uploading from my DV camera eats so much disc space, it is in *.AVI format. How can i avoid that ?

Question

I have a panasonic NV GS47 handicam, when I capture the video from cam to my PC it consumes about 1 GB per every 4minute video( it is in AVI format). It makes almost impossible to do that... If any one knows a solution please help me...

Answer 1

Wow ! I too have the same model, NVGS 47, handicam ! and ofcourse, the .avi file is uncompressed and total 60 (or 90) min will take up nearly 15GB !

What I did, was I divided the entire video in four parts, of 4GB each ( 20 min duration). I used the windows movie maker software to transfer the video ( because the software cd that came along with it was corrupted, and I couldn't install the motionDV and SweetMovieLife softwares--you can see it in my previous questions !).

So, what you should do, is don't transfer the whole video all at once but when you connect it (by firewire), transfer it for first 20 mins, then pause and save the clip. Now, transfer the next 15 to 20 mins and save it on "ANOTHER DRIVE", (you should have atleast 5 gb free space on each drive). Then the rest is easy, just burn the original .avi files on cd.

In the sp mode, the video cd took like 630MB after completion.

Another advantage of dividing in parts is that, when you'll create the video cd, you can choose them (the parts) as bookmarked thumbnail images which will be displayed on the tv, so you can directly view a particular part.

I hope, I answered you.

Answer 2

You won't be able to avoid the large disc space requirements - it is just a fact of the matter.

MiniDV takes up 13GB of space per hour, so you will need to make room on your hard drive (get rid of or archive some files on DVD) or you can purchase an external hard drive (which is what I did).

External hard drives are becoming very inexpensive - you can easily purchase a Western Digital MyBook Essential 250GB Hard Drive with USB for $120.00 at Buy.com. Or you could get the Lacie Porsche 500GB USB at Buy.com for $150 - which is a great deal. I have that hard drive and it has been great.

As for the other persons suggestions of transferring for 20 minutes...most video editing software will recognize the stopping/starting points when you recorded. This will create clips for you that you can easily move around in an editor.

Good luck!

Answer 3

You can, but it's pointless. I say pointless because to reduce the size of the files, they have to be compressed using a different codec, such as WMV. You're probably burning onto DVD anyways, and when you do, your files, will be compressed yet again, reducing quality. The best way is to leave enough room on your hard drive to transfer the whole video, or do it in bits and pieces. Edit it, then burn it to a DVD using your program of choice. After it's on a DVD, you can delete your files on the hard drive (remember, they're your raw footage, they're not meant to be opened and watched directly, at least that's how I think of it). So huge files should not be stored on your computer permanently. And if you are one of those people who don't edit and likes to watch on their computer, you can put it into an editor then output as a .WMV or .MOV or whatever, and then you can delete the originals. Hope this helps!

Answer 4

You can't you have to deal with it. Get an external hard drive and transfer to it as a dedicated drive.

Video (SDTV) IS 4 MBPS, HD is over 7 MBPS