Format of AVI file

[avin]

I have a 98 min DV footage that I want to convert, however my HD space is kind of lacking. I have about 13GB free over two drives, and this is not enough to store the captured AVI. So I capture in sections and resize to reduce the size (to SVCD), however this still isn't enough to store the footage.

I'm thinking about using other codecs other than the DV codec to reduce the size. I've looked at huffyuv, however this produces pretty big filesizes as well. Divx seems like a possibility, but does this degrade picture quality even at high bitrates? The max I can set it at is 6000kbps, which will produce a file of 1.2 gig for my footage.

I'm eventually encoding to SVCD, which is only ~2400kbps .. is this a bad idea?

Are there better codecs to use as an intermediary format?

[Guest]

Making quality sacrifices because of a lack of hard disk space will sound very silly to most people here. Can't you buy a bigger hard drive, clear some content temporarily off to tape, add a hard drive, or install a removable drive carrier? If you're not willing to do something to get space for your video, then you're not really serious about things and you should just go ahead and use DivX at maximum quality.

[avin]

Well, I've cleaned up all I can; my bro's and my computer are running on bare minimums. And believe it or not, I'm not working so I can't afford a HD .. I wonder if they rent HDs for a day? :)

[Neo Neko]

Divx or Xvid even could be good here. It will not be quite as good as if you went from DV or HuffYUV straight to SVCD. But if you keep it at a high enough bitrate you should be able to minimise any MPEG or macroblocking noise. BTW it seems as if Divx5 has a max BR of 10Mbps. I would recommend testing your settings before doing the whole thing in Divx5 though. Not everything is working properly and some of the settings can cause artifacts. :(

[avin]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
It will not be quite as good as if you went from DV or HuffYUV straight to SVCD.

Why is it bad going from DV straight to SVCD? I thought that the DV AVI would have the best quality (apart from the original on tape) so it would be the best format to go to SVCD.