Best archival file/codec format?

[timmus]

What's a good compromise between MPEG1 and MPEG2 for storing a video collection? NOT movies, but just short features and clips. The MPEG2 format is, of course, very bandwidth intensive and doesn't lend itself to playback on some computers (or editing). On the other hand MPEG1 seems to pixellate and degrade really easily. With the various AVI codecs I tried, I get the most editing/compression flexibility but it's like pulling teeth getting them to rip easily/reliably/quickly to DVD.

Any ideas here? Thanks.

Tim

[redwudz]

If you want easy ways to go from DVD to AVI, try AutoGK, Fairuse Wizard, AVI.net. And you might look into the x264 VFW and CLI Codec. But it takes a lot of CPU power to encode with it.

You have to decide what you want. Highest quality, smallest size or fastest conversion? Personally I would recommend Xvid for a good all around archive format for compact video with decent quality. I use FairUse Wizard for that most of the time to convert DVD to Xvid. MPEG-2 is the best if you want a fairly universal format for DVD players. Xvid or Divx can play on a lot of newer settop players.

If you are having playback problems with formats like Xvid, then you might want to look into a faster computer. If you do extensive editing, Xvid or Divx are not good choices. MPEG is a little better. DV is one of the easiest to edit, but you have fairly large files, about 13GB per hour.

Most all of these formats, and quite a few of the programs and codecs, are freeware. You can try most of them for little or no cost and determine for yourself what will work best for you.
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