To make a long story short, I've been dumping the contents of my parents MiniDV tapes over the years onto a NAS to ensure that the memories can live on if anything ever happened to the tapes.
Currently the import process involves using Windows Import Video Wizard and creating an AVI file with little (or no) compression. This means that a 30 minute clip weighs in at ~10 GB once everything is said and done.
In order to reduce the size of these files, but preserve the quality of the original tape (including fast moving scenes, etc.) what codec or encoding settings would you recommend?
Thanks in advance.
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Thanks for the advice.
For the time being I've been using Adobe Media Encoder to convert them from the raw AVI file to MP4, with the bitrate optimized for Apple TV at 480p. I figured that it was pointless to go above that since that's the highest MiniDV could push out anyway, right?
Also, do you mind if I ask what you use to encode with? Adobe's offering is alright, but seems to lack a lot of the fine tuning that MediaCoder seemed to have (from what I recall).
Yeah there's not much point in going above 480p. That is right about the same resolution as DV videos.
My personal favorite encoder is Quicktime Pro. It costs $30 dollars sadly but then you can export any unprotected video openable in Quicktime to one of many formats. Also it lets me configure the exporting to satisfy my needs. If you are going to use Quicktime make sure you check "Use high quality video setting when available". Its an option under Properties.
The most important setting when outputting to mp4 is whether you are using the H.264 compression or using MPEG-2 compression. H.264 is supposedly twice as efficient as storing videos but takes longer. Also H.264 produces a different kind of artifact in overcompressed videos, vertical "waves", which can sometimes be annoying.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: Thomas4019Posted on 2009-07-13 at 10:41:53ID: 24842017
I've personally been using the same compression when i import them. This is because if you plan to edit the videos, most software likes "non compressed avi" much more than any compressed format.
The two encodings i would recommend if you want to compress them,
1. MPEG-2, the DVD standard encoding format.
2. MP4, the iPod video standard. Now practically the standard for online video downloading.
No matter which encoding format you use, make sure you use a high "bit rate" to minimize compression artifacts.
I would not compress them more than DVDs which is 5GB - 8GB for every 2 hours.