Archiving Video?
 

Ok, so I've captured and edited the video off of a miniDV and rendered it to a full quality AVI in Pinnacle Studio8. That leaves me with a 6.79 GB file for a 32min, 37sec video. My 250 gig HD is starting to fill-up fast.

At 6.79 GB its obviously to big to burn to a DVD as a raw AVI file so what are my options for archiving files this big without reducing the quality in anyway? Oh yeah and how is Pinnacle able to actually author this same file to a DVD without any problem? Is it reducing the quality of the original raw AVI file when it authors it as a DVD? :helpme

First off a dvd video is much lesser quality than the raw avi. Secondly I have run into this same problem. There is no solution, To make it smaller your going to lose quality, but that doesen't mean what you have left after making smaller is not going to be sufficient, however it will still be pretty large from my experiments.

So my solution was to record the edited raw avi back to another dv tape, that way I have the original unedited and the edited one as backups. You can recapture the edited one and re encode it fast enough if you had to for some reason.

I also make a super high quality mpeg1 of the edited version so I can go back and grab small pieces of it for trailers or small promo clips if I wanted to.

Otherwise to save the raw avi your just going to have to buy LOTS of big drives or wait a little while longer for the new blue laser DVD's to come out and be affordable. They will hold close to 50 Gigs per disc, but I imagine they will be so expensive to start with it's going to be cheaper to just buy drives.

So at this time it's more logical to just record your edited version back to another DV tape.

Cheers,
BV

Thanks BV - I was really hoping there would be some way to keep the original AVI file archived due to the fact that Pinnacle seaches for the original file when you open it to work on a project. In other words if I could archive the raw AVI file then I could open up the Pinnacle project associated with that file, point Pinnacle to that file, and edit it accordingly.

I guess you're suggestion will work - It'll just take a little more time to recapture and then edit the movie again. Do you see any generational loss of quality when you use this method?

Thanks Again - Jake

Simple solution:

http://ampcontent.com/Pics/PullOut.jpg

Nice fuckin set-up Aaron!

What do you pay for one of those 200gig WD HD's? Is it just a standard drive hooked up to a removable device or the drive itself a removable unit? Oh yeah, where can I get one?

Retail package per drive is $299 but I have recently seen OEM for $225. The chassis cost me $16.00 each. They are pretty much standard...Except for the speeed and buffer size but ANY standard HD will work.

If you are using this only for archiving then the Special Edition drives are overkill. Go with a large standard drive and you can save some money.

Cool - thanks! Any recommendations on where to find the chassis?

I picked mine up from a local computer store. If you can not find them locally then go through mail order.

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...867&pfp=BROWSE

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...876&pfp=BROWSE

You da man! Thanks

My pleasure...Now...Let's get back to what GFY is all about...

Fucking with people. :Graucho

That would hold about 15 hours!

Raw avi = 12 - 13 gigs per hour, I would need 4 dozen or more of those to archive my shit.

Cheers,
BV

No loss and if you record an edited version back to DV you will not have to re edit it. :)

Cheers,
BV

so to record a backup DV tape it means u need another camera OR a DV playback/recorder. How much is that?

My guy backs up the raw AVI to tape for archive purposes.

All he needs is one. I'm assuming he has 1 dv camcorder. If not it doesent have to be a fancy 3chip or anything. A cheapo will do.

Cheers,
BV

It looks like your AVI is already compressed (if it was raw your output would be more than 200Mb a min), but I suggest you try a codec called huffyuv. This codec does LOSSLESS compression, so there is zero quality loss. Pinnacle Studio can load and edit source compressed with this codec with no probs. I think you can also save to it as well, so you can go from DV to final cut without any blurring, blocking or noise.

So u can take the edited AVI that's on the hard drive and export it to a miniDV tape in a camera? what software does this?

Thanks for all the input guys. Now you've got me thinking about another issue. I shoot all our stuff on a 3 chip miniDV (VX2000) but I have a single chip miniDV (TRV30) that I just leave hooked up to the computer to capture video with.

So here's my question: Since the single ship camera is only feeding the computer the video that has already been shot with the 3 chip camera I'm not loosing any quallity by running it through the single chip camera into the computer am I?

You're using a firewire port right? All digital, no loss of quality (unless the tape mechanism is dodgy or the heads are dirty)

Oh yeah, definitely using firewire. So, I guess that the data written to the tape by the 3 chip camera transfers 100% to the computer even though it's being captured through the single chip camera?

What editing software does NOT allow this?


As for the record back to MiniDV thing....Using Studio, I have had some problems but it could be something in the settings that I have not been able to figure out.

I lose some of the image....It's like taking a 1 inch square and only recording the data in the first 7/8ths of that image...I lose 1/8 all the way around. Not to scale, just an example.

The vids I am backing up are 30 minutes and 6.25gigs....I don't care if I need 400 of these drives, it is better and faster than having to re-import and encode the videos from MiniDV again. I tried that...I am too busy for such time consuming B.S.

:2 cents:

pinnacle, ulead, premier, etc..................
all of them i've used.

Do you have it set at 720 x 480?

yes

There is no option for that....At least none that I am aware of. It really does not matter...Even if I could get it at full screen, It is still not worth my time. Hard Drives are dirt cheap but time is expensive. :glugglug

I think external USB 2.0 drives are the ticket now for mass storage (faster then firewire). These Maxtors 250Gb are nice, but check out the neon on the Western Digital.. too bad I already had the Maxtors.

I like it that I can hotswap them between systems.. comes in handy for mass encoding and batch editing.


http://1adulthosting.com/maxtors.jpg