Compressing video for Archive

I wanting archive about 100 of my MiniDV tapes to hard drives. Was wondering what would be the best way to compress the video files, so there small in file size but have good quality so the video can be used when needed. Done many test files but wanted to get others thoughts

Thanks JPierson

If this is DV, then capturing at DV is sufficient. You're not going to get better image quality. You could considering going ProRes SD, which will increase file sizes but possibly make the clips more compatible with future uses (since DV is a very old codec). But DV will be fine.


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Jason, when responding to responses to the thread, post it to the thread so that others can chip in.

> What Im looking for is to compress the captured files out to an mpg2 or WMV or something
> like that

Neither of those formats is a good choice. They are ancient codecs, extremely compressed, and WMV isn't even compatible with Final Cut Pro.

If you want your material to be even somewhat viable, then you need to use codecs that will preserve more of the image quality.

> I'm worried if I compress them out to Quicktime We are looking at some major storage
> needed to back up all the video I have.

That's a fact of life. But external-drive storage goes for about 8-15 cents per GB now. DV runs at 13GB per hour, ProRes NTSC at about 19GB per hour. One hundred DV tapes at maximum DV quality would be only about 1.5TB; a 2TB RAID1 drive can be had for $230 (OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro). If you want a backup -- and you most certainly do -- you can get two of these drives for under $500.

If you can't afford that to archive 100 tapes...well, then you may as well not archive at all.

If you really have to use a compressed format, at least go with H.264 MPEG-4s at a high data rate, full frame rate and frame size. They will look better, and each MB of file size will yield more image. WMV and MPEG-2, to me, are both dead formats as far as archiving goes.


www.derekmok.com

IMO Tape is the archive. Hard drives die, but tape lives on for much longer.

----------------
"What do you mean there's no undo?"

Matthew Celia
matt@fcpguru.com
www.fcpguru.com

I agree with that ? in principle. Right up to the point where you realize that DV tape won't always be readily playable. Today it's not that hard to get your hands on a DV deck or camera ? though it's harder than it was five years ago. Five years from now? Nothing is guaranteed. The tape itself might be long-lived, but that doesn't help if you can't play it back.

For that matter, even hard drives have the same problem. I have in my closet a stack of old bare hard drives, all 200 GB each, with old project files on them. If I ever need to go back to them, I'm going to have a bit of a hard time ? because they're ATA drives, not SATA drives. I think I have an ATA enclosure in the same closet somewhere, but I'm not positive of it, and while I imagine I could still buy a new one today if I needed to, that won't be true forever.

Hell, my best friend has an ancient 5 GB SCSI drive with old files on it ? mostly PowerAnimator models, if I remember right. His problem is even more serious than mine; not only does he not have a way to access the drive, he doesn't have the software to read the files ? and he doesn't even have a computer capable of running the software.

Everything fades, whether we like it or not. Ironically the most durable long-term ? I mean really long-term ? storage medium is paper.

>I mean really long-term ? storage medium is paper.

I vote for wood carvings.





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