Is compression the solution for the storage problem?

[Pascal Parvex]

When I look at the sample files I downloaded, they really have a good quality, and they only use about 10 Megabytes per minute. So you could put over 7 hours of footage on a simple single layer DVD, in full 1920x1080 24p.

 

[mochouinard]

Mpeg2 or h264, wmv, divx... those are the type of compression you do not want to work with. It is nice for viewing and giving out to the world. But not for editing and archival. Always keep the SOURCE, with the best quality as possible.

 

[Blaine]

I agree. With everything I archive, I save the raw clips as data files to DVD. For a large project, it's a lot of DVDs but with the price coming down on DVDs is seems the best way to me for long term storage. The only downside I've experienced is the time to actually burn them to disk.

 

[toke lahti]

Acquisition and delivery codecs are different beasts.
Jpeg2000 (like in infinity) would be whole lot more efficient than ancient dv codec though.

 

[dvxnerd]

Since the files are data files, you should be able to compress them a little further using ZIP of STUFFIT.