Smaller AVI Files??

[Magyck]

Hi,

I have a whole load of REALLY big AVI files that I have captured as DV AVI onto my computer to edit and burn onto dvd. Now I'm fine with that part, i'm just not sure what i can now do with the raw unedited AVI files, as I REALLY don't want to delete them.

Is there any way that I can shrink the size down a bit so i can store them on External hard drives and still be able to edit them again later? (at the moent they are taking up about 250 gig), and I've barly scratched the surface of what i want to convert...

These are just irreplaceable home videos, so I would really like to keep as much qaulity as possible...

Thanks in advance for any help

[redwudz]

That's a tough question. The best is to store them on DV tapes until you can edit and convert them to your final format. Anything less will result in some quality loss.

If I really had to convert them to another format, I would use MPEG-2. That way, you would just need to use a MPEG editor and cut and paste to be ready to burn to DVD. You would use DVD specs for the conversion. You can see them to the upper left in 'WHAT IS' DVD.

I would also convert the audio to AC3, also DVD compliant and this would save a lot of space for higher MPEG-2 bitrates. I would use a bitrate of about 8000kbps or thereabouts for your MPEG-2 video encodes. Then burn this all to DVD disc in data format.

When you decide to do the final edits, a MPEG editor like MPEG-VCR, VideoReDo or similar should work great to get everything together, with hopefully no re-encodes, except maybe for the cut and paste transitions.

Probably many other ways, JMO. But if you can save the original DV formats somehow, that's still the best.