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| TheRock |
| Posted: Jan 15 2011, 04:45 AM |
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Newbie
Group: Members
Posts: 2
Member No.: 29628
Joined: 15-January 11
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It seems like this should be a really common question, but even with a fair amount of searching I haven't found any discussions (except some old ones that seem possibly out-of-date) that really answer the question for me.
I'm a fairly novice user of VirtualDub but have been happily using it for a few months to compress videos of my daughter before uploading for viewing by the grandparents. But now I'm thinking of deleting the original uncompressed files because I'm running out of hard drive space (and the little one is cute, so many gigabytes of video get recorded each month). To my eyes the video quality of the compressed files is indistinguishable from the originals, so I'm not too worried from a quality standpoint. However, I AM worried about whether the video codec I'm using will make my files less "standard" and therefore more difficult to play on whatever computer or video player I might be using 5, 10, etc. years from now.
I capture the video on a Canon digital camera (SD850 IS), which creates an .AVI file that is, I believe, uncompressed. I've been compressing using VirtualDub with the Xvid MPEG-4 codec with a Target Quantizer value of 4 (I left the other parameters at their default values).
Is this a reasonable approach?
I guess put a different way, my questions would be:
- Are the files produced by this codec (with my settings) standard MPEG-4 files that could be read any program/device built to read MPEG-4 files?
- Is MPEG-4 itself a common-enough standard that it is likely to be around for a while? (Like PDF for documents or JPEG for photos.)
- Is there a different codec (for MPEG-4 or some other format) that would be a better choice for my purposes?
I'm not looking for advice on physical storage media, because I think I have a pretty good understanding of the options (and the need to periodically transfer files as technologies evolve, so that I'm not stuck with perfectly-preserved media that, alas, cannot be read because the reading/writing devices no longer exists or are incompatible with future computers).
Thanks for any guidance!
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| stephanV |
| Posted: Jan 15 2011, 09:10 AM |
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Spam killer ;)
Group: Moderators
Posts: 4348
Member No.: 8917
Joined: 18-February 04
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The first question to ask is, are you looking for playback on standalone devices, or just on the computer.
For the computer AVI+XviD is fine. I don't think there is a realisitic chance that you won't be able to play these files in the next 20 years, when we still have support for 20 year old video codecs right now. There is a bigger chance that in 20 years from what we call a computer now won't exist anymore. 
If for standalones and it is SD content I'd pick the DVD format, with backing up an ISO of the disc on an external HDD.
The truth is that hardware manufacturers are making steps towards giving their playback devices the popular options of the computer as well (for example MKVs have made their way into common brands like Samsung), but it's a bit difficult to predict what will stick.
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useful links:
VirtualDub, Input plugins and filters, AviSynth, AVI-Mux GUI, AC3ACM by fcchandler, VirtualDub FAQ |
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| TheRock |
| Posted: Jan 17 2011, 11:11 PM |
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Newbie
Group: Members
Posts: 2
Member No.: 29628
Joined: 15-January 11
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Thanks Stephan! That's a helpful description, and given that the thread has been read 44 times and yours is the only reply, I take that to mean that your response is being accepted as definitive. ;-)
I'll be happy as long as I can read the videos in the future on SOME type of device, such a computer, so based on your response I feel pretty safe just going ahead and keeping the AVI+Xvid files and deleting the originals to save space.
Greg |
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