Transferring video tapes - MPG or AVI?

[Walt Jabsco]

I'm transferring a lot of my own video tapes recorded from TV from the 80s onto a portable hard drive.

Should I transfer it as AVI or DVI files - which is best?

The MPG's take up a lot less space so is a lot cheaper and, as the original videos are analogue and relatively poor quality, I presume that format should be fine.

Thanks.

[MarkE19]

If you just want to capture & watch the video then straight to MPEG-2 or even DivX etc will be fine. If you want to edit out adverts etc then I would capture as DV .AVI first and edit as in this format there will be no loss of quality. Once all editing is done then you can convert them to whatever format you want.

Mark.