[akfoster]

I have been importing old vcr tapes via the Dazzle for some time now, but my hard drive is filling up with all the
avi and iso files to where I have very little space left. I have the dvd of the edited files burned, plus the iso still on the computer, but I would like to back up the full avi files for extra safe keeping ( video of the kids and grandkids growing up). Some of the files are 11-12 gig long.

What is the best way? Convert to MPG and save to a disk or use backup and span multiple disks?

Maybe get an external Hard drive?

I really dont want to go thru the import procedure again, in case something goes wrong. This real time importing is the pits!

[Beerman]

akfoster, on Jun 11 2006, 09:49 AM, said:

I have been importing old vcr tapes via the Dazzle for some time now, but my hard drive is filling up with all the
avi and iso files to where I have very little space left. I have the dvd of the edited files burned, plus the iso still on the computer, but I would like to back up the full avi files for extra safe keeping ( video of the kids and grandkids growing up). Some of the files are 11-12 gig long.

What is the best way? Convert to MPG and save to a disk or use backup and span multiple disks?

Maybe get an external Hard drive?

I really dont want to go thru the import procedure again, in case something goes wrong. This real time importing is the pits!

USB and Firewire hard drives are cheap and, you can actually buy a bare hard drive and then purchase as case to enclose it in sometimes for alot less money. I'd go with the portable. Depending on how many files you have and how large the total is I might opt for the mpeg format.

[REDWAGON]

Some time ago kent, I was in the same boat as you are wanting to BU a lot of precious Family video and jpeg's. I did what Paul is suggesting to you and purchased a large external HD and one of those cases for it. It runs via a USB 2.0 cable and I backed up all my video with the mpeg format. As Paul suggests, the case and external drive route is probably a lot cheaper than another HD for your computer.

[Brendon]

akfoster, on Jun 11 2006, 06:49 AM, said:

What is the best way? Convert to MPG and save to a disk or use backup and span multiple disks?

Maybe get an external Hard drive?

I certainly wouldn't convert to MPG since the way they're usually done, AVIs hold compressed video while MPGs are uncompressed. Your AVIs will likely expand like popcorn in conversion to MPG.

A utility such as VirtualDub or Nandub can split AVIs (without recoding) into chunks which will fit a DVD, if you need to do that. I've also used VirtualDub to join split AVIs back together.

External drives can be very handy and are relatively cheap now.

[akfoster]

Ok that settles it.....external drive it is.
That would also add some portability to some of my projets.

I was amazed how fast I filled a 140 gig drive

Thanks for the input guys.

[stevensrw]

akfoster, on Jun 11 2006, 06:43 PM, said:

Ok that settles it.....external drive it is.
That would also add some portability to some of my projets.

I was amazed how fast I filled a 140 gig drive

Thanks for the input guys.

One word of caution however, external drives in caddys do tend to be noisy, especially when placed on your desk which acts as a sound board. look out for one with a fan, and put in the biggest drive you can stretch to - as you say, with movies they fill up awful fast