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Good archival format for DV
I’m wondering if there is a codec I can use on my Windows system to archive a bunch of standard-def DV footage. I’m looking to save space on stuff I want to keep hanging around for a rainy day. But I’d like it to be easily editable and still retain the AVI file format.
Is there some codec that would be, say.. halfway between MPEG-2 and DV quality-wise, could be embedded into AVI files (so that it will be mostly transparent to NLE projects that refer the media) and still as editable as DV?
I’d even settle on MPEG-2 quality if there was a way to embed it in order to maintain the AVI file format.
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11 Replies
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To be perfectly honest, considering all your requirements, you are best off keeping it as plain simple ol’ DV.
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I had always understood the DV codec to be a fixed data-rate of about 3.5 megabytes/second. But I’ve seen software where the DV output requester has a 1-100% quality slider. Does this imply that you can actually variably compress the DV codec?
Also I’m wondering if I can revisit the software Motion-JPEG codec again for this level of archiving. I remember it being a bit hurky-jerky, but last time I used it CPU speeds were way slower. And if I remember correctly MJPEG could be encoded into AVI files and it was not an interframe codec. What do y’all think?
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I have used MPEG Streamclip to make AVI movies with PhotoJpeg codec embedded. I kind of agree with Danny that archiving your DV clips is the easiest way to do this….they’ll be good for a long time.
You don’t gain much by transcoding really.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Well I’ll give it a try..
These clips are stored on a big-but-slow hard drive for potential retrieval in a near-line fashion. So drive space is the top concern here, rather than video quality.
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What do you all know about the on2 VP3 or VP6 codecs? Could this be a good compromise codec?
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Nope, both of those CODECs are designed for delivery, not archive. If you are determined to use another CODEC (a waste of time IMHO) try Sheervideo
https://www.bitjazz.com/en/products/sheervideo/ -
I did a couple experiments.. and VP3 was decent quality at half the size.. and VP6 was very good quality at 1/4 size of the original DV clip.
The key was, the codec options actually allow you to set as low as one key-frame per frame, thereby essentially opting out of any interframe compression. This seemed to make it highly editable/joggable in my NLE. Response time to a jog was pretty instantaneous. I assume that this is a big factor in what makes a codec ‘delivery-only’ since the viewer will more-or-less watch a clip sequentially.
I’m gonna do a couple more tests and report back. That SheerVideo looks good, but probably in cases where quality loss of any level is unacceptable. This is stuff where I dont want to delete, but still want to keep around just-in-case.. I wonder if Sheer might be ideal for VJ’ing where jog-latency is crucial.
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I guess it comes down to expectations.
VP3 is a 6 year old CODEC that subsamples at 4:2:0 where NTSC DV is 4:1:1.
For me, archiving at anything less that native DV25 quality, (with fast storage as cheap as it is) would be a false economy.
That said, here’s another route for your R&D:
https://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html -
Yeah I guess I had a hard time describing my expectations. I guess in retrospect, I was looking for something that has intraframe compression that is slightly better than MPEG-2, but would be highly reactive when editing/jogging when layed into an NLE.
If it weren’t for the latter requirement, I would have used something like DivX. VP6 seems to fit the bill (at least when you set it to 1 keyframe for every frame).
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Is the loss of timecode not important?
What are your plans for the audio?
It’s a London thing.
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