[danlevi]

I note from these forums that mini DV tape yeilds better quality footage than DVD, HDD or memory card:

Best Type of Camcorder MiniDV, DVD or HDD

I also appreciate that to watch with conveince it can be compressed/ converted to DVD but with a loss in quality.

Is it possible to archive and review the raw DV footage digitally? (as oppose to keeping several full master tapes)

If so how much disk space would, typically, one hour of footage comsume?

[jetinder]

In AVI format you'll need around 100gb for 1 hr of raw footage from the minidv tape.

[danlevi]

Crickey! I'd need a spare hard drive then as it'll be a while before hd or blue ray dvd back-up becomes £ feasible.

Thanks for quick reply.

[senu]

Originally Posted by jetinder

In AVI format you'll need around 100gb for 1 hr of raw footage from the minidv tape.

No Jetinder , you most certainly do not need 100Gb for 1 hr of "raw footage"

I remember correcting this sometime in the recent past .. 1 hr of DV AVI from miniDV tapes is 13Gb. ..no more than that. DV AVI has a constant data rate of 3.6 Mb per second
13Gb per hr also applies to HDV.

You may use up a lot more than 13Gb during editing because your software can create lots of temporary render files ect but after editing you should ideally simply just delete them

AVI is not a format.. it is merely a "wrapper " which video files encoded with different codecs may end up being "contained" in
.. Divx, xvid mpeg4 mjpeg in addition to DV AVI ( and codecs from Canopus , Windows ect) ect all have the "*.avi" extention

There is a flavour of AVI which is said to be totally uncompressed ( even DV AVI is minimally but very cleverly compressed) .. it uses up 40Gb per hr. Even so , It is hardly ever used these days as DV AVI is just as good in quality and uses up far less space.

The best place for your DV AVis archive is on the tape. If you truly need some for regular access for editing, even a 750Gb HDD wont set you back more than £80-£100.

Originally Posted by danlevi

..
I also appreciate that to watch with conveince it can be compressed/ converted to DVD but with a loss in quality.
..

If it is for watching, very well encoded mpeg 2 ( As used in DVDs, even those from Hollywood)) is by no means inferior.

Especially for viewing on a PC DV AVI may be overkill.

If I had to have a "media server" and didnt intend to use the footage any further for editing , apart from mpeg2, well encoded DIVX, quicktime and even WMV files can be very good quality but small size. HDV can be output to WMV-HD with little or no loss in IQ

[chrishull3]

i have finished puting all my hdv tapes to blue ray,each 2 hour disc cost on average 9 pounds.the playback looks great it seems better than the origional but i know it cant be,perhaps its the lovely menus and instant playback anywhere.hopefully rarely if ever having to be played the edited hdv tapes will last me out.

[redsox_mark]

chrishull3,

I'm impressed! What software did you use to author your blu-ray discs?

Eventually I'd like to do the same, but it will be a while before I can convince the wife that we need a blu-ray writer and blu-ray player.....

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by redsox_mark

chrishull3,

I'm impressed! What software did you use to author your blu-ray discs?

Eventually I'd like to do the same, but it will be a while before I can convince the wife that we need a blu-ray writer and blu-ray player.....

mark i have a sony laptop [mine is a fz11z]the installed software is click to bd dvd,i capture two full edited hdv tapes per 25gb disc then split all the films from the tapes onto menus,ie if a tape had 10 films another 6 the menu would be 16 films with a playback video showing under each title.without a bd laptop i am not sure how you would go about it.the bd discs play on my ps3.

[danlevi]

Originally Posted by senu

The best place for your DV AVis archive is on the tape.

Thanks for this updated info, the spare hdd is much better option to me now. I was looking to back-up digitally for two reasons:
1. so I wouldn't need several tapes
2. i'd always be able to access recordings without a hardware requirement, i.e. a working camcorder to play the tapes from

I did consider a DVD camcorder but after tying one out it is very difficult to create 'mini-clips' to email from the DVD. To be able to encode a mini dv tape to a small emailable video (*.wmv, *.avi, *.mpg, etc.) would be very useful.