Archiving Video

[gator95]

I apologize if this has been asked before. I could not find it in a search. I have a Sony digital 8 video camera. I would like to archive all of my tapes to dvd for easy viewing and in case the camera ever dies. A 60 minute tape is producing 12 Gb of video in iMovie. Is there a way to compress this so that I can burn it to a single dvd and bring it back to the computer for editing later without loosing much in quality? Thanks.

 

[-DH]

>>Is there a way to compress this so that I can burn it to a single dvd and bring it back to the computer for editing later without loosing much in quality?<<

Yes to the first part - you can compress and encode it as a DVD-Video using iDVD, DVD-SP, Toast or other DVD authoring program.

No to the last part about preserving quality. Once compressed, you WILL lose quality. The compression process throws away a lot of information in most frames of the video (Google: MPEG-2, GOP, I-frames, B-frames and P-Frames for more information).

Yes, it can be edited later ... but it will have to be converted into an editable format first. In short, DVD-Video is NOT a recommended for archiving.

You're best bet for archiving is to hang on to the original tapes, and/or have them dubbed to DV tape. A cheap DV camcorder can be used as playback device should you need one in the near future.

-DH