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Archiving/Editing Format Help PLEASE!!!!

W

Wanski

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2011
18
0
I have about 70 hours of home video from Hi-8 and mini DV sources. I have transferred them to DVD and they are in a VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD which contains the .VOB files.

#1. I want to archive these memories on a portable HDD for offsite storage in a lossless format. Should I copy the discs to the HDD with the same .VOB format or convert them to .DV or another format?

#2. I also want to store them on my RAID server ( 2TB ) for editing and movie creation with iMovie/Final cut or Adobe Premiere Elements on my iMac. I understand that after I edit and save the files I can convert whatever format they're in to a format compatible with DVD for burning to DVD. What lossless format should I save them to on my server?

I greatly value and appreciate your thoughts and suggestions as I only want to go through this once and not mess it up as I am so prone to doing.

Cheers,
Gabby
 
Last edited:
Wanski said:
#1. I want to archive these memories on a portable HDD for offsite storage in a lossless format. Should I copy the discs to the HDD with the same .VOB format or convert them to .DV or another format?
Click to expand...

Keep them in their VIDEO_TS folders.

#2. I also want to store them on my RAID server ( 2TB ) for editing and movie creation with iMovie/Final cut or Adobe Premiere Elements on my iMac. I understand that after I edit and save the files I can convert whatever format they're in to a format compatible with DVD for burning to DVD. What lossless format should I save them to on my server?
Click to expand...

A true lossless format is not going to be practical, but Apple Intermediate Codec shouldn't look noticeably degraded.
 
Please excuse my ignorance but what is Apple Intermediate Codec??
 
Unfortunately the DVD format you have copied to is a terrible lossy format that will have already damaged your Hi8 and Mini DVD videos. If you back up your DVDs, don't compress them into anything else, they will be awful. You should either back up the VIDEO_TS folders or use MPEG Streamclip to change them into MPEGs without compression. If it was me, I would be transferring all the tapes again to the computer directly without DVD playing a part. It depends on your set up and the amount of space you are willing to use up, but I would be capturing them using Final Cut and the ProRes422 4:3 codec, HQ if you have no concern for space, and then keep those in archive and compress the results into H264 MPEG4s using Compressor or something like HandBrake for general use - so you end up with one large ProRes422HQ file and one MPEG4 H264 small file of the same thing. Only then will you get the best results. DVD must be avoided at all costs when transferring old tapes, especially for family memories that cannot be replaced. If you are only using iMovie, may be you can use the AIC video format as this might work best for keeping as much image as possible. Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
Charlie Croker said:
I would be capturing them using Final Cut and the ProRes422 4:3 codec, HQ if you have no concern for space, and then keep those in archive and compress the results into H264 MPEG4s using Compressor or something like HandBrake for general use
Click to expand...

True, for best quality, redigitizing would be the way to go but ProRes422HQ would be overkill for Hi8 and MiniDV. ProResLT would be indistinguishable from the higher rez codecs for these Hi8 or DV but would save a lot of space. There is another thread about Apple Intermediate codec vs. ProRes going on at MacRumors.
 
There's really no point in transcoding digitized standard-def DV to ProRes (no appreciable gains). If you decide to re-digitize, keep it in DV. Practically every NLE under the sun can work with DV without any conversion.
 
Hello....

This is good info for a know-nothing like me.

I recently found myself in the same position as the original poster.

Have a HV20 and have imported HDV footage using the basic iMovie technique cause that's all I know how to do...butr I also noticed that my import settings are not max'd so I'm wondering if I'm losing quality (which I suspect I am).

Now reading this, I want to re-import but am wondering if there are any freeware alternatives to Final Cut or whatever to maximize quality etc. Space is not a concern...so I want a high quality archive and something that looks good say for any old time viewing (which I can Handbrake for ATV say)

Any help on navigating this would be helpful. Thanks!
 
Final Cut "Classic" and iMovie are based on the same Quicktime codices. There should be no difference in quality. In fact, I know some folks who use iMovie for capturing their tapes, then export the projects to Final Cut 7 - iMovie's media manager is light years ahead.

The idea behind iMovie 08 was exactly to do that....
 
Thanks...

So in assuming that iMovie does the trick on max'd out setting, is there an efficient way of combining all off the discrete .mov clips and then handbraking for ATV use?

Again showing my ignorance, I thought that an iMovie Project saved in a format that say Handbrake doesn't recognize....
 
Thank you all !!!

I appreciate your input.
I have decided to re-upload all of my movies using iMovie.
I will keep them archived in the DV format and do my editing etc from there when I get the time.
I'm glad that others can hopefully take something from this.

Cheers,
Gabby
 
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