Advice needed on best format to use please

[dazzystar]

Hi All,

I've managed to transfer my old MiniDV tape footage to my PC using Scenalyzer Live 4.0. This stores them as .AVI files which I then join together to form one larger .AVI file. I've then used Microsoft Video Editor on my Windows 11 PC to export them as .MP4 files (1080P) which are very large. Is this the correct thing to do or should I be exporting them as another file format which is lossless and smaller? We'll only be using them to play back either from a PC.

Cheers
Daz

[usually_quiet]

I'm not sure it makes sense to upscale from interlaced standard definition video to 1080p. MP4 files containing progressive H.264 standard definition video are automatically going to be smaller and most TVs do a decent job upscaling standard definition progressive video to HD resolution or even UHD resolution.

Regardless of how you decide to encode your AVI files for playability, your should try to save the original AVI files containing your MiniDV transfers in case you want to re-edit or re-encode them again someday.

[lingyi]

IMO, the best option is to always keep the video as is, especially since DV isn't high quality as is. By re-encoding, you're always going to lose quality at the savings of pennies per GB. Which will be even less financially significant in the future.

Also, understand that .MP4 is a container that can contain multiple different codecs of varying quality. And I [suspect] Microsoft Video Editor doesn't provide an optimum output choice. Many recommend Handbrake and hopefully someone will post with recommended settings for your videos. Would probably be helpful if you posted some samples of your AVIs since the settings may vary according to content, e.g. fast vs slow motion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_container_formats