# what video format to go with for archiving



## hakunatata (Aug 20, 2010)

I have a lot of old small business DVD's that I made when I was in the wedding video and personal documentaries business. I mostly now just have a bunch of home made DVD's left of that work and I was hoping to be able to back those up but not have each one be 4.37 gigs. I have exported a lot using handbreak, compressor, and MPEG stream clip. But I have not been too happy with the quality and file size of the files I am getting. I am sure I am doing something wrong. I wanted to be able to have them accessible on my computer and playable on all the different media players. Does anyone have any suggestions of a software or settings for software that might work well. I was hoping to not lose any quality but be able to get them down to 2 gigs or so. Does anyone think that is possible, or do you think I just have to stick with the Video_TS folders? And what file type do you think is the best to go with as far and longevity and variety of apps that can play it, mp4, m4v, mkv, mov... I have also heard makemkv is a useful app for that purpose.

Thank you in advance, hope everyone is doing well.


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## Harpmaker (Oct 28, 2007)

I haven't kept up with the world of video compression codecs, so I don't know the latest and greatest out there. :blush:

Basically it comes down to how much video quality you want to keep in the converted files. ANY further compression WILL result in the lose of information and a degradation of the signal. Only you can decide how much lose is too much.

If you are talking about standard definition DVD material, hard drives are cheap and I personally prefer to save my material at full DVD resolution and bit rate. You can't get detail back after it's gone. I generally save them as .ISO files so they can easily be burned back into disc format for use on a standard DVD player.

The two media coders I use the most are:
MediaCoder
http://www.mediacoderhq.com/
and SUPER©
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Both are free. I like free. :bigsmile:


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## hakunatata (Aug 20, 2010)

I will check both of those out. I like free as well. It is all standard definition material. So I will look into going with ISO vs a file format. plus I would lose all dvd functionality if I went to a single file format, multiple audio tracks and subtitles. thank you very much


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## Harpmaker (Oct 28, 2007)

I forgot to mention that VLC will play the .ISO image files directly without having to "mount" the image file. Some of the newer stand-alone media players like the Western Digital Media Player will as well, but playing the DVD menu can be problematic.

I have had very few problems using VLC, and it too is free. :bigsmile:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

If you are looking for a stand-alone player that will play just about anything take a look at Wbassett's review of the PlayOn! HD unit here.


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