I enjoy sending video into my computer and enjoy editing video in my video editing programs. I, like others, have difficulty being consistant at a formula for producing dvds which will be of highest standard quality and useable on most dvd players. I would also like to archive video to data DVDs or video DVDs and trust that the integrity of the video on those disks can be easily used for future video projects with the same quality as my HI 8 digital video tape.

I have a Pentium IV 1.6 gig PC with a Canopus DV Storm Card Edius 2.5 video editing software, Roxio Easy media creator 7, Nero Express 6 Adobe Premier 6. I have a NEC DVD burner 500 meg ram 80 gig hard drive space. I also have a Pentium IV 3 gig with error free Nero on it no other video accessories.

Canopus(Edius) allows many ways to encode a video. The manual always tells me how to do things but no information on what and why things should be done to be compatible with Roxio or Nero. Canopus allows to burn direct to DVD. Great quality but no allowance for fancy menus.

I installed Nero into this computer and was producing errors encoding the video resulting in audio and video
syncronization problems. The dvd emulation worked fine before creating the DVD itself. It was when I actually press the button to burn that the end result came out messed up.

Roxio converted a canopus avi output to mpeg 2 with its converter and the quality was jittery compared to the canopus burn direct. Roxio has limited fancy menu design I could get around that for a while if it would put out great video.

I realize my dvd creation programs are light versions compared to full blown versions but the issue of file compatibility from Canopus to either Nero or Roxio will still be the same for their full blown versions.

If Roxio or Nero recognize the Canopus mpeg 2 versions I can not be sure that they find the file fully compatible. If they are not seeing the file correctly then I believe they are double Mpeg 2 encoding in theory.

Once I have this issue solved my next is how to use DVD and DVDRW as an archive source for video clips which I can return to and use in another editing project at a later date. (I am a musician and would like to take various clips and create mtv-ish videos).

My fears are that I will not be able to import the clips and maintain the same integrity that my original dv avi files have. I also realize there is dvd ripping software out there. One would think that the space used to archive an mpeg 2 file on a dvd would be adequate to bring back to a video editing program and get rid of a immediate need for advd ripping program.

Does anyone have the most trusted specs for mpeg 2 compatibility with either Roxio or Nero?

Does anyone know of a more compatible dvd creation software with canopus?

Does anyone know of a most generic way to archive compressed mpeg 2 files to dvd which can be reintroduced to video editing software for editing later on with little to no loss of quality?

I apologize for the book but any help people can lend me will start to "reduce the haystack so I can find the needle" if you know what I mean?

Sincerely,
the lizard

I'll pick up on this and let someone else chip on with the rest. Compressing video isn't like storing files in a ZIP archive. With a ZIP file, none of the data is lost; with MPEG compression data is literally thrown away never to be seen again. In theory, the human eye shouldn't notice the difference between the uncompressed and compressed video - commercial DVDs for example. So the first time you compress to MPEG, you're throwing away data. Then, if you edit and encode again, you'll throw away more data. Each time you encode, you'll be throwing yet more data - and therefore quality again. The more you encode, the more you throw away.

You may, of course, not notice a difference. But there will be a loss of quality nonetheless. The best way to "archive" footage is simply to keep your DV tapes.

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Hi Lizard,
As Mark said, storage on DV tape must be the best way, for myself all my work is archived on DV tape, When a job is finnished and gone out to the customer the final edited version and all the relevant raw footage is achived on tape, that way it is there if new copies or a re edit is needed.

It works for me.

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3.2 Ghz P4 800FSB CPU, 2Gb DDR400 PC3200 memory, 128Mb AGP ATI Radeon 9200 DDR Graphics, 40 Gb H/D, 250 Gb H/D, 1.5 Tb H/D, NEC ND-2510 dual layer DVD 8X, LG Gsa-4081B DVD, Creative soundblaster live, Windows XP SP1, Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements 2.