Archiving analog videos in digital format

[rewbs]

Hi all,

I'd like to help a charity organisation that has a whole pile of analog videos they want to convert to digital format, so as to easily be able to edit them, distribute specific chunks to journalists, re-compress particular scenes for publishing online etc...

Does anyone have any experience doing something similar? I have a few questions:

1. What format would you recommend archiving in, considering that it must be possible to edit the video on macs and pcs?

Initially I though mpeg2 would be best as:
. It's nice and standard
. A harware encoder could do the conversion in a (relative) flash

But then I realised DivX could be a good option too as:
. It is getting nice and standard these days too.
. It would give better compression for equivalent quality. If I could get 1-2h per 700MB CD that would be great.
. It will takes ages to encode with my PC, but an mpeg2 hardware encoder would cost loads anyway.

I'm a newb so I'm sure I'm not taking all factors into account. What do you reckon?


2. If I understand correctly, neither of these format would let you easily cut the video exactly where you want, due to P/B/I-frame business. Is this correct? Isn't there any editing software capable of generating a keyframe at the point were you want to cut? If not, I guess neither of these formats are suitable for this purpose. Would a lossless format like HuffYuv be the only solution? I imagine 50+ hours of HuffYuv could get hard to manage size-wise...


3. Finally, from reading some guides it seems the best idea (for ultimate quality and to reduce any risk of audio de-sync) would be to use the Canopus ADVC-100 to capture the video (assuming I don't fork out for a HW mpeg2 encoder), and then follow doom9 guides to get it from Canopus' format into something more accessible. Does that sound about right?


cheers,
rewbs.

[jggimi]

Hello, rewbs, and ... well, should I say welcome to the forum? This was your first post, but you registered two and a half years ago! Wow!

Your series of questions raise some additional issues you should consider.

I don't know how much a "whole pile" of videos makes. But you apparently want to leave the video in an editable digital format. This will consume massive amounts of information storage.

There are a whole series of compression technologies that make video editing manageable. HuffYUV is a lossless compression technology, and there are various other codecs that can be set to be lossless or "nearly lossless." Lossless compression is helpful when editing, because there is no quality degredation -- no loss -- through the editing process. But lossless / nearly lossless technologies still consume a great deal of space. Actual compression varies, of course: Expect approximately 6-8 GB for every 10 minutes of full resolution capture with HuffYUV. Expect approximately 2-4 GB for every 10 minutes of MJPEG Q19. Expect approximately 2 GB for every 10 minutes of DV.DV is not as "nearly lossless" as MJPEG, but depending upon how big your "whole pile" is, you may want to invest in a digital camcorder and store your unedited sources on miniDV tape. There are plenty of consumer-grade DV editing tools available for the PC and the MAC, and your volunteers may be much more comfortable using those and creating VCD/SVCD/DVD right from the tool, without having to know a lot about digital video technology, formats, file structures, or video disc authoring techniques.

If no editing is needed, your organization could aquire a consumer standalone DVD burner that captures analog video.

MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (DivX, or another MPEG-4 codec) are both acceptable compression technologies for storage after editing, though the consumer tools are usually designed to create MPEG-1/2 video discs. For example, I use Ulead VideoStudio to edit DV home video, and it can directly and automatically create and burn all sorts of video discs, but it's very cumbersome to use for encoding .avi files.

Your MPEG research is correct; because P-frames and B-frames depend upon information in an I-frame, splices are normally performed in front of an I-frame (also called a Keyframe).

A couple of additional points to consider:

...But then I realised DivX could be a good option too...Realize that tools for encoding DivX on the MAC lag the PC. See www.divx.com for details.

DivX might make a fine technology for your final storage environment, but, as I mentioned above, it and other MPEG (1/2/4) options may not be as suitable for pre-edit video storage.

...Isn't there any editing software capable of generating a keyframe at the point were you want to cut? Yes, I understand there are commercial MPEG-2 editors that do this. But I've never used them, and can make no recommendation.