Video techies in here...

[unvmyrs]

Ok, I am trying to take my home movies and put them on a hard drive, or even DVD's. My problem is, that when I dub my movies from my video camera, Panasonic Mini DV, the AVI files are HUGE. a 30 something minute clip is around 7 gigs. I know a bit when it comes to this, but I am confused as to why these are so huge. Can anyone provide some insight for me? Thanks in advance.

[Bonemaro]

Re: Video techies in here...

Yup... DV runs about 14GB an hour. The native NTSC DV codec uses a 5:1 compression with a resolution of 720 x 480 at 29.97 fps. It runs a CBR of 25Mbps, so that's just the way it is.

What are you using that can convert the to a different format? I have Adobe's CS4 and can use the media encode to create just about any format. You can make an MPEG2 DVD file that runs anywhere from 3-8 Mbps. Somewhere in the middle of this road would yield you a 90-110 minute video on a standard 4.7GB (4.3) DVD.

There's also a ton of Quicktime .mov variants you can create and the H.264 stuff is pretty nice. That's getting you into HD Bluray compression.

Wait until you do a 4:2:2 10 bit DVCPRO-HD capture at 1080p. That'll eat up about 525GB an hour. LOL

Any help? Please ask if you have questions.

[ssms5411]

Re: Video techies in here...

Theres external hard drives you can get well over 600 GB for about $100. I have a 560 GB external hard drive to back up my files and music, works great.