Need some video encoding advice...

[Alex Franke]

My old Hi-8 camcorder died a while ago and I realize now that they're getting harder and harder to find. I'm going to borrow one for the purpose of digitizing/ripping a stack of old Hi-8 and Digital-8 tapes. All this video technology, though, has always been a bit overwhelming to me.

Any helpful advice out there?

I'm looking for:

• Good quality/file size ratio so I can edit together movies with it, but 13GB/hour seems huge.
• Something that works equally well on Windows and Linux
• An enduring technology so I can postpone reconverting it all again as long as possible

Thanks!

[herb fellows]

While I know the people on this forum are a veritable font of information (self excluded apparently, I've got nothing for ya), I would be posting this on a Linux oriented website also. Linux being what it is (relatively rarely used), I think you would get better info there about this.
As for the term 'enduring technology', I believe these words are mutually exclusive when it comes to anything video:-(.
It will only endure until sales slow down, then the next 'improvement' will be shoved out of the starting gate.
I sometimes think they have all the 'improvements' squirreled away for release on a 'as needed to make more money' basis.

[Alex Franke]

Hmmm... this looks promising: http://handbrake.fr/

Herb, ever since getting burned on them when I was a newbie, I have feared Linux websites... I have heard they're getting better, though. Maybe it's time to give them another try.

[dbhost]

Alex,

MOST but not all Linux distributions support mpeg. (Red Hat being notable for its lack of support). And even that, with third party rpms is fixable... Pretty much mpeg4 is playable / editable on Windows, Linux, and even Mac...

Generally speaking, I have taken most, but not all of my VHS cassettes and converted them to mpeg, and then cut those files to DVD...

[Raffi]

For size/quality/editability I would suggest the "dv" codec. Around 12gb per hour (sounds big, but you can get a 1000gb hard drive for less than $100, quite affordable

Your digital 8 is native DV so you would lose nothing by sticking to this codec (codec is a fancy term for file type if you will) so you lose nothing by editing in it, it has the added advantage of being multi platform compatible and can be digitally edited in many software packages

.02

[Kristofor]

Alex, the tool is really less important than the format. Handbreak is a decent cross-platform tool that makes encoding pretty easy.

Raffi, I agree for straight up archive purposes plain DV takes the least work and retains the most picture information.

However, it's not the most friendly format for playing on multiple devices, sharing with friends/family, etc.

You may want to keep an archive copy and create a MUCH smaller, and almost identical quality, converted library. MPEG2 if you're targeting video DVDs or MPEG4 AVC / H.264 if you're looking at BD or computer based playback are probably your best bet.

Kristofor

[Raffi]

mpeg 2: good quality for size, takes a while to compress, and once it is in this format it is not easily editable, and loses a lot of quality when you re-compress to other formats

I still say stick with DV, then when you need to send to family or friends convert to mpeg 2, or h.264

in other words: mpeg2 or h.264 for after the video has been edited

[Alex Franke]

So I've been importing all these videos as 13GB/hour DV-AVI's, and I'm using a free DVD authoring application called DVD Flick to make some DVDs. The problem is that I'm getting some strange results and I hope one of you all can help. I think it's an interlacing problem but I can't figure out how to correct it.

This left frame is from the original DV-AVI as it came from the camera. (By the way, isn't this the most handsome kid you've ever seen? ) I burned the DVD, and on the right similar frame looks like when I view that DVD on the computer. It appears to be an interlacing artifact on the adult's pointed finger. When I watch it on the TV, it looks interlaced like this when I pause it, but it looks just awful at full speed (looks like big wavy edges, just like example 3 below).


In this example I told DVD Flick that the original video was interlaced, and then I used handbrake to pull the video back off the DVD. The DV-AVI is first. Using the default settings get me the interlaced look next, and then selecting "decomb" or "deinterlace" got me the ugly blocky one at the end -- this is the way the DVD actually looks on both the the TV and computer, too.


Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

[Kristofor]

The first thing that comes to mind is that for some reason your aspect ratio is changing... The good example is ~1.25:1 and the one below it is ~1.45:1...

I would have expected the original to be 1.33:1.... I guess I could believe that it was some slightly different ratio I suppose? However, that wouldn't explain why the output is a different, odd, aspect ratio. I've never used that specific tool, so I cannot comment on it in detail.

Since the same content is in both frames (one is not a crop from the other, but rather a squeeze of all content) you could be running into a weakness in whatever algorithm they're using to do the encoding... Can you try again but keeping the output the same aspect?

If you did this on purpose because you have a wife or other family member (or yourself...) that doesn't like "black bars" please at least try it the other way, there's a reason why almost everyone in the know prefers letter/pillar-boxing over the alternatives.