What is the best uncompressed container format for archiving original film

jimnick · #1 (**permalink**) 03-08-2007, 06:14 PM

I am having a bunch of movie film transferred via film chain telecine to digital format. I want to archive it in a container format that will best preserve each individual frame of the original film (in other words, uncompressed). Storage space is not an issue. Is AVI the best format for this purpose? What are the pros and cons of AVI? Is there a better uncompressed option?
Once I have the films archived, I will then want to individually edit them and burn the finished product to DVD. So I'm also wondering what software(s) would be best to import the uncompressed files, edit them, and burn them.
Much appreciation to those who can lend some expertise on this.
JN

Mark W · #2 (**permalink**) 03-10-2007, 01:47 PM

The container wont affect the quality of the video. Most editors should handle uncompressed video, although on my system with my editor I find uncompressed files can be clunky to edit, presumably due to disc access speed.

Have you treid the 'huff' codec. This produces files about half the size of uncompressed with no quality loss - it is a lossless codec.

jimnick · #3 (**permalink**) 03-12-2007, 03:30 PM

I don't know how much control I'll have over codecs used during capture from the telecine. As far as I know, my container options are AVI or MPEG-2, but I know next to nothing about codecs. Unless I find a better option, I'm planning to have him use AVI since MPEG-2 in inherently lossy. I just want to make sure I will be able to work with the uncompressed AVI files after he does the telecine capture. Is their an advantage to using a compression codec, other than saving storage space? Does it somehow facilitate the editing process?

Also would still like to have anyone's recommendations on video editing software for editing AVIs, then converting to MPEG-2 and burning to DVD. Thanks.