Best format for archive?

I'm using a Canopus AVCD55 to record medical (endoscopic) procedures in DV format. Unfortunately these produce massive file sizes, eg, 5-20GB. If I use Compressor to convert them into another format, what would be the best choice in terms of retaining picture quality whilst reducing file size? It's possible I may in future use 'stills' for publication purposes. I'm not recording audio.

I'm not sure this will work in your workflow, but have you ever used JES Deinterlacer? It's a free app, but ... it DOES deinterlace, including combining static field regions where possible to maintain source resolution.
When I use it I usually have it export to Apple Animation and then just re-encode to whatever from there -- often wmv, flv or some other web-based format. This is great for cleaning up DVD (interlaced) source materials for web formats (progressive).
You can set it to export any QT format - including H.264.
I assume you have QuickTime Pro. If you are just selecting clips to archive you might be able to trim those in QT pro?
I believe JES Deinterlacer has a simple project queue, so you might be able to give it a few files and leave it running overnight ...
Regards - Phillip

Similar Messages

Best Format for Archiving Video Files

I am importing old VHS and 8mm family videos for my cousin, to both burn them to DVD, and to archive the movies in case he wants to edit them later.
I am planning on purchasing for him, a "write once," external HDD, probably firewire, (though I am open to suggestions), to put both the backup Video TS folders on, as well as the Quicktime movies themselves.
My guess is, the best format for the QT movies would be their original DV-NTSC, but at around 13GB an hour, this can add up pretty fast.
The h264 .mov codec looks great, takes forever to render, and it seems the file size difference to DV-NTSC is nominal at best.
Obviously the future is some kind of HD, so these movies will never look great years from now, but I want them to be preserved for him at the best quality possible, at the smallest file size, if it will not compromise the quality too much.
I know I can render them significantly smaller as h264 .mp4 files, or as DIVX, (which also takes a long time), but I imagine they are of significantly reduced quality that would be visible in future video editing he might do.
If DV-NTSC is the only way to go, so be it. But if not, then any suggestions for what other format I could use to save these QT files, without visible loss of quality is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for all the advice. And I mean everyone.
Here is my latest dilemma.
Though 15 years old, the original Vhs's play beautifully. Aside from some (expected) glitches in the beginning or end of some of the shots, the video has not degraded appreciably. This is great news, as my cousin wanted to make back ups before degradation begins.
First, I captured the Vhs movies and corrected some bad color, mostly due to poor white balancing, and on the computer, they looked great in comparison. I burned DVD's and they looked terrible in comparison with the originals. Now I know I am going to lose some resolution when going to DVD, but it seemed harsh, so I ran some tests.
I burned a DVD of the original capture, with no color correction, just the raw footage and the DVD did not look much better, so it wasn't the color correction.
Not satisfied, I made a copy from the FCP timeline straight to Vhs, (I should note, through the ADVC-110.) This looked significantly degraded as well.
Finally, I made a straight dub from Vhs to DVCam, figuring that had to look good, and that also looked significantly degraded, compared to the, (now looking pristine), Vhs original.
As the original Vhs looks so good, what good would a TBC do? Or a proc amp?
Is there some secret to capturing and exporting Vhs that I am missing? Or, will it always look significantly degraded, even straight to DVCam?
+David Murray wrote: There is an industrial way to get good VhS copies but it is extremely expensive+
I don't know what this is, but I am sure it is clearly out of our league, but David M., if you are still following this thread, I'm curious, would this ultra expensive method actually result in a dub that looks like the original? I am actually really shocked at how bad the straight DVCam dub looks. It really does not look much better than the color corrected, computer exported version.
The Vhs tapes of my cousins daughter are as precious to him as anything he has.
As they date back 15 years, he is concerned about the longevity of the tapes.
As there are over forty hours of them, he wants them to be in an editable format, so later he or his daughter can make a highlight reel, or whatever. So thus the QT movie archive/backup on HD.
Whether as Finalcutter said, that this drive, even if unused, and put in a cool dry safe, might not function years down the line, makes it iffy, but what other choice is there for editable versions, unless I break the QT movies up into 20 minute chunks and archive them to over a hundred DVD's instead. Perhaps that is the safest solution, though certainly time consuming.
As failure of the HDD somewhere in the future is likely, though not certain, I am still not sure that the HDD holding all his QT movies for future editing is the wrong way to go.
As it is a digital version, and not an analog copy, I get that a DVCam backup of the originals is the best option. I will suggest to him that we do this as well, even though he does not have DVCam himself. But again, is there something I am missing here? Why does the Vhs to DVCam copy look so degraded? Is there anything I can do to keep the original quality, or will it die with his original Vhs as it slowly degrades over time?

What's the best format for archiving for future hi res?

Hello,
I've got FCP 6 running on OS X 10.6.8.
If I upgrade the system I'll have to upgrade FCP and will lose a lot of my old video files in the process (at least it'll take a LOT of work to get them back to the way they were.)
So I'd like to save my videos in the best resolution for future use. At this point I've only got copies for hi res YouTube and standard res DVDs.
In the future I might want to go to Blu Ray or whatever else is current. What's the best file type to save them out as?
Also, should I do this through Compressor or straight from FCP 6?
I know hard drives fail, so what would also be the best way to store them? Thumb drives? Data DVDs?
Thanks.

Neal Fox wrote:
... I know hard drives fail, so what would also be the best way to store them? Thumb drives? Data DVDs?
All media can fail ... my first home-made DVDs were killed just by letting them lay in the bright sunlight for 20 minutes ...
So, aside 'future-proof codecs', for long-term strorage a smart back-up-strategy is essential.
And here come hard-drives back again into the game:
to copy/clone a hard-drive, you simply drag the content from Drive#A to Drive#B - done. (no need to watch the time-bar grow...)
to copy 'disks' ... that is a more complex procedure... not to mention, a disk doesn't fit as much data as a drive, so you have to repeat that steps multiple times.
There are no numbers avail about non-mechanical storage media (sticks, SDcrads, SSDs) on the log run...I 'killed' several sticks and SDcards, just by using them.-
Magnetic media ... hmmm, older audio-tapes got rust; a German manufacturer (BASF) got 'famous' in the late 60ies for using the wrong 'glue', so the iron particles felt off from the plastics after some decades of storage..
Finally, 'hardware' - anybody remembering SCSI? 5 1/4" floppies?? MO-drives? ................. (firewire < chuckle> )
You can actually read a 500y old Gutenberg Bible, but in 50y, most of our 'data' is gone, poof, nirvana....
(no, I'm not grumpy )

Best format for converting video

What is the best format for converting videos for your iPod? I am using handbrake but there are alot of settings. What is the best one? mp4,avi,ogm? and what about codecs? aac audio, mp3 audio,h.264 video mpeg 4 video, .mp4 video? Need help?

See this Wikipedia article for some encoders:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora#Encoding

Best format for DVD studio pro??

I will be exporting from FCP4.5 and am wondering what is the best format to get the best possible quality from FCP to DVDSP? Also, should I go through compressor and what settings should I use?
I also want to make my own video transistions, what is the best format for those as well?
Thank You

The movie is 90 minutes.
You didn't mention your video format. You can export your movie as QuickTime Movie (not QT Conversion), same settings and self contained (my favorite flavor). The use that movie in Compressor and use the Best Quality DVD: 90 min presets encoding your video to MPEG2 and your audio to Dolby 2 (AC3).
That's the best standard workflow. With standard I mean that sometimes some kind of footage can need different treatment.
Hope that helps !
Alberto

Best Format For Front Row

Hi what is the best format for videos in front row? Most videos I have are avis so I had been saving them as .mov files instead until recently when I discovered I could export them to Mpeg4 and in the process make them widescreen - I also noticed that when I saved these videos as .mov they took up about 5 gb but as mp4 they took up 500mb. So anyone have any opinions on what is the best way to do it?
Cheers

AVI and MOV are both simply "containers". The video and audio files inside them can be many formats with less or more compression. The MPEG-4 compression can be very good, of course, depending on the quality of the original file. The MOV files you saved must be using a different type of video compression that may be better quality but takes up more hard drive space. The "best" type of compression is probably a personal choice. What type of software are you using to save the files? QuickTime Pro?
-Doug

Best format for ps3 and apple tv

What is the best format for viewing movies on a hdtv (1080p) via ps3 and apple tv?
Not sure what my best option would be in the sharing/export options, also should I make it 16:9 even though all the footage was 4:3?
Message was edited by: rwltrz4

Thanks.
I've posted up on their forum too (the folks over there are not as responsive as you guys, helpful, but not in the same volume )
I kinda hear what you're saying, but the encoding time (fps and time taken) is pretty slow on my PPC G5 iMac at the moment, and if the Turbo.264 is doing most of the processing then from what you say it'll stay the same on a new Intel Mac. I really hope not, or it'll be me throwing in the whole notion of recording TV on my Mac and heading off down the shop for a PlayTV for the PS3.
Either that or hope for a decent upgrade to the Mini at Macworld, sling the Apple TV on to ebay (film rental selection here in the UK is still pretty weak) and replace with a Mini, plug the tuner in that and watch native EyeTV recordings without the need for lengthy encoding. I reckon Front Row, and an iPhone Remote will do almost as good a job for my music as the Apple TV does.
One day we will look back and laugh at the notion of an hour long TV show being 'encoded' for playback at all, let alone waiting more than 2 minutes for the process to happen!

Best format for Premiere elements 12?

What is the best format for making movies on PRE 12? My clips are now .mov files, whether on iPhone 5 or Nikon 7000 SLR. Should I still convert them to .AVI files?

fish614
Are you working with Nikon D7000 as well as the iPhone video?
What are your settings for these devices when you record?
How do you want to view the export of your Premiere Elements Timeline after you edit this video on the Premiere Elements Timeline?
ATR

Best format for upload to a website

i would like to know what is the best format for upload to a website, what i got now is an exported quicktime self contained movie from fcp 25 minutes in length.
the footage itself is shot on mini dv and edited on an uncompressed 8 bit sequence, when exported to quicktime it is 28 gb in size so it is kind of a heavy one.
is it possible to upload it in one piece ( apple recommends exporting to mpeg4 yet i got a bad quality out of this using mpeg streamclip.
what would be the best compreessor for this
than you very much

i got a bad quality out of this using mpeg streamclip.
Check the links that Cristina posted, then let us know if your quality improved, using Compressor...it should.
One question for you regarding quality...are you referring to overall quality of the full frame image, or are you displeased with text/graphics.
If this is the case, then I'd wonder if you edited in a DV sequence, then dropped the edited content into an 8bit timeline for exporting at better quality.
This can cause degradation of the image (particularly text/graphics), since you're taking a 720x480 frame and ever-so-slightly vertically scaling the frame up to 720x486.
Let us know what you did...and your results w/Compressor.
K

The best format for output

Hi All,
working in animation project to be broadcasted on a TV channel as HD1080 50i,
1- all the animation layers was rendered from TOONBOOM as .SWF to keep it in vector for compositing issue.
Dose SWF lose any quality? we always use TGA sequence with alpha in our past SD projects but now we found SWF is a smaller file size and allows zooming Because it keeps all vector lines.
2- compositing each scene in after effects cs6 and then render them.
What is the best format for output to deal with premiere cs6 as a real time playback ( my editing pc includes gtx680 4gb., many HGST 3tb with raid controller,64g ram, aja kona 3g) so do I go with TGA sequence (I think it will destroy the raid Because of the large number of small-sized files in read and write ) or MOV uncompressed (I'm afraid of the space size and don’t know it will play in real time ) or what is the best compressed format Maintaining video image quality as its now will be my only master source?
Many thanks,
sherif

Thanks Rick for your reply,
Regarding the SWF i moved to flash pro forums and they are supporting me now,
My system is a pc, win.64, I7-3930K, 64G RAM, EVGA GTX680 4G, Many HGST 3TB with raid controler,
Some advised me to go with Quicktime Prores HQ or DNXHD or DPX ,
In this year project my client's requirement for delivery is :
DNxHD 120 Codec, wrapped with QuickTime rapper, which means a file with MOV extension and the codec used is DNxHD 120 ( 1080@50i HD)
So do i work with dnxhd 120 from the beginning to the delivery? (and it will be my only master source) or another format encode it at the end to dnxhd 120? ( i will distribut this project to many channels after the first run exclusivity period end with different requirements).
Thanks,
Sherif

Best format for SSD when i use os x and windows

Which is best format for my new SSD when i want use OS X and Windows together ? I mean when i will be in windows i can copy folders from windows to OS X folders and conversely ? Thank you for all info

Before you do anything make sure that anything you have on your external hard drive is moved somewhere else as all information will be lost in this process. Then make sure it is plugged into your mac
Here's what you need to do next. If you click on your Macintosh HD on your desktop then click on applications. Then scroll down and click on utilities. In there you need to click on disk utilities. When this opens you need to select your external hard drive from the list on the left.Then on the tabs at the top click on partition but just leave it all as is except you need to change the format from Mac Journaled to Fat 32 then click apply. It will then be ok for use on both Mac & PC but be warned they don't like each other so some stuff will work and some stuff won't. If it formatted for Fat 32 then mac will sometimes not read it through a wireless connection. (I am trying to figure this at the moment and can't seem to get it to work).
Good Luck

What is the best output for archiving in Quicktime?

Hi,
I'm producing webvideo. The video's are converted to quicktime and dropped on a videoserver and converted to flash.
The most important footage is archived to tape but I'd like to archive all the output. What is in your opinions the best setting for output in quicktime with less space and enough quality to use again in webvideo. Final use will be 800kb flash video.

You should archive the material in it's native format so that you have the possibility to revisit the project and make changes or generate master files in other formats.
Use the Media Manager to consolidate your project into a single enclosing folder. This can be compressed into a .zip file or disk image. It will save space if you dont include render files, even more if you make the material that came from tape, offline -although you will have to recapture in that case.

Best format for HD export?

I'm putting the finishing touches on an EPK for an upcoming indie film, working on CS4. The bulk of the featurette was shot on P2 cards in 720p, but it also includes tons of still images, some SD footage shot on Mini DV and clips from the 1080p finished film downconverted to 720p. The next step is going to be exporting it into a file for archiving, a file which the transfer house can dub to an HDCAM tape.
Thing is, I've never worked in hi-def before, this project marks my conversion from working exclusively in SD. And I'm having trouble figuring out how best I should go about exporting to a file. Obviously I know how to use CS4 Media Encoder, but I don't know what file format I should export in and what codec I should use for best results.
The most important thing here is quality. Hard drive space (or lack thereof) is not an issue, as we have an enormous, brand new hard drive to copy the final render on to. We would rather have an enormous file with the best quality than have to use some sort of lossy codec. Any ideas?

Okay, next question...
I'm going to have to go with an uncompressed Quicktime file, since I need a 5.1 mix and I can't export with Lagarith to anything but AVI in Stereo.
I exported by selecting quality at 100 percent and "None" for my codec. Actually, I'll list all the settings I used below:
Format: Quicktime
Preset: Custom
Video Codec: None
Quality: 100
Width: 1280
Height: 720
Frame Rate: 23.976
Field Type: Progressive
Render at Maximum Depth - Checked
Aspect: Square Pixels (1.0)
Codec Settings: 32 bit
Optimize Stills - Not checked
I had to try a couple of different times with different options, but these are the settings that worked best for me. I rendered the first 45 seconds of the EPK and it produced an enormous 3.2 gigabyte file that appeared to be full quality.
Are these settings good to go with, or is there anything that I can do better? Different options? I'm particularly concerned about outputting the file in full 720p and 16x9, I had to mess around with the Aspect and manually set the height and width to 1280x720 before it looked right. Should I do things any other way?

Best settings for archiving?

Hello everyone. I'm new to the Final Cut Studio suite of programs. I work for a church and we record each service as SD DV. The result is usually about 16GB per week. I was using ffmpegX and was able to make a MPEG-4 MOV file where the video was 8 Mb/s and the AAC audio 448 Kb/s and I got it down to 2.63 GB. We'd like to be able to grab clips for future FCP projects. I was curious to see if anyone knows of better settings for this using Compressor. Rendering the compressed MOV clips back in Final Cut takes a long time (I obviously only do a portion, not the entire 1+ hour file) and I was hoping for a better way to do this. I've also been checking out the Pro Res 422 in Final Cut 6 (we're on FC5); would Pro Res be good for archiving SD DV files to smaller sizes, or is it only good for HD?
Thanks in advance!

Ok, makes sense about the Pro Res 422. At least we would benefit from the ability to edit it several formats without rendering until the end. I thought I saw that as one of the features online. Correct me if I'm wrong.
We record to a FireStore, which is a FireWire hard drive that creates .dv files directly from the camera. So, we're not using tapes to begin with. We could, but one tape a week could get expensive. We'd like to store them digitally, but processing time upon edit is not a big deal because we don't edit them very often.
So, knowing that h.264 and mpeg-4 is going to chew up resources on the encode and decode, what settings would give us the best quality for a reasonable file size. We're at 16GB per service uncompressed, so anything 4GB or lower would be ideal.
Thanks!

Best encoder for archival purposes?

I have been using AAC with 256 resolution recently for all my CD imports to iTunes but I occasionally get skips in the songs (happens on all computers). So two fold question.
1) Am I better off using MP3 with Constant Bitrate of 256 or higher for best quality for importing and archiving to iTunes, and
2) What causes the skipping of imported CDs even when the originals play just fine in other applications or CD players?
Steve

archival is a tricky word. it implies you want to keep the files in as close to original as possible. for true archival quality, you could use the apple lossless format, but its not practical at all.
VBR is the best comprimise, it just sorts out the difficult to compress areas and gives them a higher bitrate than the rest of the file. i just set it as 192kbps with VBR, which is what i used with MP3, i figure the MP4 AAC LC encoder in itunes has improved since its early days, (not all that confident though it doesnt matter too much)
however, in your case, i think that the 'ripping' engine in itunes is the problem.
if the gaps and pauses are in the middle of tracks, then it is the drive correcting data incorrectly by using the ECC values from the cd/dvd drive to smooth over the invalid areas. try switching it off, it might help, but it depends on the drive and the CD in question.
it's been a problem in the past for most removable media, reading errors and correcting them has 2 approaches, guessing what is supposed to be there by using the error correcting codes (faster, default behaviour) or re-reading the data several times at low speed until the same data is read back (slower, can damage hardware by constantly spinning up and down to re-read the same sectors).
if the gaps are only near the end and beginning of tracks, then it's more likely due to the encoder and/or the disc. but ts uncommon, encoders are pretty good these days.
some copy protection methods break the mastering conventions (known as red-book CD audio) so you'd probably need to read the disc at 1x speed instead of 30x to 40x as you normally would. even then, it might not work OK.
there are worse forms of copy-protection, most are oriented towards disabling or slowing down 'ripping' across the entire CD's content.
if you have windows, getting a hold of EAC to rip the files is the preferred fix.
or, get a 1:1 cd copy program (i.e. programs used to rip copy-protected games will also rip copy-protected audio CD's) such as blindwrite or clonecd, which will allow you to make a backup from a damaged/copy-protected disc. you can then mount the disc image in a virtual cdrom and test that the virtual image is error-free.
you can also use slysoft's anyDVD to have an on-the-fly application that repairs copy-protected media i.e. dvd's and audio cd's with copy-protection for personal use. it also makes reading dvd's and cd's faster and less hardware intensive.
for mac, well, there's umm ... bootcamp. a regular toast/dmg creator won't do the job if its one of the nastier copy protection mechanisms, they damage/alter the error correcting data on the disc intentionally so that the drive itself mangles the data every time it grabs that section of the cd.
programs like EAC just read the data in it's raw form over and over then compare each pass for integrity. if the drive is passing the mangled data to the OS and correcting it on the fly (via ECC), then your drive just wont be able to read the audio cd's without those gaps and breaks.
so, in short, it's been a problem for a while.

Best format for archive?

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