Video storage for later edit or conversion - MPEG or DivX ?

[q1aqza]

As a newbie I currently only convert my home videos to SVCD (captured in DV and edited using Pinnacle Studio DV Plus, encoded with TMPGenc 2.53 and burned with Nero) and I am happy with the results I am getting.

However, I have also been storing all the MPEG2 files for some future date when I will probably wish to convert and edit them again, or create new SVCDs for family, or convert them to DVD when DVD-R becomes more affordable.

This is starting to take up a lot of disk space and I was wondering if someone could please give me any advice on whether I would be better off converting either my DV quality AVI or the encoded MPEG2 to DivX for storage?
Would I get the same quality in DivX as I would from MPEG2?
If I convert an MPEG2 to DivX and then convert back to MPEG2 again will the quality be degraded? And similarly if I convert back to uncompressed AVI?
Is there an ideal DivX formula of video and audio bitrate, etc. that can reach MPEG2 quality but use less disk space?

I tried a DivX conversion recently with VirtualDub where I converted a 16 minute home video from a DV quality AVI (over 3Gb file) to a DivX AVI of just under 300MB but the quality was noticeably poorer then the MPEG2 I encoded from the same AVI, which had similar filesize. I must be doing something wrong as I keep reading that people are fitting whole DivX movies onto a 650MB CD with very good quality.

Sorry to ask so many questions in one posting but I would appreciate any advice or references to where I can find this information.

Thanks in advance.

[q1aqza]

Can anyone help please ???

[tsoler]

Hello,

this is not a real answer for your question, but maybe another solution. Why don't you put your edited videos to your camera whith DV-in?

This is the best solution, capturing from your VDCam (don't loose quality), editing in your PC (don't lose quality), and then, outputting to your camera (don't lose quality). Then you can compress to MPEG or whatever you want, but always will be a copy of your video with no compression in your camera.

This is what I do it with my SONY PC110 (DV-IN and DV-OUT active). I don't know what camera you have, but maybe you can investigate if it's possible to activate the DV-in.

Another storage done whith compression (MPG1-2, DIVX, etc) will degrade the quality forever.

Toni.
(PD: Sorry to my english)

[q1aqza]

Toni,

Thanks for your answer. My camera does not have DV-in enabled but I believe there is a 'widget' that can do this for my camera but I am reluctant to try one yet as my camera is still under warranty - but I may consider this as a future option (I have theSony DCR PC6E).

I guess my ultimate aim is to be able to store MPEG2 quality video but at a reduced file size - using DivX? and when I wish to produce a new or modified video I can edit the DivX AVI and then re-encode to MPEG2 for SVCD. But the few tests I have done so far using DivX it seems that to obtain close to MPEG2 quality the DivX file size is nearly the same, which defeats my objective. I have only justed started 'playing' with DivX so maybe the are some configuration options in VDub that I need to use to help reduce the file size.

I'll just have to keep experimenting to find a compromise.

Rgds,
Mark.