaper than removable drives. Lets say eight hours of DV about 100 bucks. Steep but convenient.

DV AVI to DVD-RW maybe 20 bucks per hour depending on sales and favorite brands and the phase of the moon or the curl of the pigs tail. Not too steep of a price for some and not to inconvenient to do or use, but they will stack up fast!

DV AVI to DVD-R maybe 2 bucks per hour and up I think more like 3 bucks and up depending again on how you shop.

It doesn't really matter how you save your movies, but here are some of my thoughts. DV- AVI is what your orginal source is and should be your primary backup. It is the easiest to work with as far as editing goes(or at least for most programs, but I hear this is changing) You should keep a logbook saying what is on each tape and each backup of whatever media you choose. In your log book (either paper or computerized) note the date, the time frame, the subjects, the location, the occasion, the reel number and anything that you think will help. I am sure that there is a killer program that will do this, or you could make your own spread sheet, it would make it easy to cross ref, like if you wanted to find anything with uncle Bob or all the Christmas videos, you would know what source it was on and what backup to pull to work with. As far as compileing goes (and I assume that you are editing in DV-AVI) you could make a Christmas video with everything that you have right now and before you convert it for DVD make a DV-AVI copy and log it as a source or sub source and after next Christmas you could just pull out your old Christmas compilation that is already DV-DVI and add to it.

You are right when you said that most of your movies wind up being 3 to 10 minutes. It is hard to make an edited movie of one subject for much longer and keep it good! My best edited home movie was only about 5 minutes and about half of that was effects(slow fade in titles, slow fade ins of a still shot of the rock wall that my kid was going to climb, slow fade of a still of my kids face. Hell, he went up and down that wall about half a dozen times in 20 minutes and I could only use 3 minutes of footage that was any good! And it took atleast 6 hours or more to make!)

[thecoalman]

Felix,

Here's my solution for both analog and Digital8 footage. I configure the capture program to create files no bigger than 4gb in DV AVI format. So if I have 1 hour of D8 footage on tape I'm going to end up with approx. 3 large files and one small one. You can create 4.3 gb files but if a disc is going to be corrupted most likely it will be at the end so I go with 4 just to be on the safe side.

If the original footage is digital this is an exact copy of what's on tape. If it's analog it's probably the best choice without producing monstrous size files. Once captured I burn them right to DVDR for archiving purposes. You'll be able to use these discs in the future for any future projects since they are they best copies you can produce at the moment. I store both the tapes and the discs.

This can get expensive but I think it's worth it IMO it's the best method of storing them for for the future at this poin in time. At some point in the future a better storage medium will come along, at that point I'll move them to the new medium, at least I'll know I'll have the original copies on both disc and tape (providing they last).

[overloaded_ide]

Lots of excelent reading.
One point I beleave that was missed was the fact He wants to watch them on the DVD player also now.

I would suggest you get a new DVD player like my older Norcent DP300.
I can play a mpeg2 file without authoring a DVD. I only did this a couple times and there is a file size limit it seems, maybe 2 gigs, maybe 1 gig?
So make your files mpeg2 1gig in size and 4 of them to a disk.
If you have already done all the editing that envolves encoding the source then you should not have to encode again latter, just pull clips. Simple cut and paist type stuff should not be a problem and most authoring programs I have tried will let you select parts of many mpeg2 files for the new DVD and do not encode them again. Actually at least some programs let you add clips from from a DVD also. So as long as all editing is done and you just want to add to it, you could open the mpeg2 or DVD as the first file, and a new Mpeg2 as the second and Author the DVD without encoding. Tmpgenc DVD Author does this even.
Just be sure all your specail effects, color editing, ect... that involves working with the avi before encoding has already been done as you want it before encoding to the mpeg2. If your wanting specail effects like fading from the old stuff to the new stuff that requires specail editing as an AVI then this is not the best choice, but if your just adding a new chapter for 2005 to an existing 2004 DVD it should work fine.

As for the source backups. I would suggest using DVD R disks and saveing the raw avi files to those for future use after editing also in case you want to make changes. You may only get 10-12 minutes to a disk as people have said, but thats what about $3 an hour, or a lot less?? 10 minutes on a 50 cent disk times 6? Why bother with more expensive RWs then? If you ever want to re-do the files on the disk, make the changes, burn the new disk and toss the 50cent one or save it as a spare backup.
And 50 cents is a high figure, $35/100 for DVD -R disks if you buy good low cost ones. 10 minutes per disk? Ok that's about 16.6 hours for $35. And since they are mostly backups you won't need often you could just store them in the cake box they come in after you burn them.

Since you can never replace some footage like the kids being born, first steps, etc.. I would save those type files a couple times, maybe back to DV tape also.
You can always make another trip to the grand canyon, it hasn't changed that much in the last 10 years, so I would save a backup of it too but not be as concerned with several copies of something like that unless it has specail people and such.

Although tapes may differ, they're basically the same I beleave and all rot with age! Make a new copy of the source tapes, wrap well and store. Maybe you'll get 5-10yrs or more? Then if you ever decide you cut stuff you want you have as close to exact backups as you can get.

I just started doing the kids tapes (VHS-C) from 13yrs ago. They play pretty good still in a camcorder but after about 6 tapes the heads got dirty and won't play anything now, not even the new tapes from this year. I know I lost quality on those old tapes, but how much I don't know. Still better than nothing, and mostly looks same as when first recorded. But the tapes are rotting obviousily.

Course 13yrs ago VHS and VHS-C was fine, we did not have DV as we do now, nor did I have as much interest in video or know the tapes would rot so fast either. That was the main reason I gave my 13yr old daughter a camcorder this year for her birthday
I needed something to play the old VHS-C tapes
They won't play on a vcr using an adapter either like they should, but they do just fine in the camcorder.

Which is another point to think on. It was mentioned about future equipment, yes you want the best quality backups you can make, but you did not use future equipment to make the source tapes! I dought todays camera's are recording the quality of tommorows playback devices either.
I mean I look at the kids NEW camcorder (VHS-C) and compare that to what I had 13yrs ago. Same format tapes, but hers is so much better quality than I had, and mine was very expensive compared to what I paid for hers. We can only do the best we can with what we can get at the time we get it!

[babyboo]

This is an excellent thread! The best one I have read in a very long time! Thank you!

[Felix_too]

Well what can I say…

I was hoping for some real help with this problem and I have not been disappointed!

Thank you all so much.

I can’t say I am entirely happy however, because I suppose I was hoping for a perfect solution to this problem, but at the current time, it appears such a thing does not exist!

I suppose my biggest disappointment is the realisation that having spent millions of hours (that’s without exaggeration!) editing down at least twenty of these mini movies already to MPEG2, that I have lost some quality. At the time, I was under the impression MPEG 2’s would give me superb results and so I considered backing up to tape would be pointless.

Having said this, I need to push you on this point just a little further.

I upload my footage in DV format (not MPEG2) to my hardrive, then edit this huge AVI file using Pinnacle Studio 9 and finally output the finished movie as an MPEG 2. I have no intention of ever re-editing this finished MPEG, so no further degrading of the movie could happen. I think maybe I gave you the impression with my original post that I intended to re-edit these MPEG’s at some future point, but this is not the case. I would only use the MPEG (unchanged) to produce DVD’s or back up the MPEG “as is”. So have I really lost out in terms of quality if I produce MPEG2’s?

So what key points have I learned from your posts?

1. Having finished a movie, most of you are saying I am going to lose quality if I save the finished movie as an MPEG. But are you mainly saying this because you think I may be intending to re-edit the movie again at some point in the future? If I am not, do you still think it is a mistake for me to save as an MPEG2 file? Guns1inger touched upon this point in his post of 5th October, but I would appreciate further comments, now that I have made it clear… I WOULD NEVER NEED TO RE-EDIT EACH MOVIE.

2. It was suggested that I save the finished movie as a DV AVI (either on a hardrive, DVD-R etc.). However I am sure I read somewhere that an AVI file is one of the original video “type” files and is therefore a bit ancient. Surely there must be a new sexier format that I could save to (if not MPEG 2) that would enable me to keep all (or almost all) the quality, but reduce the file size... There Must Be!

3. I would have a problem saving any of these movies for the long term on a hardrive. I have had too many hardrive failures over the years to ever fully trust a hardrive with my precious movies. So I suppose if I have to save as an AVI, it would need to be written to DVD-R’s, but only being able to save ten minutes or so per DVD would be a real pain and let’s not forget, I still wouldn’t be able to watch them on my DVD player!

4. A couple of you spoke about taking the filmed material and transferring it immediately to hardrive/another tape etc. before editing it. Although of course I appreciate all your comments, this does not address my original query. I want to take the raw footage and then edit out at least 75% of the rubbish NOW, so I then have a completely finished movie, lasting about 10 minutes. My original question was based around “what do I do with this movie once it has been edited?”

5. Overloaded made an interesting point when he suggested I could buy a DVD player that actually plays MPEG2’s. That’s a neat idea, but in truth, your posts have left me thinking saving each movie as an MPEG2’s may actually be a bad idea anyway.

6. Several of you recommend saving back to tape is best. Although you are probably right, this seems to me to be such a step backwards!

Before I ultimately decide on the strategy that best suits my particular needs, I would very much appreciate any further comments on the above points and thank you all once again for your help so far.

PS. As a final note, I thought it might help you to know that when using Pinnacle to make an MPEG, there are obviously several setting that I can select (DVD Compatible, MV Compatible, Custom etc). However once I have made the MPEG, if I then try to use it to produce a DVD, the only one that works is the one labelled “DVD Compatible”. Although I cant change it (because it is “greyed out”) the default “Data Rate” for this setting is specified as being 6000.

[ZAPPER]

Don't fret. The only reason to say that saving everything as DVAVI is the best is because it is the highest quality file that you have right now. It is the easiest to transfer, the easiest to edit, the most useable between differnt programs and so on.(just my opinion) I would recomend that you back up as DVAVI everything that you have(meaning your orginal source tape just to have in case of a castastrophy(SP?) And in time something that you edited out today may be what you want for another movie. The little edited movies that you want on DVD today are fine as DVD compliant MPEGs on a DVD disk. If you are happy with the way that they look on your TV when you play them don't really worry about any loss.(due to compression or conversion) On most home movies you are not going to even notice the difference between MPEG from a DVD and the cam hooked straight to the TV.(by the way the cam to TV is coming out of the cam as anolog anyways)When you make your little edited movie on DVD just burn a few more copies. Use one for your enjoyment at home and keep one as your backup. Give two to Grandma and tell her to use one for her enjoyment and to put one away for safe keeping(redundent backups)The most important thing to consider is that the movies are getting watched. That is why we even shoot video in the first place. Maybe Granny is 10,000 mies away and doesn't get to see the kids that often or whatever, share them with whoever wants to see them(and force them on the rest ) I have seen old home movies from WW2 in the Pacific and from the 50s of my brothers and sisters, and nobody ever complains about the quality. You will get too caught up in the movie to even notice. Some day when everybody has a holographic theater in their frontroom, these old DVDs will seem quaint but cherished.

[fourthquark]

DV video is 13GB/hr, DVD-quality mpeg2 is (approximately) 2 GB/hr. So when you go from DV video to mpeg2 video, you are representing the same video information with about 1/7 the data (number of bits or bytes). Something has to give. With DV video, each frame is encoded in its entirety. With mpeg2, in order to achieve the dramatically lower bit rate, mpeg2 video stores entire frames (keyframes) only at regular intervals (e.g., every 15th frame), and only stores changes between the keyframes.

So technically there is quality loss because much of the original information is lost when you go from DV to mpeg2. However, whether you will actually notice the difference visually is another matter. Why don't you try an experiment? Edit a video. Save one copy of your edited video back out to tape in DV format. Convert another copy to mpeg2 and create a DVD video disk. Then play both videos on your TV and compare. Connect your DV camera's analog out (preferable using an S-video connector) to yur TV to play the tape, and use your DVD player to view the DVD on your TV. Of course, you also need to keep in mind that this comparison may be biased by the image quality limit of the TV you use.

[Felix_too]

Thank you both Zapper and Fourthquark for your additional comments.

As you suggested, I will indeed try a little experiment. I am currently working on a small "movie" and will output this to MPEG2, then convert to a DVD. I will also transfer straight back to DV tape and then see if I can actually see a difference.

Watch this space... I will get back to you with the results over the next few days!

[edDV]

quote Felix_too

"1. Having finished a movie, most of you are saying I am going to lose quality if I save the finished movie as an MPEG. But are you mainly saying this because you think I may be intending to re-edit the movie again at some point in the future? If I am not, do you still think it is a mistake for me to save as an MPEG2 file? Guns1inger touched upon this point in his post of 5th October, but I would appreciate further comments, now that I have made it clear… I WOULD NEVER NEED TO RE-EDIT EACH MOVIE. "

Yes Mpeg2 is lower quality in general, and the encoder used in Pinnacle Studio is far from the best available. In the future, MPeg2, Mpeg4 and other encoders will be available to make your DV master look far better on an HDTV monitor. Keeping the material in DV format will make high quality reencoding possible.

"2. It was suggested that I save the finished movie as a DV AVI (either on a hardrive, DVD-R etc.). However I am sure I read somewhere that an AVI file is one of the original video “type” files and is therefore a bit ancient. Surely there must be a new sexier format that I could save to (if not MPEG 2) that would enable me to keep all (or almost all) the quality, but reduce the file size... There Must Be! "

AVI, like Quicktime is a wrapper technology not a video standard. The Codec used within the AVI wrapper determines the video quality. In this case you are using the DV codec. Since your original material is DV, this is the best for archive. There is a tradeoff in further compression that only you can answer but I again refer you to my answer to #1.

"3. I would have a problem saving any of these movies for the long term on a hardrive. I have had too many hardrive failures over the years to ever fully trust a hardrive with my precious movies. So I suppose if I have to save as an AVI, it would need to be written to DVD-R’s, but only being able to save ten minutes or so per DVD would be a real pain and let’s not forget, I still wouldn’t be able to watch them on my DVD player!
"
The options are recording back to tape, DVDR or HDD. Keep in mind that next year 50GB DVD technology will be available so best to temp store on HDD or minDV tape then copy to 50GB DVDs later.

" 4. A couple of you spoke about taking the filmed material and transferring it immediately to hardrive/another tape etc. before editing it. Although of course I appreciate all your comments, this does not address my original query. I want to take the raw footage and then edit out at least 75% of the rubbish NOW, so I then have a completely finished movie, lasting about 10 minutes. My original question was based around “what do I do with this movie once it has been edited?"

see answer to #3. I record back to tape the clips to be saved and finished edit version. That way I can reuse the clips later if I desire. I too toss 25-50% of the material as "rubbish". This saves backup tapes and makes material easier to find.

"5. Overloaded made an interesting point when he suggested I could buy a DVD player that actually plays MPEG2’s. That’s a neat idea, but in truth, your posts have left me thinking saving each movie as an MPEG2’s may actually be a bad idea anyway."

I always make MPeg2 DVDs and keep backups of these and project files too (for menus, graphics, etc.) for important material.

"6. Several of you recommend saving back to tape is best. Although you are probably right, this seems to me to be such a step backwards!"

Tape will deteriorate in about 10 yrs. I see large DVDRs as the final resting place for my archives.

"PS. As a final note, I thought it might help you to know that when using Pinnacle to make an MPEG, there are obviously several setting that I can select (DVD Compatible, MV Compatible, Custom etc). However once I have made the MPEG, if I then try to use it to produce a DVD, the only one that works is the one labelled “DVD Compatible”. Although I cant change it (because it is “greyed out”) the default “Data Rate” for this setting is specified as being 6000."

Better encoders allow up to 9000mb/s (depending on sound settings) and more sophisticated 2 pass algorithms. The tradeoff is encoder cost and encoding time. This is why commercially encoded DVDs look so much better than home made DVDs made on a PC. The big boys use render farms and long encoding times. Even doing all this, the final result will still not equal the original DV tape.

Future encoding algorithms will be far superior and future computers will be many times faster. Re-encoding the DV master for HDTV display in the future is the goal.

[djmattyb]

The big boys use the Sonic SD-1000 encoder.
http://www.sonic.com/products/sdseries/sd1000/

They only cost $12,000. I don't know why everyone doesn't have one.