MPEG2 to AVI conversion

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am new to the forum. I have been converting my library of 8mm movies. I have a bunch of large AVI files on my hard drives. I could save them on DVDs in raw unedited mode. I need hard drive space to capture more movies. My question is …is there a way (hardware and software) to convert mpeg2 files back to AVI file format for editing purposes?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Why would you ever want to go BACK to AVI? To me this is quite a bit backwards. Although you are trying to save space, you would be working against things much more. MPEG2 is a highly compressed video format. I’d assume you’re talking about going back to DV AVI. DV is a much less compressed format and allows for very little quality loss. So first off you’re losing some quality going to MPEG2 and then you”d be losing even more when you go back to AVI. By the time you get back to AVI you’ll have lost a significant amount of quality. One thing I do is always make a master of my edited project back onto a mini DV or DVCAM tape. That way you don’t have to eat up HDD space and if you ever need to correct something, you can just import your project back via firewire.

However, if you’re still looking for a way of getting that MPEG2 back to AVI, you’ll want to go with a stand alone converting piece of software. I use Canopus Procoder 2.0 for all of my encoding/conversions. It’s fast and the quality is superb. There are others out there though

Good luck!

-Jim

[Anonymous]

True, but then you’re going to be spilling your projects since an hour of DV is usually around 15GB

[Anonymous]

Thanks to all the folks who have given me advice on this topic. From what I can gather
– will lose quality thru conversion
– can save DV AVI files to DV tape or DVD

Actually I have been saving such files to DVD, without any conversion. I guess I will continue to do that till I have an edited movie which I can convert to MPEG2 and burn a DVD.

Thanks again

Panchu

[Anonymous]

[quote=”panchu”]Hi,

I am new to the forum. I have been converting my library of 8mm movies. I have a bunch of large AVI files on my hard drives. I could save them on DVDs in raw unedited mode. I need hard drive space to capture more movies. My question is …is there a way (hardware and software) to convert mpeg2 files back to AVI file format for editing purposes?

Thanks[/quote]
******************
I had this problem and found the solution to be a 300Gig external hard drive. Buy the drive container and drive separte. Be sure to get firewire and a cooling fan with it and assemble.–very easy—
It stores about 25 hours of AVI files which can be quickly copied back to your editing machine as needed. –Cost is about $110—-

[Author]

Posts