I need help understanding the following.

After I burn an avi file to a DVD as a movie can I later edit that movie again?

Or do I always need to start with/go back to the avi file to do any more editing?

Thanks. As you can see I am still learning the basics.

Bill

only if its a dvdrw

Craig,

Thanks for your response.

Normally yes however:

1. Did you author the DVD as a standard DVD to play in DVD players? If so the "AVI" file is not longer "AVI" it would have been encoded to MPEG. Your software may not handle MPEG2 and if it does there will most likely be a loss of quality.

2. If for some reason you just saved your orginal "AVI" video source to a DVD Data Disk, you can easily edit that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColumbusBill Or do I always need to start with/go back to the avi file to do any more editing?

You are better off editing DV AVI.

Rich

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When you burn a DVD, that will play in a standard DVD player, you have not only converted it but you have also compressed it. There is software available (designed for non commercial DVDs) that will allow you to rip the DVD back into a format that can then be edited in you video editing program. However, it takes a long time to rip and encode the video and the quality will be reduced.

The best idea, is to save your mini DV tapes as an archive, and then just play them back into the computer through your camcorder and then edit the movie again.

Ripping video from a DVD that will play in a stand alone DVD player does not take long. I rip from DVDs all the time. Two hours of video can be ripped in ~30 minutes (I don't stand around & wait & time it when rips unless they are very short.) OTOH, if you were to have to pull that two hours of video from a tape, it's going to take you two hours.

I agree it's best to save the initial tapes for archival purposes. But once it's on DVD, IMO, keep the DVD in the event you want to use footage from it later.

Thanks for the excellent advice. This forum is a wonderful thing.

I understand much better now. I plan to keep the original miniDV tape so I can always go back it.

If I want to have a second tape as extra security, can I do the following? Transfer the avi file from the original tape to my hard drive and then copy the avi file to a second tape?

Thanks, Bill

You know, IMO, this is one of those things that can make you crazy. (Or in my case, crazier than I already am.) I think the trick is to find a backup/archival system that:

1) Fits in your time frame and financial investment frame.
2) Works. ;-)

SO...if you have 60 minutes of tape, it will take you 60 minutes to transfer all that footage to DVD/hard drive. If you want to write it back out to tape, that will take another 60 minutes. So two hours to get one backup.

What I normally do is transfer from tape to DVD & then make 3 backups of the DVD. Since it takes ~7-15 minutes to copy a DVD (depending upon the speed of your burner), I can spend one hour transferring to DVD and ~30 minutes making 3 more DVD copies. Also, I don't record over my tapes. So in ~90 minutes I have the original tape & four DVD copies. Since I buy the best DVDs in bulk (Taiyo Yuden), I get them for about 30 cents each. I use an Access database to catalog what's on each tape/DVD so I can quickly pull video if I'm putting together a movie, like I often do for Christmas. This system feels comfortable to me & so far has not failed me. I'm sure other people would not be happy with this system & if I was doing videos for my profession instead of as a hobbyist, I would probably do things differently.

just remember most dvds have a shelf life of about 5-10 years at best