[AngelEyes]

Hi,

I am using Premier Pro 2 to backup my DV tapes to HDD, at the moment I have them all saved as what I assume is uncompressed AVI. The files are fairly large, around 14GB per hr tape.

I used Premiere in the past to downsample a video to an mpeg but the quality was pants tbh.

What is the best compression metho to use that will not reduce the video quality visibly?

Ideally I would like something that will playback in Vista Media Centre but I am assuming as long as I have the correct codec installed this will be ok? I don't mind buying a codec if I have to. ideally it would be good to export in to the new format from Premier but I could always batch convert the videos afterwards in another app if I have to I guess?

One last thing, my latest Sony Camcorder saves it's files as AVCHD, can WMP or Premier use this format?

Many thanks,

Adam

[senu]

Originally Posted by AngelEyes

Hi,

I am using Premier Pro 2 to backup my DV tapes to HDD, at the moment I have them all saved as what I assume is uncompressed AVI. The files are fairly large, around 14GB per hr tape.

DV AVI is compressed but not enough to make a difference

I used Premiere in the past to downsample a video to an mpeg but the quality was pants tbh.

It shouldnt be DVDs have thier video files as mpeg2

What is the best compression metho to use that will not reduce the video quality visibly?

You have to experiment but usually using an encoding bitrate nearer 8 Mbits/sec, is a case of "more". Encoding hardware and software are not equal though but there is no reason why the one that ships with Premiere should give anything other than great results

Ideally I would like something that will playback in Vista Media Centre but I am assuming as long as I have the correct codec installed this will be ok?

You probably wil already have it or be able to obtain it for free

One last thing, my latest Sony Camcorder saves it's files as AVCHD, can WMP or Premier use this format?

WMP can play AVCHD if a suitable codec is on your system
Im not sure about Premiere TBH ( although i expect with 3rd party plugin you may) but I know Premiere Elements 4 among others can

[rhubarbe]

You can use (a current version of - I have 7) Nero Showtime to play the files, and Nero Vision to edit them. Subject to having a powerful enough PC to accelerate the video of course.

[AngelEyes]

Thanks chaps, I'll have a play and see what results I come up with.

Out of interest I have CoreAVC Pro somewhere, is this a good encoder?

Would an Mpeg4 encoder do a better job than mpeg 2? If so any recomendations, there seem to be tons of codecs DivX, Xvid i wish i new what half of them were for

Adam