[GaryClough]

Hi,

I have just finished transferring all of my standard definition mini dv tapes onto my pc and it is taking up 700GB of disk space.

I will eventually get round to editing it, but it may be some time due to the amount of footage I have accumulated.

It is currently in mini dv avi format, so I know I can reduce the amount of space by converting it to some other format, but I am totally confused by the number of different options.

I have downloaded AVS Video Converter, but need some help choosing the best format that will allow me to edit this footage in the future.

Can any of you experts offer any advice please ?

Thanks

[MarkE19]

The best format for archiving footage that is still to be edited is to keep it as DV .AVI
If you compress the footage then when you work on it you will get loss of quality with every render. The loss may be slight, but if you need to do a fair bit of work then all the slight losses will add up and could easily become noticable. Also compressed video will be harder work for the PC and not all software will be able to work with all formats.

If you need the HDD space back and are not ready to do the editing then just delete the video and recapture when you are ready. Or get an external HDD and put all the video on there until ready to do the work.

Mark.

[GaryClough]

Thanks for replying Mark,

I realise that keeping it in its native format is the ideal solution, it is just the shear amount of space it has taken up so far is huge. I would like to step up to a hd camcorder soon, and don't really want to have to keep the large supply of tapes, hence why I am looking to archive all the footage.

There are so many new formats (DIVX / XVID / H264 / etc) I am just confused as to which would give me the best quality while still giving me a smaller file size.

Are their any opinions ?

Thanks

[A n d r e w]

Although I understand your desire to reduce the amount of disk space being taken up, large external hard drives are relatively inexpensive these days and my suggestion would be to keep your video in DV .AVI and transfer it to an external hard drive (if keeping this in storage you'll want to spin the platters up now and then to keep the drive in working order). Even then, you'd be best served with either a RAID-1 drive or two separate drives (perhaps this is better because one can be kept "off site") for redundancy / back-up purposes (the drives', not yours!).

Andrew.

[chrishull3]

what ever you do dont get rid of the tapes, i would never get rid of mine no matter how many fomats my video is on.

[GaryClough]

OK, Thanks,

I was assuming that some of the latest compressed file formats would be almost as good as the natice DV AVI.

I am already storing my files on an external 1tb drive. Looks like I will buy a 2nd one just to make sure I have a backup should this fail.

Thanks

[Mr Lazy]

Originally Posted by GaryClough

I was assuming that some of the latest compressed file formats would be almost as good as the natice DV AVI.

Some are almost as good, as far as playback is concerned. But that's not the point. As MarkE19 said, the point is that when you come to edit, you may have to transcode it to another edit-friendly format (making the whole process longer and more frustrating), or, when you come to render you will lose some quality.

I am already storing my files on an external 1tb drive. Looks like I will buy a 2nd one just to make sure I have a backup should this fail.

Always a good idea.

[senu]

Tapes are inexpensive, small and well stored, relatively sturdy
I wouldnt be quick to get rid of them
Certainly they lack the instant access of HDDs but they could be your ultimate Archive