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Best formats for archiving / editing old home videos
My 2013 New Year’s resolution was to get all my old home video archived to digital for fun and sharing, and to use some of it from my days of a radio show to make a retro video podcast. For the video podcast, I want to bring together video from lots of old NTSC sources, as well as some new HDV, and .mov’s from a Canon 60D DSLR (but that’s a whole different topic, probably for the Premiere Pro forum).
I was thinking my workflow might go something like this:
1) Sample old tape onto PC (either pass through a 3-chip Panasonic DV camcorder from 2004, or use a XP machine I have with an old Matrox RT X100 card), separate into events, and save as DV format .avi’s. I have the following NTSC formats: VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, 8mm, Hi8, & DV.
2) Immediately make a DVD for safekeeping, with chapters for each event on the tape. Give copies to family.
3) Keep anything I might be using for said podcast as DV format .avi on a hard drive for later use (3TB RAID1).
4) Convert anything unlikely to be edited to a more compressed, but not TOO compressed, MPEG4 / H.264 for later viewing over my home network on PCs, tablets, a PS3, etc.
5) Along the way, for sharing anything to YouTube / Vimeo / Facebook, export bits to a more compressed MPEG4 / H.264.I have a 2 year old PC based on a 6-core AMD chip and Windows 7, with Adobe CS4 (no reasonable way to afford CS6 any time soon) and a blu-ray burner.
QUESTIONS:
Am I right in my choice of formats at each stage of this scenario? The .avi would be an NTSC interlaced video file, right, just like copying form a DV tape? I’ve noticed such .avi’s from analog sources contain the messy edges that would normally be overscanned on a television, either SD or HDTV. Should my long-term viewing files in the form of MPEG4/H.264 be de-interlaced, as well as cropped and zoomed to make 640×480 4:3 edge-to-edge videos?I’m just trying to develop a game plan here with ideal formats for what I’m trying to do, so I can get started digitizing before these old VHS tapes turn to dust. 🙂 Any specific advice would be GREATLY appreciated!
And let me know if I should break all this down to one question at a time. I tend to get word vomit.
Lee Overstreet
Tuscaloosa, Alabama -
1 Reply
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[Lee Overstreet] “Am I right in my choice of formats at each stage of this scenario? The .avi would be an NTSC interlaced video file, right, just like copying form a DV tape? I’ve noticed such .avi’s from analog sources contain the messy edges that would normally be overscanned on a television, either SD or HDTV”
It’s not bad. You don’t mention which software you’re using for compression which would really help.
On interlacing/avi/from DV or other SD source
If your original source was interlaced, keep it interlaced, period. “Preserve the original quality as best you can”[Lee Overstreet] “Should my long-term viewing files in the form of MPEG4/H.264 be de-interlaced, as well as cropped and zoomed to make 640×480 4:3 edge-to-edge videos?
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If you’re intending it to be viewed on a computer or other non-interlaced playback mechanism, then yes, deinterlace. The messy edges are the points where the scan line is supposed to jump to the next line – truthfully, I’d leave it; again preserving quality.[Lee Overstreet] “1) Sample old tape onto PC (either pass through a 3-chip Panasonic DV camcorder from 2004, or use a XP machine I have with an old Matrox RT X100 card), separate into events, and save as DV format .avi’s. I have the following NTSC formats: VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, 8mm, Hi8, & DV.
2) Immediately make a DVD for safekeeping, with chapters for each event on the tape. Give copies to family.
3) Keep anything I might be using for said podcast as DV format .avi on a hard drive for later use (3TB RAID1).
4) Convert anything unlikely to be edited to a more compressed, but not TOO compressed, MPEG4 / H.264 for later viewing over my home network on PCs, tablets, a PS3, etc.
5) Along the way, for sharing anything to YouTube / Vimeo / Facebook, export bits to a more compressed MPEG4 / H.264.I have a 2 year old PC based on a 6-core AMD chip and Windows 7, with Adobe CS4 (no reasonable way to afford CS6 any time soon) and a blu-ray burner.
“1) Fine
2) Sure. It’s compressed, but if you’re okay about that and your family primarily uses DVD, spot on. The question is how much video to a DVD; more video = higher compression. 90 min at around 7mb/s is about the biggest you can be anyway.
3) Keep as much material in the original capture format? yup!
4) That’s fine. I’d pick a common tablet (i.e. iPad) format in SD
5) Well, this I’d quibble with. Youtube, vimeo, etc are going to recompress your work again – a large h.264 file is probably better than a compressed one.Last, you do know that adobe is ‘renting’ CS6 for 30/month, right?
Best,
Jeff I. Greenberg
Editor/Author/Speaker/Consulting
My NAB seminar schedule, contact info and more
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