best format for archiving on PC

[Swytch]

Hello,

Im looking for some advice on what format to store video files on my PC. currently i burn TV recordings (downloaded or captured myself) to DVD, however i will be hooking my PC up to my projector to view files off my hard drive, and plan to start storing all my shows on a networked HD, and no longer want to deal with authoring dvds. I want to retain as much quality as i can (i have a large screen and can notice very small errors), but of course TV recordings cant be perfect. Id like to use AC3 audio, as some shows will have surround sound. I am looking for a solution that will give me the best video quality (as close to identical to source) with as small file size as i can (as long as it doesnt degrade video quality, i can always buy more HD space).

i normally stay away from divx due to the low quality i generally see, altho i have seen some very high quality divx files as well

any suggestions?
(i realize a lot of this is based on opinion)

thanks
Swytch

[Baldrick]

All reencoding will degrade video quality.

so don't reconvert downloaded compressed video.

what format are you capturing to?

[DarkRitual]

I myself, when I archive the movies from Tivo, I usualy archive them in VCD format. Since that way they do take up less space, not as less of a space as DivX. But acceptable, since when I'm ready to watch the moves, I just stuff them onto a DVD or DVD DL, and burn them with TDA. I found the results more than acceptable (for me, thought I'd caviate that). For me VCD is a better storage, since I don't have a DivX player, and when I go on Vacation, it's fairly easy to stuff approximatly 4, 1 1/2 hr movies onto one DVD or abour 8 onto 1 DL DVD and play on my portable DVD Player. But thats just my personal choice. And I'm sure everyone else has their particular favorite way of storing their movies and in what format.

[Swytch]

well i dotn currently do any capturing, but im lookign into mayeb settign taht up, so im gettign an idea on what card i may want to get based on what format i want to use....

i currently just extract files off my dish receiver as mpeg streams, which can play a little wierd sometimes unless i re-encode them...

i know re-encoding will reduce video quality, however if i get teh settign right this is minimal and ic and eal with it for purpose of all files taking up as little space as they need to for the quality i want....

[mikiem]

"i currently just extract files off my dish receiver as mpeg streams, which can play a little wierd sometimes unless i re-encode them... "

hmmm. Thought most (all?) sat in US used smaller frames, had to be re-encoded to spec anyway. Oh well.

To your orig. question if it helps, the most efficient codecs are things like DivX, Xvid, Real, Wmv etc. -- check the Doom9 shootout. They can give you either small or large files depending on how much compression you want to use, and quality goes down the more compression you use. In the end you have to just try it and judge the quality vs size and see what suits you.

As far as capture goes, there's loads of threads giving opinions, or just keep doing what your doing -- your sat box is going to manipulate that picture, send you analog to capture, and at the end of the day probably lose enough quality to just go back to grabbing the stream.