What size and media do you prefer backing up video to?

[napalm]

I'm not asking about codecs here. Back in the day a dvd movie would generally be backed up on 1 or 2 700mb cds. But now that dvd writers are so common and HD-DVD etc. is coming soon and HDD's getting bigger, is anything changing? What makes more sense, for example backing up a HD-DVD to a single sided DVDR (in xvid/avc etc.), or to an arbitrary size and keep it on the harddrive (for example 1GB or 2GB per movie...) or keeping multiple titles on a DVD-R in smaller size etc.? I want to know your preferences because I would like to start archiving soon in a way that I won't regret much... thanks.

[MrTroy]

As for DVD backups: writable DVDs are very cheap nowadays. Easiest option is just to backup DVD to DVD (mpeg2). For most movies you'll need to convert DVD-9 to DVD-5, but apps like DVDShrink simplify this process tremendously.

For HD backups: to get reasonable quality, you really need those 4,7 GiB. You can't, like you proposed, back up a HD movie to 1-2 GiB and still have good quality. If done correctly, however, it is possible to fit an HD movie on a single-layer DVD and still have a good 720p image.

[unmei]

Often i encode anime OVA series where a couple of episodes belong together, then i make the set approximately fit a full or half DVD.

For normal movies i encode them mostly to arbitrary sizes around 500 to 1500mb and buffer them on the harddrive in order to fill DVDs with a set of movies that match in genre/mood. Usually i get "thematic" DVDs with 3 to 6 movies this way.

(ps i have no HD sources)

[johnhamler1]

u can go with 700meg, if you want stereo or 1.3 gig with 5:1.

div x or xvid of course, and 4-5 movies on one dvd with .srt subtitle.


consider the weight of your collection in 5-10 years.
by chance in a few years(2-3 years), we will be able to put 15-20 movies on one blue ray disc.