HD video

[Guest]

Asking for a friend at the best possible place I guess.

He is using a HD video camera when he is on vacation. Back home he wants to transfer, cut and convert this video material.

Which way should he save the movies on
a) HDD
b) DVD and/or Blu-Ray

to get the best quality possible.

It's not a matter of money in his case.

Help will be very much appreciated.

[Guest]

No one does know?


[Image]

[BizarreLoveTriangle]

Hey, nice bump

Can't help much, though. I guess it depends on operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.) and personal preferences.

[Phuzzy4242]

Asking for a friend at the best possible place I guess.

He is using a HD video camera when he is on vacation. Back home he wants to transfer, cut and convert this video material.

Which way should he save the movies on
a) HDD
b) DVD and/or Blu-Ray

to get the best quality possible.

It's not a matter of money in his case.

Help will be very much appreciated.

HDD isn't the way to go - too expensive compared to discs, too fragile when a power surge or bumping the computer can ruin them, etc. DVD will eventually be as useless as 8" diskettes - not enough capacity - but the cost is very reasonable now. You can get an internal Lite-On dual-layer multi for $40 at WalMart.

HD DVD is like betamax after the videocassette wars - beta was better quality than VHS but the movie producers (especially 'adult entertainment' ) chose VHS because tapes were cheaper to manufacture. Today's movie studios have picked blu-ray, so to avoid having a player with nothing to play, and to be compatible with everyone else, that's the way to go. Prices are coming down, and capacity of 25, 50, 100, even 200 GB per disc is going to eventually be needed even for PC data. I recommend a blu-ray burner.

[BizarreLoveTriangle]

I thought the question was about encoding the video.

I've done some DVD's (and earlier SVCD's) and I know that some specific MPEG2 codec parameters need to be chosen to make the disc compatible with standard players. I don't have any experience with HD video and blu-ray yet.

If there is enough storage capacity, I would save raw DV. That has definitely the best quality and encoding can be re-done any time later.

[Guest]

Thanks to both of you, Phuzzy4242 and BizarreLoveTriangle.

I guess raw DV and authoring a blu-ray should fit his expectations

[loverboy]

I've never worked with DV input but I'm guessing we're talking significant file sizes that will need raw processing power & loads of memory for editing/encoding.
Unless your friend is producing material of a professional quality I would think Blu-Ray could be wasted. DVD's still have life in them & will play on virtually anything.

lb

[Guest]

I've never worked with DV input but I'm guessing we're talking significant file sizes that will need raw processing power & loads of memory for editing/encoding.
Unless your friend is producing material of a professional quality I would think Blu-Ray could be wasted. DVD's still have life in them & will play on virtually anything.

lb

So far I have understand him, he does want to play back the material in the same quality as recorded with the cam. He does want to keep the movies as files on the HDD and for backup he bought a blu-ray burner. I don't know the quality of his PC, but at least was very expensive.
lb, I'm the same opinion as you - with DVD, produced in high quality, he should be happy, sadly he's a bit of a dick.

[Phuzzy4242]

I've never worked with DV input but I'm guessing we're talking significant file sizes that will need raw processing power & loads of memory for editing/encoding.
Unless your friend is producing material of a professional quality I would think Blu-Ray could be wasted. DVD's still have life in them & will play on virtually anything.

lb

I agree that DVD's still have life in them, but how long will it be before they won't be big enough? There's no such thing as too much capacity - before long, the "high speed" of today will be like 300 baud dial-up of 30 years ago. I'm going to be the "Great Karnak" and predict multi-gigabit transfer speeds will be available to most homes, and we'll come to think of the HD quality of today like we do VHS rips.

Along with the improvements in comms speed and quality will be corresponding increase in file sizes, so higher-capacity media will be a must. I like DVD's now because I can put 5 or 6 full-length movies on each 4.3GB disc - blu-ray would crunch my 500+ discs down to one album.

My first hard drive in 1981 was 30 megabytes and was hot stuff at the time. Now, even a terabyte isn't enough. Eventually, blu-ray won't be enough either, but it's the leading thing right now. If you're going to spend the money anyway, it makes sense to buy high-end so you don't buy twice.

[emuler]

If you're going to spend the money anyway, it makes sense to buy high-end so you don't buy twice.

The flip side of that remark is the fact that hardware prices tend to come down, especially in things like DVD Writers. I personally remember buying a CD Writer many years ago for TEN times the current price of a DVD writer. (If you factor in inflation, think 15 times at least). So, the chances that you'll get a BluRay burner for half the current price next year are rather good.

If he can afford it, let him get a BluRay writer and use that for storing his videos in the format the camera puts out (he should of course make the appropriate settings in the camera to get the best quality output - largest file size). No harm done if his clips are not very large - he can put several clips on one BluRay disc just like you are currently doing with compressed movies on DVDs.

Word of caution: CDs, DVDs, BluRays etc. do go bad occasionally/ eventually. You put 500 movies on one disc and that disc goes bad... there's a big hole in your collection.