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I'm using Videostudio Pro X2. I shoot my video at 1080i in my sony HDR-HC9. Since I still work only with standard definition DVDs, I have been setting my camera to "dumb down" the HD video to SD when playing back for capture. The dvd's I make are sometimes used for broadcast on a local community TV station, so quality is a goal.

I am considering capturing my video in wmv9 format using another program. I would like to archive my captured video files to DVD for possible later use. The large size of avi files makes it difficult to maintain them on a hard drive or save them to DVD. I've been reading elsewhere about the small size and high quality advantages of windows media 9 video files. There are claims that the quality is very good at one tenth the file size of avi.

I know that Pro X2 can open and edit wmv9 files and ask if anyone can share experience with the use of wmv9 files and the resulting quality.

Further, is it possible to mix wmv9 files and avi files in the same project timeline and get good results?

Jim Miller

In UK 1tb hard drives are down to around £65, dirt cheap for archiving files.
Down converting your HD file to SD may result in an mpeg2 file I think. If I'm right, you'll then convert this to dv.avi, gaining a larger file size, but you cannot increase quality.
Converting the mpeg to wmv may result in a smaller file size, but will result ina quality loss as you are using a lossy format.
If your end product is always going to be std def dvd at present, I'd suggest you stick to the down converted mpeg2 file and use this to edit/make dvd and archive.
On the other hand if it does produce a dv.avi file from downconverting, this is definately worthwhile archiving as it's lossless in editing, unlike mpeg2 and wmv which each time you save them will compress the movie file.
I wouldn't go to WMV if space is a major issue, I'd go to Mpeg2.
Of course going one step further, archiving the HD file would be best, so you can make an HD movie when you have the facitilties.

It surely makes sense to download from your camera the best quality possible. How you convert after that depends entirely on what you want your final video for. You can always then go back to the original if you want better quality. I do a lot of still work with a DSLR camera and always shoot in RAW. I work on the assumption that you never know when the next shot will turn you into a millionaire. I use the same maxim in video, here's hoping

Strangely enough the best down conversion is often done by the camera, rather than a 3rd party app. But yes, keeping the original hd file would be best.

Just for the sake of completeness, the Sony HDR-HC9 is a HDV camera, so the down-conversion in the camera is from high def UFF mpeg-2 to SD LFF DV/AVI... That is a good format for editing in SD, as I think you already know. But it is large -- 13 GB per hour -- which is roughly the same as the HDV mpeg-2...

Because I work these days almost exclusively in HD, I don't do the down-conversion in my own Canon HV20. Instead, I capture in HDV format and do my editing in that. Then I produce both a HDV final (for myself and those who have Blu-Ray players) and down-convert from the HDV Project to SD DVD-compatible mpeg-2 (making sure I keep the UFF of the original) and burn that to SD DVD. I do that for my friends and family who don't as yet have Blu-Ray players or even a HDTV. Again the quality of the resulting DVD is very good, marginally better (I think at least) than my DVDs produced using SD DV/AVI > DVD-compatible mpeg-2.

One thing I certainly would NOT be doing is convert my original files to wmv. It is small in footprint and produces excellent quality -- yes to both of those. But wmv is also a rather difficult format to play around with, apart from being lossy, difficulty -- and lots of time required -- to convert it to any other format. In effect you would be doing one round at least of re-encoding (and quality loss) to get it into wmv in the first place, but later, when you finally move into HD editing, you will need to re-convert back to HDV for editing and/or burning to Blu-Ray (or potentially a third re-encode, and further loss of quality, by converting it to HD AVCHD mpeg-4 for burning to an AVCHD hybrid disc).

For archiving purposes, my own suggestion would be to just hold onto the original mini DV tapes with your HDV on it. Or else, do as suggested above and buy a cheap 1 TB external hard drive and dedicate that to storage.