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Digital to PC? Huge files? URGENT!!! PLz help me out

I

INemtsev

Senior member
I just recently purchased a Canon Optura20 digital camcoder and although the quality is great but when I want to capture my recordings on my rig in order to edit them, I come up with outrageously large files. 1 hour like up to 20 gigs...How will I be able to burn my video files on CD's then, SO my question is, IS it suppose to take up that much? Am I doing sometihng wrong?How do I reduce the file to a burnable
size without loosing quality?:brokenheart:


Camera URL: Canon
 
Nice camera! Are you using the usb interface? From the specs of that cam, it LOOKS like it's usb 1? Use the Firewire port instead. As to the gargantuan file size...if you want high quality, the files are gonna be big. I haven't dealt with video a lot, so I don't have much of an opinion on the file types used to reduce quality and therefore size. Someone else?
 
You simply will need to convert it to a format than will fit on a normal cdr 800mb......I would suggest VCD or SVCD codec since they will play in most DVD players\burners. And Yes Video files in a raw format are extreamly large.

Ryan
 
Use FireWire for bearable transmission times. Then of course, whenever you're reducing file size, you'll be reducing image quality. That's the difference between compression (lossless) and data reduction (w/ loss). E.g. ZIPping files is lossless, while MP3-ing an audio CD is a lossy conversion.
 
DV transfer @ 720 x 480 @ full quality should be ~ 13 Gig/Hr which is not all that big. Transfer of the DV video is real time. It's a limitation of the DV cam. It only transfers as fast as it can play. From there you have to convert (render) the video into the finished format. If you want to put it on CD, there are quite a few formats. MPEG1/2/4, WMV, a few others. It depends on where you want to play the finished product. If you want to play it in a set top DVD player, you would use MPEG1 (VCD) or MPEG2 (SVCD).
 
Another vote for "get you some Firewire" - and have a look at the tutorials at Doom9 to learn about compression techniques and video formats.

As oldfart suggested, MPEG1/2 for set-top DVD players, MPEG4 for anything else. With MPEG4 you should be able to get one hour of excellent quality video onto a single CD (1400kbit video, 192kbit audio IIRC)

- M4H
 
yes dv may seem big but in reality the files are tiny, at work we work completly uncompressed. now thier are some big files!!!!. each machiene has thier own terabyte array 😀
 
Your Canon is a MiniDV camera which is best "captured" through a firewire port (MiniDV is designed with this capability in mind). You did not specify how you captured from your camera to your PC, but it sounds like you did an analog capture, which would explain why you ended up with a 20GB file. As previously mentioned, DV captures should be about 13GB per hour. Huge files are a fact of life when dealing with video editing. Since 120GB HDs can be had for $65 or so right now, is that such a big deal?

Normally, end-product viewing formats, like MPEG2 (DVD), are not suitable for full-blown video editing because they use temporal types of compression. DV format, on the other hand, is suitable for editing because each frame is still present (the frames themselves are compressed). Therefore, DV files are usually considered "source" files and must be compressed into a proper format for the medium desired (MPEG2 for DVD, MPEG4 (DivX or asf) for computer viewing). MPEG2 will compress that 13GB DV-format file to a 4.7GB DVD file with still very good quality. Use MPEG4 if you just need to watch it from your computer -- you can compress it much further with still very good quality.
 
Just a note -- there are several DVD players available now that can play MPEG-4 encoded video just as they do MPEG-1/2 and VCD formats. Can't name any off the top of my head, but I've heard they're out there. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Matthias99
Just a note -- there are several DVD players available now that can play MPEG-4 encoded video just as they do MPEG-1/2 and VCD formats. Can't name any off the top of my head, but I've heard they're out there. 🙂
Click to expand...

Lite-On is one company that makes them, the LVD-2002 is one model. It even can play the DivX implemtation of MPEG4 as well.

The thing is, the way the prices are coming down on DVD burners and media, it's almost cheaper to dump the footage onto DVD than mess with these special types of DVD players.
 
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