Best non loss video codec?

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

DV directly transfered.

DV tape sent over FW to a DV file on the computer = zero additional compression.

Its just a “numbers” file-transfer.

[Daniel Connell]

But if I edit and resave ad nauseum, it still won’t lose anything?

Also, if there’s something that gets the files a bit smaller than dv avi, I don’t have a huge amount of disk space and I’m wanting to back up to data dvd.

cheers

Daniel.

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

[Daniel Connell] ”
But if I edit and resave ad nauseum, it still won’t lose anything?”

Editing and “rendering” is another question entirely.
It depends on what edit software and what kind of layers and filters you apply as to how much you “degrade” your original footage (if at all.)

But your original question was about archiving footage.

DV is already 5-to-1 compression.

There’s no point in archiving to a file that destroys the quality.

Just keep the TAPES… they are fine for archival purposes, small, full-quality and you can just load them back up and capture the footage again, if needed.

Heck, many places back-up to DAT cassettes… DV is nearly the same size as those and you don’t need to do anything but put them on the shelf.

[Daniel Connell]

What I’m doing is editing down the raw footage from the tapes to conserve space, saving those files to data dvds, then loading footage to my (slightly too small) harddrive, re-editing and compositing.

So I need a codec that can be saved to x number of times without losing any quality, but is still small enough that these files are going to be reasonably portable.

I’ll be keeping the tapes as backup, but don’t have constant access to a camera or deck to recapture from.

cheers

Daniel.

[Tony]

Dude for the price of a external firewire drive you could cheaply buy yourself a 300 or 400 gb drive and keep your stuff on it for as long as you need.

Such drives can run anywhere from the a low 250 to 400 dollars depending on where and when you buy it.

The wasted time and effort to save to dvd is better spent on an external or internal drive.

Tony Salgado

[Daniel Connell]

Which would be very nice, and is on my wishlist. The video has to be posted tho, hence the dvds.

Daniel.

[Vince Becquiot]

Well, if you are using straight cuts with no effects or transitions, you can export back to DV tapes without usually losing quality. A DVD backup is probably the worst solution of all. Once a footage is compressed to DVD (By that I mean Mpg2), it really isn’t suitable to editing or compositing again, and you will probably have a heck of a time even importing it back into your editing application. HD DVDs might solve that issue with SD video at least.

Vince

[Glenn Chan]

There are lossless codecs such as Quicktime Animation and Huffyuv.
There’s also commercial codecs like Microcosm, although the smaller file size may not be that big a deal.

DVDs can hold either data or MPEG2 video. The problem with DVDs is that they can degrade very quickly, even getting data corruption in 2 years.

[Daniel Connell]

Well, looks like the best option is just keep them in dv format (going with the Sony one), and not rerender them until the final output. I’m not doing a huge amount of compositing (just putting 3d elements in and grading colours) so I should only have to render once.

I had a look at huffyuv and Microcosm but they’re still 3-4 times the size of the orginal dv.

Thanks all for the excellent feedback.

Daniel.

[Jimmy Brunger]

You could always WinRar your footage for archiving purposes?

BTW – What medium do people suggest for keeping footage/edit projects on? I tend to rar my files up and put onto DATA DVD and keep them in a opditracker, so they are easy to find and access. Other than back onto tape (not an option when keeping AFX & Video Toaster projects intact) or keeping on HDDs, what are my options for mid to long-term storage?

We may be getting an XRAID with hot-swappable drives in the near future, but until then I could do with a solution that ensures my data is safe.

Thanks.

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