Backup AVI files

[Metallo]

Hi guys and Happy New Year to all!

I'm busy converting my old Video 8 cassettes into DV-AVI files with the final purpose to put everything on DVD.
I came out with more than 600 GB, which is what I expected.
Now, this was quite a long process and I'd like to keep these "master files" forever.
In order to reduce the disc space, I thought to compress them in a lossless format, the first idea was to use a backup sw like Acronis Image Backup.
Do you think this is a good option?

Any better idea or sw more specific for this job?

Thank you for your help
Alex

[LoRd_MuldeR]

At first I think that you will not be able to further "shrink" your DV files by convertig to a lossless format. DV already is a lossy format, it works very much like MJPEG (compressing each single Frame to a JEPG image). Furthermore putting the files into archives (like Zip, Rar, 7z, etc.) or using a Backup tool won't make the video files smaller at all! All you could use such tools for, is making a Backup of your HDD and splitting it to several CDs/DVDs. But 600 GB would required about 128 DVD-Rs. Obviously not the way to go...

In your case I'd re-encode the DV files with a more efficient format. At least MPEG-4 (XviD, DivX, etc.) or better H.264 (x264, Nero Digital). This way you can get files that are a lot smaller without too much quality loss. Of course re-encoding always means quality loss, but if you choose correct settings, you won't notice the difference and still get smaller files...

[foxyshadis]

You might want to test these xvid settings, which are about as close to lossless as xvid gets (in fact, it's higher quality than DV), by importing this configuration into the registry: Xvid EHR (http://foxyshadis.slightlydark.com/random/xvid-lossless.reg)

This will decrease bitrate to about 3/4 of DV, but editing will be somewhat slower. By enabling b-frames, you can lower size to about 1/2 of DV, but some editors do not like b-frames at all, even with packed bitstream. It will be rather slow, though, on a P3. If you're willing to go from nearly lossless to only roughly transparent, you can use another matrix (ie, UHR) and further decrease size, but as you captured into DV I suppose that isn't your intent.