Its a sad day when...

[digitard]

You remember your 1gb drive being "so friggin' huge" and people wished they had a gig of space.

Now I have 180GB of storage on my PC (soon to be more) and i can barely hold all the raw AVI files needed to edit together a paintball DVD (5 cameras ... 1hr+ each). Sad day.

Anyone wanna buy me a new drive as a bday present?

:)

Dave

[-=Squid=-]

Ive got a 20 gig you can have if you can use it.

[Blazestorm]

Got an 80 gig... but I don't think you deserve it

I suggest editing the AVI files.

My 120 gig has no trouble importing DVD quality Mpegs... I can fit about 30 hours of it on mine

[PyRo]

I have 2 40 gigs with 3gb on one, and 20 on the other :)
I was running on 4 untill about a year and a half ago :)

[digitard]

I do edit them, but the RAW files must be there in full form til I'm done editing in case I need something from them.

I make PB DVD's of local tourneys and teams (aka the link in my sig). So I need all the footage from all our camera's locally stored so I can get pieces as needed until its done. Its a pain when I need to grab something to find the tape, then find the right time, recapture JUST that part and then edit. Its much easier, and time friendly, to store it on PC til I can delete it.

First I import ALL the footage into completely unrendered AVI files (16 or so gigs per hour). Then I edit each one into clips (still in AVI format so I lose very little quality) and use those clips to piece together a chronological DVD. Then I take those clips once their pieced together and render a single MPEG2 file for the DVD of everything the way it should be. After that I build the DVD menu system (main links, scene selection, special features, company info, etc) and compile all the video footage (including trailers) into DVD format and start burning.

Once the video has been burnt to DVD, and multiple backups made so incase reproduction is needed after a drive loss, then I can delete the AVI files and do it all over again.

As much as I'd love to just dump space I need it. I just need to get a bit more memory (standard DDR PC2100) and another drive for finished backups) and I'll be kosher.

Dave

[Blazestorm]

MPEG's are what they use for DVD's

Uncompressed AVI's are similar, but take up too much space for very very little gain in quality.

Like I said on my 120 gigs I get over 30 hours to import :)

[digitard]

Well once the video is created the final file is roughly 3.4gigs only because its compressed to MPEG2

But during the editing process I prefer to keep everything in AVI so I dont have to re-render the files multiple times.

Think of it like this... if I were to cut down space I'd have to take the AVI, and convert to MPEG2 (cause remember, I need the full unedited file for references), then take THAT mpeg 2 and render sections into clips ... so now that file has been compressed 2 times. Then those clips compressed again into MPEG2 into a single "final" file. Then placed on DVD.

Thats 3 MPEG2 recompressions. It loses some quality and stuff at that point. Nothing major, but when producing a commercial DVD I want the best quality I can.

That is why I keep the AVI file structure til absolutely needed. I can edit the entire thing in AVI files and only have to compress to MPEG2 once, and this way I get the best possible quality.

[Blazestorm]

I import with pinnacle which imports it as Mpeg2 and keeps it that way throughout the entire process

So yah

[digitard]

Yeah, I know... I have Pinnacle Studio 9.

I honestly just prefer the absolute best editing quality I can get with resources. While mpeg2 isn't a dramatic drop from AVI (its barely noticeable), since I'm doing multiple clip editing, and then re-rendering I prefer to keep it AVI til needed since it will get some "digital fuzz" after a few renders.

If I was doing a project with less "exact" transitions and clips then I might not mind as much. But since I have over 380 "clips" each project strung together to create what I want I just prefer to keep it in AVI as long as possible cause I change things a lot. Since each scene is only 5-30 seconds long before the next clip (otherwise games would get boring) using "chapter detection" doesn't work well cause I edit deeper than that. So the original file would have to be broken down to exact clips anyways and then strung back together with the final process.

[skife]

finish half of the dvd, burn it to a dvd
deleate it

finish the other half, and add it to what you have done already.


dont know if this will work on dvd, but its what we do at school with the vhs stuff we do when making movies and such.

[digitard]

You can do that, but then you'd have to re-render the 1st half.

To combine clips into 1 piece of video you have to open them in some type of editing program, and then render it again into 1 single video file. This re-compress' the video again, so the first half will have a slightly lower quality than the second half since its being rendered twice.

The final fact just comes down to "logic". For me to finish any section and lose almost no quality I have to save it in AVI (otherwise that whole re-rendering scenario comes in). The problem is AVI size's are enormous. Like I said above, a single 60min AVI video is almost 16 gigs. So even with DVD'S I'd have to cut that into 4 clips and burn it to 4 DVD's. Even with DVD-RW discs (Which I use for test burns) that would take a long time, and be time consuming.

The only way to get the exact setup I want is to allow the AVI to stay uncompressed on the drive.

Did you know when editing LOTR they used over 4 TERABYTES OF STORAGE? Because they would never compress the video into anything but raw form (think of the slowly degrading quality after rendering) EVERY single thing they did would stay in their raw format and then be edited like that in AVID and various editing programs.

1 Terabyte equals roughly 1000 GIGABYTES ... (its actually slightly more, but im not going to get into that). SO basically they had over 4000gigs of video footage stored, and would be accessed at any given time to find pieces and clips they liked.

Yes... storage wise its insane, but the same rule applies as I'm using. When creating a commercial DVD that someone is going to buy, this isn't just for my personal library, quality is essential and i dont want to run the risk of degrading video. Lets say I rendered it twice into the final "pieces" and they looked fine, but then I do my "FINAL" render and it gets some fuzz. Thats going to upset me, cause its visable quality loss. I figure 200 dollars in storage updates (getting another drive) eliminates that, and I can keep the best quality I possibly can.

Hope I'm making sense.

[skife]

again mine is the poor man's fix.