With the emergence of the digital era, video conversions to DVD seems to be the popular thing to do.  For a backup or archiving method, more and more people are taking their old VHS, Regular 8, and Super 8 movies and converting them to DVD (Digital Versatile Disk).  While DVD’s are a great way to view your videos, they’re not the best way to store or archive them.

When initially digitally captured, these media are converted to .AVI files on digital tape.  When stored in this form, new digital videos will be at their highest quality.  However, when these videos are put onto DVD, they are converted to MPEG2 format, and this involves a significant amount of compression.  The resulting videos are of lower quality than the originals.  Another problem with archiving to MPEG2 is that the video in this form, although digital, can no longer be readily imported into an editing program for digital editing.  And DVD’s can be vulnerable to damage from scratching, breakage, or sunlight.

The answer to saving your old videos is to archive them as they were originally digitally captured (as .AVI files), and the easiest way to do this is to store them on digital tape (most commonly on mini DV or DVCAM).  Editing can readily be done on video from archived digital tapes, and DVD’s can be created from them for viewing.

Note - Archived digital tapes are intended for storage and not for viewing.