format for long term storage on hard drive

[Guest]

I take digital video on 30 mini-DV tapes. I want to download this video to my
hard drive and archive it there (forever). I do not edit very much or create
many "movies" - maybe some casual stuff every now and then.

AVI is too big a format to be economical on hard drive expense. What is the
best format (and/or compression specs) to use?

 

[Wojo]

If you don't plan to create DVD's then High Quality NTSC works just fine. It
is high quality video and uses far less harddrive space. The best practice
however would be to simply save the DV tapes.

 

[Guest]

Do you mean MPEG-2?

If you don't plan to create DVD's then High Quality NTSC works just fine. It
is high quality video and uses far less harddrive space. The best practice
however would be to simply save the DV tapes.
--
-Wojo
MVP - Digital Media
Wojo's Web:
http://tinyurl.com/ytv9mo

 

[Graham Hughes]

Personally I keep dv-avi files on hard drive and the mini dv tapes.
High quality ntsc is a wmv format which would result in compression, then
compression again to mpeg2.
MM will not save to mpeg2.
If you have to compress and the end result is ONLY going to be dvd or lower
quality, say for the web, then going to mpeg2 now would save space.
It does depend on what encoder you use thouogh, cheaper ones from the likes
of nero are ok, but paying for a good one will result in far better quality
for the same file size, but expect to be paying $500 or so.