[neilski]

Hi,
I have tried to find the answer to my questions without bothering anyone but the more stuff I read the further I seem to drift to a whole load of further complications relating to my original question but about thingsI have never even heard of before.
Anyway I'm stuck and here's why.
I have been using a Sony PC 100 which I paid about £800 for in 2001 and edit with Pinnacle 7 (mainly family holidays and kids sports).
The Sony has never missed a beat and I am more than happy with the PQ
However I have hd tvs and projector and feel I should upgrade to a high def camcorder .Money is not my main concern but I would prefer the convenience of a HD over mini DV but not at the expence of noticeable PQ.
This is where I'm stuck ..Do I have any way of archivng a HD camcorder's recordings for later copying to high def dvd without permanantly compressing to a reduced quality? And would the compressed high def saved to dvd be of lower PQ than my current Sony tapes?
Whether I go for HD or miniDV I need advise on high def editing /encoding....
Am I right in thinking that it is possible to capture and edit high def on a PC and copy back to tape without losing quality ?
Finally I have read that my old Mini DV tape recordings can be uprated to produce higher PQ but I can't find any practical information on how to do this.

Advise gratefully received

[redsox_mark]

You mention both High Definition and HDD.... let me try and explain..

If you want High Definition, all the camcorders record in a more compressed format than DV. But they are still worth it in my view.

High Def on tape (HDV) uses MPEG2 compression.

High Def on HDD, in most cases uses AVCHD compression, which is MPEG4 based, and more compressed than HDV. The exception is the JVC HD7, which uses MPEG2 on HDD.

Generally the video quality of the HDV models is slightly better, and HDV has better editing support than AVCHD (though recently AVCHD editing support has been released on several editing packages, including Sony's Vegas).

Do I have any way of archivng a HD camcorder's recordings for later copying to high def dvd without permanantly compressing to a reduced quality? And would the compressed high def saved to dvd be of lower PQ than my current Sony tapes?

With a HDD/AVCHD cam, you can simply copy the files to a PC HDD, or to a data DVD, without any further compression. With HDV (tape) you have an instant archive (just save the tape). Capturing HDV to your PC also simply copies the files, no further compression.

When you edit (with either AVCHD or HDV) you generally need to do re-compress the files, unless you use an editor which can smart render the MPEG. For HDV there are some which can do this; for AVCHD I think it always needs to be recompressed. But a single recompression to whatever output format you want generally doesn't impact the visable quality.

Am I right in thinking that it is possible to capture and edit high def on a PC and copy back to tape without losing quality ?

With HDV tale it is possible to capture the video as it is, edit, and render out to copy back to tape, but as above generally you do one recompression. The software which smart renders HDV changes the GOP structure which may cause problems in copying back to tape.

Hope that helps... it may raise more questions...

[neilski]

Your right ...loads more questions.

Firstly , when saving hdd footage to a data dvd, is this likely to be a caption option on the editing software supplied with the camcorder and can this dvd then be veiwed on PC or is this simply for data archiving?

Secondly..... GOP! .....your kidding, right?

[senu]

Originally Posted by neilski

Your right ...loads more questions.
Firstly , when saving hdd footage to a data dvd, is this likely to be a caption option on the editing software supplied with the camcorder and can this dvd then be viewed on PC or is this simply for data archiving?

I don't know that any of these camcorders are supplied with any software ( none of mine is)
Where this is the case, the Software is often underwhelming. Sony had a direct to disc software that works with its camcorders but this come preinstalled only to its VAIO range of PCs and thier functionality can be had else where

Archiving is an open ended question ATM as the long term reliability of discs and the fact that HDDs are electro mechanical ( and can fail) is questionable , and as such make tape suddenly seem not so bad after all ...
but
tape will go.. eventually .
As it happens the demand driven economics mean less tape models are being made for SD. HDV is hanging on .. for now

The video data archived on disc can be always be watched on PC.. To date it is the case that they can be watched on TV via a PS3 or Xbox 360 HD DVD add on ,
You can also make ( with ) Pinnacle Studio 11 ultimate, Ulead VideoStudio 11+ and Movie Factory 6+, Authored "Mini HD DVDs" from ordinary DVD discs. These are watchable on a standalone HD DVD player or on the PC with Cyberlink Power DVD ultra with the HD plug in
PS3s ( both from disc and it built in HDD ) can play Hidef files to TV as HD via HDMI( I saw this just yesterday) impressively
and when converted to WMV-HD , you can stream to a TV using an X box 360 and Windows media extender software. however the ability to play them as data files on a DVD disc has made this method a little less used now

Secondly..... GOP! .....your kidding, right?

Mark refers to the problem you get with editing video formats other than DV AVI which allows frame accurate editing. It is not my (limited) experience with HDV from the HC1 and FX1 that edited HDV looks worse than the original. I imagine he may have more experience with that

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by senu

Mark refers to the problem you get with editing video formats other than DV AVI which allows frame accurate editing. It is not my (limited) experience with HDV from the HC1 and FX1 that edited HDV looks worse than the original. I imagine he may have more experience with that

Senu I agree with you - one generation of editing HDV doesn't make a visible difference.

My comment about the GOP structure is this - if you use software which "smart renders" HDV (avoids re-encoding parts not changed), it can only do this my creating a non-standard GOP structure... which in turn may stop you being able to output back to tape. With Vegas (which I use) it re-encodes all edits, but it looks fine, and it can output back to tape.

[neilski]

Thanks guys,

I am still unconvinced about the safety of archiving in dvd and unless you think I have missed anything I can't see any other solution other than to buy an HDVC camcorder edit to dvd and keep all the tapes to copy to high def dvd later.
Excuse me for this question of unparalleld ignorance but if I was to buy a hdvc and edit on my pc is there any possibility that I could render in high def copy to dvd and stream the data in high def back to tape onto my current digital Sony ?...more apologies.
Finally for now, is there any evidence that high def dvd recording is likely to be more reliable for long term archiving than current dvd (as you may gather I have had a couple of bad experiences with old dvds )

[senu]

Originally Posted by neilski

Thanks guys,

I am still unconvinced about the safety of archiving in dvd and unless you think I have missed anything I can't see any other solution other than to buy an HDVC camcorder edit to dvd and keep all the tapes to copy to high def dvd later.

Quite reasonable strategy which is what is possible with HDV

Excuse me for this question of unparalleld ignorance but if I was to buy a hdvc and edit on my pc is there any possibility that I could render in high def copy to dvd and stream the data in high def back to tape onto my current digital Sony ?...more apologies.

You could create High def edited files on to your PCs HDD and copy them onto DVD data disc but why would you want to do that..
You couldnt get very much onto a 4.7Gb Disc any way
and
You cannot stream Hi def material to tape on your current camcorder either .. for that you need a Hi def HDV camcorder

Finally for now, is there any evidence that high def dvd recording is likely to be more reliable for long term archiving than current dvd (as you may gather I have had a couple of bad experiences with old dvds )

No.. the most reliable method of archiving Edited footage at low cost is still Tape. To use HDD you would have to decide which format is the balance between space and quality bearing in mind that you still have your original tapes
DVD discs are for playback.. not really archiving even though with high quality discs carefully stored you may be able to use them as backup to HDD in the same way as digital still images may be backed up on different media in case any one fails
But to answer your question in another way.. in the absence of Bluray/ HD DVD domestic recordable media and drives ( I know there is some but Im not aware it is for authoring BD video as such)
We are unable to speculate about the longevity of the discs

[redsox_mark]

I too am unconvinced about the safety of archiving in dvd. An advantage of HDV cams is you have an instant archive of your original footage (just save the tapes), and you can also archive your edited footage back to tape (like with DV).

I have a HDV cam myself.

[Peter Brereton]

I've recently copied all my Betamax tape recordings...some 20 years old, to DVC. I couldn't see any noticable loss of quality. At the moment I would put my faith in tape based archiving. I've had occasional problems with loss of data from recordable cd's, the coatings started to peel!

Peter