Best method for archival

[mdod]

~10 years ago I bought a Sony 8mm digital tape camcorder and converted 10+ yrs of VHS home movies to digital tape. I transferred them to the computer and edited them into plain avi clips (eg no fancy transitions, etc) with Adobe Premiere (6.5?) and saved as mpg and I also transferred the edited avi files back to the 8mm digital tape for archival purposes. At the time, we only had CDs so it would have taken a jillion CDs to back up the avis to CD. Even fitting the all on a hard drive was problematic at the time. After 2 1/2 yrs the cassette mechanism on the camera broke so we bought the updated model of the same camera and after 2 yrs the firewire port on it stopped working. So...between originals and edited clips, I have 50 8mm digital cassettes and no way to access the data!

A friend has an 8 mm Sony that still works and I have just finished transferring all my tapes of the raw and edited clip avi files to my computer. Now I'm trying to figure out the best solution for basic editing of the raw avi files for archival (just to cut obvious garbage out) and more advanced editing. Based on some review sites I was looking at Cyberlink Power Director 10 Ultra (I saw many complaints about Deluxe and my Panasonic camera make ACDVH video) but I read some user comments about it making unusually large files. Is that a legit concern? I'm really not a fan of Adobe. Their interfaces always seem unnecessarily complicated for even the simplest of tasks and my Adobe Premiere crashed all the time. Even though I have Photoshop CS3 I often find myself using Picasa for anything I can do there because it takes half the time.

Thanks!

[budwzr]

Try Sony Vegas. The movie studio edition.

[transporterfan]

Could you clarify 'advanced editing'?
If all you you need is a cutter with no quality loss perhaps something like this is more budget friendly.

http://www.xilisoft.com/video-cutter.html

And there are free tools to do most things in the Tools section.

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/SolveigMM-AVI-Trimmer

[mdod]

transporter fan
I don't know how effective it is but I'd like to do some enhancement to the quality of the older videos, turn my edited clips into movies with transitions and chapters. Mainly home videos and special projects. I've done a lot of videos with stills synched to the beat of the music for special events. I noticed that Cyberlink Director has music beat detector that sounds like it should make it much easier.

Am I correct in thinking that saving my original video in avi, is the best option for lossless archival purposes? As far as clipping and joining sections of my original files, if I save in avi, will I get the same output regardless of what editor I use?

[transporterfan]

If you have the original files from the tapes the best way to keep the quality is to edit and save them in .ts or .m2ts format. DV AVI (not to be confused with avi (compressed)) is also fine since it is also uncompressed. These type of files store the video information without any quality loss. They do, however, remain large, so I would invest my money in more storage rather than try to compress them, if they are very precious to you. A 2 terabyte NTFS external HDD drive is a good starting point.

The problem with converting (to anything, not just avi) is that information is dropped from the frames, or frames are simply removed altogether. Depending on which codec you used to convert originally, it can be difficult to change them in the future without further conversion, and further quality loss. Avi is simply a container. The actual information is in a packet inside that container and investing in a good editor is definitely the way to go if you need to work from these converted files.

Enhancing these files is a specialist pastime, but not my forte. If you have a particular need you could try posting a 10 second clip, and if you are lucky other members will advise. There are, literally, hundreds of filters and millions of scripts which can produce remarkable effects, but without a sample it is difficult to ascertain the problem you might be experiencing.

What editor you use is very important when dealing with already compressed formats. If you can change settings to exactly match the input file format then the output quality should remain the same. Be very wary of editors which convert the output regardless. Even though they may save it as the same format (avi, say) they may well be reconverting it as well. This is why I tried to point you in the direction of lossless trimmers. As already mentioned, Sony Vegas is very good. You can also publish to DVD and Blu-ray with it.

I don't use any Cyberlink software so I can't say.

Beat detection. Others will advise you better.

[_Al_]

I understand you have DV avi on your computer ? That IS your archive. You keep them. If you take anything away you will need that later. If you insist you take a garbage out , ok, but keep that rest of DV avi.
BTW, DV avi is not uncompressed format. Frames are compressed , it is intraframe video compresion. To simplify it, imagine bunch of JPG's one after each other. But that compression is not that big, but it is, more importantly 4:2:0 so there is a loss. So you already store compressed format.

Editors (like Vegas) load Dv avi, you cut it , shuffle clips around as long you do not change colors of put effect on clips, it will export same DV avi, it will just join clips together. You archive that also. OR, you might export mpeg2 no less then CBR 8000kbps, you can make one DVD for one hour of video. There are even mp4 solutions, just so you know, double frame rate, best deinterlacers, but it is somehow difficult to do. If you encode mpeg2 with that bit rate 8000 kbps, it is enough. Visualy it would be almost the same. You can lower bitrate and encode with 2pass 6000 average (or even lower) kbps VBR for example, but at this point you only lower the quality.

Note DV avi has about 25Mbit/s, mpeg2 would have 8Mbit/s, so you get about 4x less volume.

[mdod]

_Al_
Yes, the source video is DV-AVI and yes, I know that is my archive. It may be compressed but it's the least compressed I can get. I know that you can lose quality with each edit of a jpeg file so I wanted to avoid doing that when I edit the video. 10 years ago I edited the tapes into scenes and saved them as DV-AVI before any effects were added so I wouldn't lose any frames to effects. Then I did added some titles and transitions and saved as MPG (4??? I think it was about 8:1 compression).

Yes, I definitely want to save the uncut video in case I want to use it for some other purpose in the future. But when you tape kids there's a lot of stuff that is just pure garbage that I wouldn't use for anything. I've also got some video where I accidentally hit record and the cap was on or the camera was facing the ground! As long as editing that out won't degrade the resulting video, I'd prefer to cut it out. That way, if I ever do want to edit a new movie I won't have to waste time wading through it again.

Thanks for your explanation on the DV-AVI compression. So if only the individual frame is compressed in DV-AVI, then JUST cutting and joining clips won't lose any more detail for the individual frames regardless of the program I use as long as I save as DV-AVI when I'm done, right?

Thanks everyone for the comments.

The official reviews tend to give Cyberlink better ratings than Vegas, while user reviews give better ratings to Vegas. However users also say it's a bigger learning curve and I think most comps have been with an older version of CyberLink Director. Is there any reason why I should avoid Cyberlink?

[budwzr]

Is there any reason why I should avoid Cyberlink?

Not really, except that it might suck.

[transporterfan]

BTW, DV avi is not uncompressed format.

I am aware of that but in this case it is also the original source format as opposed to containerised mp4.
I was trying to emphasis the difference between the DV AVI and avi the OP is contemplating working with.

Editors (like Vegas) load Dv avi, you cut it , shuffle clips around as long you do not change colors of put effect on clips, it will export same DV avi, it will just join clips together.

@mdod: there is your answer.

[mdod]

Is there any reason why I should avoid Cyberlink?

Not really, except that it might suck.

LOL...OK. Can you explain how it might suck? Poor results, not enough/poorly designed features, unstable? If I download a trial of each and try to edit a sample, will that give me a good idea or are the trials crippled too much?

For now I'll probably just download a trimmer like transporter fan recommended. That will keep me busy for a while. Then I can figure out which editor to get (and maybe Vegas will have an update).

[mdod]

I downloaded SolveigMM AVI Trimmer and when I select the movie to edit and play, I hear the audio but no video window displays. The only item listed under Streams/Codecs is Video (DVSD) and it is checked. I tried marking the beginning/end of a clip and saving it. When I play the resulting avi file, there is video but no audio. I don't see anything in the help file. Any ideas? It looks like it's pretty easy to use if I could get it to work!

[_Al_]

Use Virtual Dub
set start frame, end frame and press delete, repeat all you want ...
then set Direct Stream Copy for audio AND Direct Stream Copy for video and save it to hardisk - File/Save as Avi (F7)

[mdod]

@_Al_. Thanks! I read some other comments about this and downloaded it earlier this morning but wasn't sure what settings to use. It worked great!

[budwzr]

I'm really not a fan of Adobe. Their interfaces always seem unnecessarily complicated for even the simplest of tasks and my Adobe Premiere crashed all the time.

Yes, this is true. There must be a better way, right? Did you try Sony Vegas Studio?

The Vegas interface appears simple at first, with the standard canned transition presets and whatnot to get you quick started in the right direction. But as time passes, you'll start to notice that everything you need is hiding in plain sight exactly where you need it.

Vegas can be set up to fit you like a glove. Everything is moveable, dockable, and sizeable, for the most part, and you can save those layouts as presets. So when you're doing color work, you load your custom interface for that. Compositing, audio, or general editing too.

The Studio line is an exceptional value, and the tools that are unavailable, compared to the Pro version, are ones that you don't even think you need or want until after about a year of experience. So there's no need to sink a bunch of money into it up front.

But the bottom line is you. If you're interested in video post production as a serious hobby, like photography, that's technically challenging and rewarding, then Vegas is you're first choice.

On the other hand, if you consider editing as a chore that you just want to get past in the fastest, simplest, way, then the "My Video Maker" type programs might be a better choice.

[mdod]

@budwzr
Yes, after reading more on this forum yesterday, I downloaded Vegas but haven't had a chance to look at it. I've got a ton of other stuff ahead of that on my to-do list. Right now I'm just trying to make sure my 8 mm digital video tape gets transferred properly to my computer so I can ship this video camera back to my friend.

[budwzr]

Vegas can ingest it for you.

Look under FILE/IMPORT or FILE/CAPTURE.