Compressing home movies -AVI , WMV or something else ?

[bigdods]

I have a mass of home movie footage going back to the 90's. Its all been captured onto my hard disk in raw DV format , so some very large file sizes for what is in most cases very low quality video. I have files from Analogue8, Digital8, Hi8 and DV recordings and need to compress them.

I have test compressed one file using WMV and DivX codecs. I can get similar ish file sizes and the quality looks the same to me (the source files are not exactly broadcast quality!) so any recommendations on which I should go with before I take the plunge ? Or should I go for MPEG2 that my current SOny handycam records to ?

I am hoping to ensure that whatever I convert them to will be around for a long time so was leaning towards WMV. I guess my only concern with compressing them is that if at a later date the codec I choose goes out of fashion I will have to recompress them and may lose quality by doing so. Having said that the quality is pretty low to begin with so probablywouldnt be noticeable.

Just for information file formats are:

720x576 PCM Audio 25fps for all the Analogue, Digital and Hi 8 Stuff
720x576 AC3 Mpeg2 for the new stuff from my new HDD Sony ( I dont plan to recompress or muck around with these)

Edited by bigdods on Thursday 23 December 09:23

[Simpo Two]

You'd want MPG2 so you can make DVD videos, no?

[marctwo]

h264 mp4?

This is what I have used to encode all my DVDs and it seems to be the current standard.

[bigdods]

Sorry I didnt include enough detail about my requirements, bit more detail-

The files will be stored on my media server so will never make it onto DVD for playback so format doesnt depend on that. I will want to edit them in future and plan to use Pinnacle Studio which seems happy using any format.

Hadnt thought of MP4 , I think my converter would support it. Have to give it a go !

The only problem so far with MPEG2 is that none of my various video editors and convertors support it without paying a licence fee. I will have to dig around and find a free trial so I can see what the file size and output looks like.

Edited by bigdods on Thursday 23 December 10:47

[bigdods]

Any advice on converters ? I have been using virtualdub for the divx conversion. It wont convert to WMV but I have a microsoft tool that does that. Except I just found out it doesnt work just creates a nice empty file. Virtualdub doesnt have a codec for h264 mp4.

I guess I need to update to something better - recommendations please !

[marctwo]

http://handbrake.fr/

[Magic919]

Is your Sony cam HD? I use Vegas Movie Studio Platinum to edit and then you can export to various file formats and codecs. It's cheap and fairly easy to use.

[goldblum]

For the last few years I've converted AVCHD to avi using Win Movie Maker.It compresses the file substantially with no great loss of quality.

Easy to edit the clips as well.Also I have 'converted' to Hi Def,can't remember name of the program but it converts to MPEG 4,which is fine.

[bigdods]

marctwo said:

http://handbrake.fr/

Just trying it now, looks like this will be the weapon of choice to convert everything to MP4.

Thanks !

[goldblum]

I've just grabbed that as well.Ta.

[ErnestM]

AVI isn't a codec/compression scheme. It's a wrapper. Think of a wrapper as a "container" of sorts. It can contain a compressed video. For instance, an AVI container can be DivX, can be uncompressed, MPEG, etc.

What you want to do is find the best quality/compression ratio format for your intended purpose.