Home Movie Film Transfer File Format

What file format should I request for my home movie film transfers? I want to both archive the films in high definition and edit with Premiere Elements 8. Disc space is not a problem.

The commercial movie transfer companies are recommending HD AVI, AVI Black Magic, Motion JPEG (which they say are equivalent), and not MPEG-2. I didn't know that AVI could be 1440x1080. Can you give me some examples of 1440x1080 non-square pixel file names or could you refer me to an information source so I would know what I am talking about when I talk with them?

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Converting home movies to apple tv format

One more question, please.
I converted my 1280 x 720 home movies to Apple TV format in iTunes and they were "downrezzed" to 960 x 540.
Why? And can I avoid this somehow?

I wouldn't worry about it. many people are concerned about the resolution without giving a thought to datarate. Your tv is limited to the bitrate it can play, at a fixed bitrate a 1280 x 720 movie will have less info per pixel (macroblock-technically) than a 960 x 540 so whilst there are more pixels in 1280 x 720 those in the 960 x 540 movie are higher quality and there is little difference, indeed my tests generally show 960 x 540 to be slightly better.
You could reduce the frame rate of 1280 x 720 to allow it to play on the tv, but this will likely introduce jittery motion.

How do I get my home movies and avi files to play on my ipad 3?

How do I get my home movies and avi files to play on my ipad 3?

1) Download a third party player on the iPad, such as avplayerhd or cinexplayer. Search app store for AVI and read some reviews.
2) Convert the files in a program such as handbrake, mpegstreamclip on the pc and import them.
3) Download air video from the app store, install the server software on the pc and stream away.
Take your pick.

Home Movies to Apple TV Format ?

I had 67 reels of 8mm film spanning 25 years scanned in which created about 4.5 hours of video. I used iMovie and iDVD to create 3 DVDs with about 1.5 hours of video on each. I have chapters for every different part of the films resulting in about 90 chapters over 3 DVDs. Now I want all this content in iTunes and available in Apple TV. I'm not sure the best format so I'm looking for recommendations before I spend 672 hours converting these. So far I could:
1) Put all 4.5 hours into one movie and have 90 chapters. I think this would be hard to find the chapters that I want using the current Apple TV software, and one large file might be harder to manage.
2) Split the movie up into 90 individual movies by chapter. This would make finding a chapter very easy since it would be the title of the movie. Having 90 movies in the Apple TV movie section would be really bad since Apple TV can't currently group movies.
3) Break the movies up into say three movies, with about 30 chapters each. This seams like a crappy compromise.
4) I could have 90 movies, one per chapter, like option #2, but I could make them TV shows and episodes. That way with the current Apple TV software I could group them all as 90 episodes under one TV show which is easier to manage. I sort of liked this but I could not get my sample movies to show up as iTunes as TV shows even after changing the metadata to say they were TV shows. Am I missing something here ?
Has anybody done this or can you offer any suggestions ?

I wouldn't worry about it. many people are concerned about the resolution without giving a thought to datarate. Your tv is limited to the bitrate it can play, at a fixed bitrate a 1280 x 720 movie will have less info per pixel (macroblock-technically) than a 960 x 540 so whilst there are more pixels in 1280 x 720 those in the 960 x 540 movie are higher quality and there is little difference, indeed my tests generally show 960 x 540 to be slightly better.
You could reduce the frame rate of 1280 x 720 to allow it to play on the tv, but this will likely introduce jittery motion.

FCHX - External data transfer file format

FCHX - External data transfer creates a one line row of AP checks. I need to convert this flat file to bank format specifications. I have a program to do this. My problem is how do I convert the one line row into multiple line rows so I can use this in my conversion program.

Hi Kotta
What for you have created structure? is it for BP or IO or CA?
These are the Std structures provided by SAP for loading master data:
rkct994 - BCA Insurance SENDER
rkct995 - Insurance Object
rkct996 - Contract Data
rkct997 - Partner Data SENDER
All these structures contains AKTYP field in it.
Can you post more details.

HD - Motion JPEG-A vs Animation for home movies transferred to video ?

Hi,
A vendor offers a "1560x1080p HD" transfer of home movie film to one of 4 formats.
We'd like to preserve as much useful information as possible in case the very old film deteriorates, but also would consider editing in future. The choices:
High Definition Quicktime Motion JPEG-A - 50GB per hour
High Definition Quicktime Component video ~ 290GB per hour
High Definition Quicktime Animation ~ 370GB per hour
High Definition Quicktime Raw ~ 490GB per hour
They suggest Motion JPEG-A as a "a very good compromise between high quality images and a reasonable data rate" for most users."
To my eye (on a 21" computer screen) their 2 second clips look about the same (but the source doesn't seem very sharp). My 2009 iMac doesn't seem to choke on playing 2 second clips of each format.
Any help in choosing which format to order would be appreciated.

As far as the codecs, my unschooled tendency has been to avoid lossy compression when possible. (I always keep an original TIFF (LZW) image when converting to JPEG for import to PPT...)
This is fine if you have sufficient disk space available. However, there is quite a range of data rates here. Motion JPEG would allow about 19 hours of content to be stored per TB of storage space available while RAW reduces that amount to less than 2 hours. Since it is likely you would want to use this format for long-term archival storage, whatever drive(s) you you use to hold the data would be, more or less, "dedicated" to this purposed for as long as you intend to hold onto the data. Further, it you want to protect the data by RAID redundancy, these storage capacities could be reduced by as much as half-- i.e., less than one hour of RAW content per TB of drive space to less than 10 hours of RAW compressed video. So one very important question is how many hours of content are you talking about and how many drives/drive systems are you willing to dedicate to the non-temporary storage of your content.
I have no video editing experience (outside of fumbling with MPEG Streamclip).
MPEG Streamclip is a very handy utility and works fine for cutting and merging segments. However, if you plan to add titles, transitions, layer addition sound tracks, work with theme styles, or apply "motion" effects, then you will likely want to do your editing in a dedicated video editing app. And, since iMovie is probably already available to you on your current system, it would likely be something you will "play" with at some time or another in conjunction with the content mentioned. Hover, if this is the case, you will not want to re-compress the files for editing in the iMovie '08 (or later) app. As previously mentioned, the "new" version of iMovie does not like the Animation codec. And, which it will accept and "edit" the content, when exported by iMovie, it produces a "black" display output and would not, therefor be a viable option for "native" iMovie editing. (Am assuming Apple still has not "fixed" this problem in the most recently released update but have not personally checked on this since this version only runs on an Intel platform and I do most of my editing on an old PPC G5 model.) Again, just a "heads up" in case you plan to go this route.
Current use of the transferred film might be to trim/edit segments to burn standard SD DVDs. I suppose the most far-out use of these 1080p files would be to make HD Bluray discs - in a future where both my Mac has a burner and my TV a player.
As previously indicated, SD DVDs would most likely limit your final encodings to 720x480 MPEG-2/AC3 or MPEG-2/PCM burns, any of the stated target compression formats would more than suffice. Further, even a 50 GB/hour format equates to something on the order of 110 Mbps or about 8 times what is typically used for SD Motion JPEG and should, as indicated, provide adequate "headroom" for "visual perception" equivalents. (I.e., your final quality will likely depend more on the quality of your source films than on the codec you select.) In fact, if the source fils are of really good quality, you may even be able to create short HD videos and burn them to DVD using the latest version of Toast. Of course, you would still need an HD player to view them. (There are, however, other issues with color sampling/space which may or may not be significant to you.)
In my case, the ease of work flow is just as important as the quality of the final product. The MJPEG format, in addition to requiring less non-temporary storage space (i.e., fewer drives/systems), also is, I believe, one of the formats that "thumbnail" most quickly in iMovie (and/or GarageBand). This may or may not be important to you as far as editing goes. As previously stated, it is also a video format that is native edit compatible with all versions of iMovie. As such, given what you've said thus far, I would lean toward recommending it as the more suitable compression format at this point.

Best file format for 8mm home movie conversion

Hi there,
I'm about to get some old 'standard' 8mm home movies from the 60s & 70s converted to DVD as a Christmas gift for my mum.
The transfer company will also supply the footage as files to view/edit on my mac at a later date. I'm a complete iMovie novice so my question is, which file format should I choose?
They're offering AVI, MPEG 4, WMV, .MOV or Pro Res files.
Many thanks in advance for your help...
Jon Howard
PS I'm running iMovie '08 (7.1.4) & OS X 10.6.8 on an intel 13" macbook in the UK (PAL area).

Pro Res in potentially the best, but you would need Final Cut Pro, not iMovie, to edit it.
It is difficult to advise you without knowing the technology they are using. Are they capturing in High Definition progressive or Standard Definition interlaced?
I found a US company that would scan the 8MM at 1080P. They provided the files in Motion JPEG format. This proved to work great in iMovie.
If they are doing Standard Definition, I would say go for DV if they can. MOV is generally good, but MOV is a container, not a codec, so it depends on what is inside it.
Here is a post where I discussed the results.
Here is a link to the company that did it. http://www.mymovietransfer.com/
Here is a sample of the results. Watch in full screen if you can.

Which file format (.avi or .mpeg) is best to edit home movies in iMovie

I am having VHS and Hi/Digital-8 home movies converted to digital files and saved on an external hard drive. I am a novice video editor & Mac user. I plan to edit the movies for personal use. The company I sent my original tapes to only converts to either .avi or .mpeg4. What is my best option?

I have this question too! Surely there is someone out there who can help!?

How can I convert a home movie on dvd(vob file) to edit on imovie?

I had home movies converted to a dvd- the files are vob. Now I want to edit the movies in imovie.
I am having a difficult time converting from vob straight to mov files.
I purchased Quick Time Pro thinking that could do it, but I haven't been able to.
Also, it just says QuickTime Player Version 7.6.4 (518.35) on my computer.
Is it supposed to say QuickTIme Pro?
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

The "Pro" option just unlocks a lot of features in QuickTime Player. If you look at the registration info, it will show if you have Pro installed.
For converting DVD's you have two options; hardware or software.
The hardware option involves connecting a DVD player's analog outputs to a qualified "DV device" (DV camcorder, VTR or converter) then connecting the DV device's Firewire port to your Mac to capture the footage.
The software option involves using an application like DVDxDV or MPEG Streamclip to convert the DVD's VOB files into an editable format that works natively with your chosen NLE.
-DH

I need to know the best, safest way to convert video for Mac. I just had home movies converted to a DVD format a realize now that I need another step to burn them to my computer.

I just had home movies converted to a DVD format a realize now that I need another step to burn them to my computer. This is for a Christmas present! Help.

I don't think you need to use a ripper program to read a home movie DVD. Those are primarily for copy-protected commercial DVDs, right?
I think you just need to transcode the DVD files using a utility like Handbrake, which is free and fast.
http://handbrake.fr/details.php

Uploaded home movies revert to the original file name when added to iTunes?

I have Home Video files that I have renamed from the original file names. When I add these files to iTunes, the files revert to the original file name at the time the file was created. How can I add these files to iTunes with the new file name without having to rename every Home Movie that has been added?

OK I have done some more work and think i have the issue resolved. The problem lies with file formats specifically .mp4 and .m4v
I suspect the files you are importing are mp4 files. When I do this i get the same behaviour of file names changing their name after playback. When i convert my files to m4v format and import the issue disappears.

I have Home Movies from iMovie to back-up. What format for external drive?

Hello,
I have Home Movies imported into iMovie 11 on my iMac 3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.
I am saving the cpmleted movie projects onto an external hard disc. A Seagate 1TB.
I have had problems with file sizes as I keep getting the message that a movie project is too large for the medium. It seems that I can't store anything in HD.
I've looked at the disc and it's formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32)
Am I right that this imposes a maximum file size that I can save?
If so I have looked at the Disc Utility on my iMac and I can see that I can reformat the external drive.
I have a choice of -
Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, journaled)
MS-DOS(FAT) is this the same as MS-DOS (FAT32) it already is formatted as?
ExFAT
Windows NT Filesystem (Tuxera NTFS)
I'm guessing I should choose the MAC OS Extended (jounaled) or the Mac OS Extended (Case- sensitive, journaled)?
The Seagate Hard Drive is model SRDOSPO
I don't understand the differences between the above formats and would like help on chosing the right one for my Home Movies.
I also have an Apple TV3 which I use to watch the movies on my tv.
Are the home movies stored both in the iTunes file on my iMac, so I can see them via AppleTV, and the external hard drive.
If so can I just use the external hard drive without having these large files filling my iMac disc?
Hope that all makes sense.

The difference between case sensitive and non-case sensitive is self-explanatory. Non-case sensitive iis easier to work with as it can avoid confusion with files names.
The others are weird and wonderful/partly useless Microsoft formats only of interest to Windows users, or those who want to have both Apple OS and Windows on the same computer. Not all of them can be read by a Mac at all, some of them have inconvenient file size limitations.
More info here:
http://formatharddrive.net/types-of-hard-drive-formats.html
Message was edited by: Klaus1

Import Analog 8mm Home Movies thru ADVC 110 NEED LOSS LESS Format -IMovie8

Works fine however Import defaults to an .mv4 file.
Is this a Loss Less Format and if not is IMovie8 capable of a Loss Less type format like IMovie dv or similar.
if So how do I change the setting to get the highest quality import of my old analog 8mm home movies ?
Thank You
Daniel

Hi
You don't use iMovie'08 or 09 but iMovie HD 6 or FinalCut.
iMovie'08 & 09 discard every second line when importing interlaced video.
(Or when exporting it out to DVD at least - Not my favourite for intelaced (normal TV/and miniDV tape) material)
Yours Bengt W

How do I convert my DVD home movies (NTSC format) to mpeg 4 format??

3 yrs ago I had my home movies (super 8) onto DVDS (NTSC format.
I would like to convert to mpeg4 so that I can import into imovie and Quicktime player 10
I just installed Snow Leopard 10.6

I would recommend that you convert the DVDs to Apple Intermediate Codec, then edit your movies, then share the final movie in mpeg4 (h.264). This will preserve the most quality. However, the method I will describe will also work to convert your DVD directly into MPEG4.
1) Download and install the Apple MPEG2 QuickTime Component ($20) - available online from Apple.
2) Download and install MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 (free).
3) Start MPEG Streamclip
4) Insert your DVD into your Mac. If DVD Player or Front Row starts automatically quit those.
5) Open a Finder window. Navigate to your DVD to the Video_TS folder.
6) Drag the .VOB files from the Video_TS folder and drop then into MPEG Streamclip.
7) If MPEG Streamclip offers to fix timecode breaks, say yes.
8) Use FILE/EXPORT USING QUICKTIME to convert the files to Apple Intermediate Codec (or h.264 if you prefer)
9a) Optional: You can deinterlace your footage in this step, if you like
9b) optional: If you know the date and or time of the footage, name your file
clip-yyyy-mm-dd hh;mm;ss
(let mpeg streamclip provide the extension). This will provide metadata that iMovie will use to put the event in the right year and month.
9c) Optional: If you don't want to make one huge clip out of your DVD, you can make smaller clips by using MPEG Streamclip. Move the cursor to the "in" point of the clip, and press i. Move the cursor to the "Out" point of the clip, and press o. Then do steps 8 through 10 and repeat until you have done this for all clips you want.
10) Save the resulting file in a place where you can find it, like your Desktop.
11) Open iMovie.
12) In iMovie, choose FILE/IMPORT/From File and choose the file you saved in steps 8, 9, 10.
13) iMovie will generate thumbnails and you can edit.

Software to convert home movie format to DV format

I want to import home movies on DVD (which I transferred from VHS and Hi8 to DVD) into Imovie. I was told by applecare that I need software to convert the format. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Hello Susan,
in order to be recognized by iMovie you have to convert your footage into DV format.
check out Matti Haveri's website: How can I edit MPEG or convert DVD or MPEG to DV
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/%7Eshmhav/SVCDon_a_Macintosh.html#edit_convertMPEG
Helpful Tools:
MPEG Streamclip (freeware): can convert/demux mpeg2 and VOB files into DV. It can also be used to edit/trim and multiplex/de-multiplex mpeg files
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html
Apple MPEG2 PlayBack ($20):
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
DVDxDV: ($25) can convert DVD-disks, VIDEO_TS folders and .VOB files to DV-encoded .mov files.
http://www.dvdxdv.com/
FFmpegX ($15): can also convert .VOB or .mpg to .dv.
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/
DropDV ($40): can convert MPEG1 and MPEG2 streams to .dv.
http://www.dropdv.com/
DIVA (freeware): is a fast and powerful converter/encoder
http://diva.3ivx.com/
hope this helps
mish

Home Movie Film Transfer File Format

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