Archiving to CD

[wkulecz]

Bottom Line.

Hi8 ~ D8 = DV ~ 13GB/hr

CDROM ~ 0.65GB

IMHO, no lossy compression scheme is in any way suitable for "achiving". (we'll ignore that DV is a "lossy compression" of the raw digital video data).

MPEG2 with variable bitrate encoding as used on DVD gets you down to ~ 2GB/hr so if you can tolerate 15-20 minute clips, you can get an hour on 3 or 4 CDs with a quality worth saving that might meet some definitions of "archival" although your play back device choices are pretty limited right now.

Unfortunately there is no good solution right now.

--wally.

[wkulecz]

Doc,

I tried your MPEG1 VBR parameters in TMPGEnc. A 52 second DV clip was 11 MB. Using the VCD template was 8.6 MB. Quality difference was not clearly noticable in a dinky 352x240 window. 200% zoom clearly showed that vbr was better than the standard VCD encoding and either was much better than the Ligos VCD template in MSP6.

Unfortunately the VBR file would not play back smoothly full screen. Either VCD format played full screen fine and it was no contest, TMPGEnc blew away the MSP bundled Ligos. OTOH, MSP bundled Ligos blew away TMPGEnc on speed.

However, I question the utility of spending a lot of effort encoding video into a format with somewhat "iffy" playback posibilities.

No gaurentee that Medial Player 9+ will play vbr MPEGs at all. At least VCD is a standard that can paly in some standalone DVD units.

The results were encouraging enough that I will look into the SVCD encoding scheme which, again, at least some stand alone DVD players can read.


Can TMPGEnc read files bigger than 2/4GB on windows 2000?

--wally.

[wkulecz]

Probably should start another thread, but in case anyone is still reading, I can answer one of my own questions.

TMPGEnc can indeed read DV files >4GB and convert the output to VCD format MPEG1 on windows 2000. I simply picked the VCD template, set motion estimation to highest setting, and set the source file as a 5.55GB DV file. All 27+ minutes of it seems to have encoded fine.

Is it just me, or do these MPEG1 files look better when played back in WinDVD instead of Media Player (windowed or full screen) on the same computer?

So know we know TMPG can encode from bigger than 4GB files on NTFS, can it output them?

--wally

[bongo]

What "VCD template"? software..what?

[wkulecz]

When you install TMPGEnc there is a directory called "Template" containing preset files with the names for various "standard" encodings and the extension .mcf

These are important because there are a lot more poor sets of settings values than "good" ones.

When you start TMPGEnc the load button at the bottom right of the window pops up a view for this directory and opening a .mcf file sets up TMPGEnc for that encoding format.

Other than changing motion estimation from the the middle value to the highest, I never tried anything else until I tried Doc's vbr MPEG1 settings. Results are noticable better than standard VCD but I'm not sure its worthwhile to produce an MPEG1 file that can only be read on a computer.

--wally.

[TnT]

When you guys do CD archiving remember to save the codecs you use to CD too. I'm about to do some archiving too, and I don't want anyone stuck with a bunch of CDs, but nothing to play them back in the future.

[wkulecz]

Saving the codec is a decent idea, but for "archiving" you will be SOL if the future has us running 64-bit "Qtinium" CPUs that are not binary compatable with old 80x386 windows code.

ISO "standands" like MPEG1 VCD, SVCD, MPEG2 vbr, MJPEG and DV are safer but only if there is more profit in supporting the standards than in selling us something "new".

IMHO, only DV, MJPEG, or MPEG2 are of a quality worth "archiving" but these are too big for CD-R. Its fun to play with this stuff now, but keep your original tapes properly stored until DVD-R gets cost effective.


When was the last time you tried to read an "archived" WordStar document off an 8" floppy? Does the hardware and software to do it even exist? in a computer museam? In the future decoding your DivX file may as difficult. While "digital" makes for "perfect copies" the hardware and software needed to read it disappears at an alarming rate on an archival time scale.

--wally.

[Captain Marvel]

I would think to archive something would mean to preserve it as much as possible for a long time. Wouldn't it be better storing it on cd's in as original form as possible instead of compressing the hell out of it with mtehods that mat not be around for very long(hopefully).CD's dont cost that much do they??