Pleeease!! Need help with my baby's videos

[shulthise]

Hi,
I got 4 DV AVI files, each 13GB in size, hogging my disk.
These are videos of my 7 months old baby, from birth till now, so they are really dear to me.
I want to keep the videos at best possible quality. However, CDs are all I can afford . I also need to process the videos ASAP (I don't have any backups).

I already figured I can split the videos to 15-20 minutes long clips, and fit each into a CD, to get better quality. But the video formats and codecs are still a big mystery to me, no matter how much I read (or perhaps because I read too much). In the future I want to edit and join the clips, add music and sound, to produce my home movies, burn them to DVDs. So the clips I want to burn to the CDs must be at "Master" quality. And I guess not all formats and codecs are re-editable as others.

I used Microsoft's Movie Maker 2 to capture the digital video to my disk. I can edit the movie with it, but it allows me to save the clips only in .WMV format (good?). I heard of Mpeg 2, DivX, Xvid, and more, but I have no clue as for what's best for what I need .

Pleeeeeease help with a detailed advice!

Again, the things i need:
1. Best video quality for 20-minute “Master” CDs,
2. “Master” clips (from CD) must be in a format I can edit later (add sound, join and clip other videos),
3. Later, burn to DVD

Thank you,

Zoe

[setarip]

In view of the importance of these files to you, I'd strongly suggest that, until such time as you purchase a DVD burner, it would be very wise to spend about $75US for a 60Gig hard drive to add to your system - exclusively for the purpose of retaining/maintaining these files in their present pristine condition.

As an alternative, you can use a program such as TMPGEnc to convert these files to MPEG2-DVD format. When the time comes to burn DVDs, you'll simply have to "author" these files (no further compression) with a program such as TMPGEnc DVD Author (a different program tha TMPGEnc mentioned earlier).

[Batman]

2-pass xvid encode-----high quality at low file sizes (only viewable on PC's and a few standalone dvd players).

or a (DVD-complaint) mpeg-2 file. I would recommend procoder for this task (it seems to work especially well for dv material).

You can read more about encoding to mpeg-2 or xvid at doom9.org
Searching the forum (here and at doom9) should also give you many answers and helpful tips (especially video capturing sub-forum) at doom9.

[shulthise]

Thank you for the advice.
The thought did more than cross my mind - i would like more than anything to keep the videos as they are. But i'm afraid i cannot aford this solution as well, for i have about 20 more tapes (with no backup as well) to capture. I can't stop filming my baby - he's growing and changing fast and i don't want to miss a thing (if you are a parent than you know how i feel). I can't afford to buy more tapes ($20US each where i live) or hard drives.

The 13GB clips are 1 hour each. How much of disk space will one hour of best-quality MPEG2-DVD take ? Does the conversion reduces the quality dramaticaly ?

Can i take a part or two parts of the MPEG2-DVD clip and join it with clips from other MPEG2-clips without losing quality ?

Thank you again.

Zoe

[shulthise]

Thank you batman.

What is a "procoder" ?

I find it hard to find stuff in this forum. God knows i did try buy I'm not used to this media. I find it best to grab hold of someone pro and ask all the questions.

[Batman]

The "reduction" in quality depends on many factors including:

-bitrate
-whether or not any filtering was applied
-original source
-how the material was encoded

The higher the bitrate, the higher the file size, however you can choose a bitrate for yourself and that will impact the final quality of the mpeg-2 file.


Procoder, from Canopus is an "mpeg-2 encoder" like TMPGenc and CCE. If you search the doom9 forum for procoder you will see that many people believe it works especially well with dv material.

[setarip]

"The 13GB clips are 1 hour each. How much of disk space will one hour of best-quality MPEG2-DVD take ?"

Perhaps 1 to 2Gigs, at most - depending upon what audio format your present files contain


"Does the conversion reduces the quality dramaticaly ?"

The direct answer is "No" - if you've viewed any DVDs, you know the visual quality is excellent BUT -
Isn't that irrelevant, since the MPEG2 format is what you'll eventually be using for burning to DVD?


"Can i take a part or two parts of the MPEG2-DVD clip and join it with clips from other MPEG2-clips without loosing quality ?"

Yes...


"Thank you again."

My pleasure ;>}

[shulthise]

Thank you very much setarip and batman!!
I'll look up the things you suggested.

If you (or any of the other readers) have any more suggestions please post them here. I'm looking for the best solution for my dearest, and i would feel bad if i learn that i didn't make the right choice.

Thank you,

Zoe

[setarip]

"Thank you very much setarip and batman!!"

My (Our) pleasure ;>}

[DVmike]

Don't know if you have thought of putting your video on to VCD, but this format may just be the answer you are looking for.
Up to one hour of video on a single disc and most domestic DVD players will play a VCD disc.
Picture quality is fine. You will need to convert from .WMV to MPEG1 format, but there are free to download programs about that will do this job.

Hope this helps.
DVmike

[Jeff Mirage]

Stick with the Mpeg-2 solution

Just a proposal...

Don`t encode your movies using Mpeg-1, but use the Mpeg-2 as setarip suggest, it gives far better quality than Mpeg-1, And considering the importance these movies have, I would`nt compromize, just to get the size down to one cd..

[shulthise]

Hi again,
I have two more questions:

I checked the software section for the things you advised.
I downloaded TMPGEnc-2.512 and VirtualDub.

1. I want to edit my movies prior to saving them, and clip out some garbage (save space and time). I tried using VirtualDub, which comes highly recommended, but it just wouldn’t open my DV files. It says it can't process DirectShow codecs. What do I do ?
Are there any alternatives?

2. You suggested MPEG-2/DVD VCD, etc. What about DivX ? Is it suppose to be better than MPEG-2 ?

Thank you, Zoe.

[SKD_Tech]

DivX cannot be played in most standalone players.

MPEG-2 is used for SVCD which can be used on most new standalones. You may see better quality with MPEG-2 depending on how many discs you use for each movie

[Batman]

Generally speaking (this may not be true for all cases) mpeg-4 based codecs such as DIVX or XVID are designed to provide higher quality at lower bitrates.

However very few standalones support divx or xvid.

Your dv-digital video camera would include a VFW based codec which you must install if Virtualdub is to recognize your file.

Alternatively, if it doesn't you can try installing on of the follow dv codecs (you should have searched the doom9 forum):

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33526

Also read the faq's in the DV and capturing section.