Question on using DVD+RW/DVD-R for archiving home movies. (1 Viewer)

[Travis Hedger]

Well well well, DVD+RW drives and such are becoming very very affordable now and I believe I will probably snatch one up by this summer.

I have a relatively simple quesetion. I have about 8 Digital 8 tapes which I know I can import using Firewire and do a straight conversion to DVD-Video format to play in my settop player.

My question is would I be able to use these DVD+RW discs then as sources for new video compilations from my home movies. Say I have a few minutes of 1 video on one of the DVD's and so much on another, it should be relatively simple to extract the clips needed, splice and burn to a new DVD right?

 

[Mike_G]

Not really. I mean, you CAN, but it's like asking if you can use a cake to extract the eggs originally used to make it. One you make a DVD, you have to 'unmake' it to get the original data back. Once the data's compressed (using a lossy format, remember), you don't get the same quality back as you would if you used the original tapes.

Mike

 

[Mike Sogge]

Can current DVD players even read DVD~RW formats? I don't forsee DVD~RW being too useful, similar to what CD-RW seems to be. Expensive media, long reburn times, less compatibility, etc.

 

[Jeff Engel]

I have the Pioneer DVR-A03 and what Mike G said is true. DVR-R/RW, not to be confused with DVD+RW is the 'defacto' DVD format right now. These are the only ones you can make dvd's of and watch them on a regular DVD player. DVD+RW can only be seen on a DVD+RW drive.

When you burn your data to a dvd you might as well consider it gone as far as using it to create again. It's just like his analogy of rextracting eggs from cake...can't be done. Well..that's not entirely true as you can get some of the data back from a disc but not enough to make it an even worthwhile attempt. Data loss from compression would make it unwatchable. If you want to preserve your data you need to burn a DVD data disc to hold the raw material, then transfer it to your hard drive to work with then when it's all done you burn your final dvd copy. This will preserve your "Masters" in their original large data form for use again and again. The only downside is that you need twice as many DVD-r discs. The other solution is to save all your data to your hard drive and archive it that way. This is not the safest way of course if you have a hard drive failure. You could buy an external firewire hard drive, which is what I have to store your data, that way you only turn it on when you need to use it, not every time the PC boots. Not much safer but a little better.

Jeff

 

[Travis Hedger]

Great replies guys.

DVD-R's and such are coming down in price and I can't wait to jump in.

When the DVR-A03 came out last April it was $999. That same drive is listed on Pricwatch now for $379.

I now know what to do. Store the raw data to a seperate DVD for my master video and then I can extract that data for whatever sequences that I want. And the freeing up of about 15 Digital 8 tapes would save the $$$ from having to purchase more of them.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Hang on a minute... DVD+RW is supposed to be the most compatible format of them all right now, not the least. Someone is confused here, and I don't think it's me, for a change.

When the DVD+RW Alliance set up the standards for the DVD+RW and DVD+R formats, they included compatibility with existing DVD-Video players and DVD-ROM drives as a key requirement into the specification. DVD+R/+RW is the only format that was build from scratch to be compatible with DVD and to act as a logical -compatible- addition to the popular DVD system.

The above taken from a random site I found when searching on the topic, http://www.dvdplusrw.org/video/comparison.html

 

[Christopher Collins]

IN order to get your home movies onto a dvd in a format that can be read by a dvdplayer you will need to convert the video from the firewire / VD format to MPEG2. After you have it in mpeg2 format you can use DVD authoring software to make a DVD with some simple buttons, which will allow playback. The DVD software is comparable to EZCD Creator in that it provides you an interface for compiling and burning your projects to disk. It is very much like creating a VCD. I am not aware of any free tools, which do DVD very well.
You will need to either purchase software like Sonic DVD IT. Found here Link Removed or purchase a capture and editing solution that comes bundled with the software. Pinnacle Systems / Canopus and Matrox all offer some mid ranged products that will do this. If you are looking to do it on the cheap I think that some of the Dazzle hardware is now supporting mpeg2 and DVD. Please keep in mind that like anything else in life you get what you pay for.
You are probably looking at $500 for the drive and $500+ for a capture card that might come bundled with the software. The capture cards will also allow you to edit the video and do things like color correction or adding credits in real-time. These cards usually come with adobe premiere and have hardware support for the native file format that the video is captured in.
You could also use a cheaper software editing solution like UleadMedia Studio Pro. This software does editing and file format conversions. It does not need any hardware to do this. The speed of your system will greatly impact your pleasure using this product. Editing video in DV or Mpeg2 format is going to be pretty taxing on any system that does not use hardware acceleration of the format.
Unless you really want to take the dive for over $1000 I would honestly recommend taking the tapes down to a professional to have them transferred to DVD. Sony even offers a service at $49 a disk. Im not sure about the turn around on the Sony service but you probably wont be able to beat the price anywhere.
For pure storage yo DO NOT WANT TO USE DVDRW. The archival properties of RW disks is horrible. If you wanted to archive the video information you would want to compress it to mpeg2 (native dvd format) and leave it that way. Burn it to a dvdr. DV Video is 25mbits per second. You would use many many many dvds to backup 8 full tapes at full quality DV. You might want to look into having the info transfered to a high quality DLT. 40-80 GB of data will fit on one tape. DLT archives great to boot.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

If you wanted to archive your video in "raw" form as DV files burned to DVD-R (as a DVD-ROM data disc), you wouldn't be able to fit more than about 20 minutes on each disc.
That's not quite a random web site, Kimmo, it's the web site by the people who created DVD+RW, so of course they're going to toot the horn for DVD+RW.
At www.vcdhelp.com searching their compatibility list shows 251 DVD player models that are said to be able to play DVD-R, 99 players that can play DVD-RW, and 183 players that can play DVD+RW.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

DV takes up 3.5MBps, or a a gig every 4.5min or so.

so you'd be able to get about 20min of DV onto a DVD-R

 

[Kevin Coleman]

Why not just get one of the STB DVD recorders that are out now? There is supposed to be a new one from Panasonic coming out soon that will street under 500.00 I tried an A03 Pioneer drive back in August and it was a PITA. You have to have a very fast computer to be able to encode the MPEG 2 at a reasonable rate. I sold mine and decide to wait on the STB versions.
Kevin C.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

when you say "fast computer", what are you thinking of?

I have a P3-900 with 392 RAM and 80 GB free HD space, on ATA-100. Would the A03 work in such a system?

 

[Jeff Engel]

Yes that's plenty enough. You don't need a super fast computer to burn DVDs, only to work with the raw material. Mixing video with transitions and sound takes alot of processing power. What you have is fine, my wife uses a PIII 866 with 256mb ram and hers does fine.

Jeff

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Sure a P3 800-900 is fast enough for video editing, but it's the MPEG encoding that Kevin was complaining about. It takes many hours to encode just one hour of high quality video. The effort, the time, and the cost of the blank media means burning a DVD just isn't as casual as burning a CD.