Archiving / Backing up DV - AVI saved files

[Guest]

I have a lot of family videos that I captured through Movie Maker, Imported
into Nero, made it pretty with chapters and titles and saved the project to
DVD and my computer. Now what. I have a lot of large files taking up space
on my Hard drive that I want to get rid of. What happens when technology
changes and DVDs are replaced. Is the best format to copy onto the future
technology my DVD or should I save the Movie Maker raw version (saved in
DV-AVIas something
else to avoid losing quality? Or what do you recommend to preserve quality?

 

[Graham Hughes]

I film all my movies on minidv tapes and send any finished product back to
tape and keep both. The dv-avi file is the highest quality you'll get at
present in SD. You could burn the dv-avi's to dvd, but they'll need 3 maybe
4 dvds per 1 hour tape.
Also dvd burning is not recognised as the best way of archiving, so you'd
need to check them regualry. Often a dud dvd loses all info, a dud minidv
tape loses just a small amount, the rest being rescued.
The last option with hdd's being so cheap now is to save you dv-avi's to a
hard drive.

 

[Guest]

Thank you. Your comments were helpful.

I film all my movies on minidv tapes and send any finished product back to
tape and keep both. The dv-avi file is the highest quality you'll get at
present in SD. You could burn the dv-avi's to dvd, but they'll need 3 maybe
4 dvds per 1 hour tape.
Also dvd burning is not recognised as the best way of archiving, so you'd
need to check them regualry. Often a dud dvd loses all info, a dud minidv
tape loses just a small amount, the rest being rescued.
The last option with hdd's being so cheap now is to save you dv-avi's to a
hard drive.

--

Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.myvideoproblems.com

 

[Graham Hughes]

No worries.