Archiving files

Hi everyone,

I have a questions about archiving files and wanted to get suggestions on which format to save them in.

Back story...I currently use a JVC HD200 camera (720p hdv). I was using Avid Liquid 7.2 a while back and I fused out all clips in my timeline to archive before. However, the files were captured in 25Mbps instead of the standard 19.7Mbps for HD1 files. When the clips are fused out from the timeline, Liquid doesnt split the clips but creates one long file (m2v+wav..as separate files). They have been saved that way for a while but now I want to have them split in case I need to use any footage for a reel or whatever reason. I converted the m2v files to .m2ts and dropped into Vegas along with the wav file. I split up every clip in the file in the timeline and ready to render out. Here is the question...what format would you suggest I render the files out in? Should I go to hd1 and dump as m2t or just bump up to something like mxf or xdcam hd at 35Mbps? All my other footage is is in m2t but Im worried about the loss I would get from the original footage captured at 25Mbps then bumped down to 19.7Mbps. I did a test render out with the 32-bit setting and it looked really nice...not much visual loss if any..but afraid of image degrading further if I render that out again for any future stuff. I would appreciate any advice anyone has

-alan

thanks John,

You're right...I'll just keep the files as they are then. What I'm going to do in addition is keep the project files with them. Since the timeline has the video "split" into clips, it'll be easier to pull out segments from the original file.

I like keeping them as the source format as well...but I cant in this case. Liquid didnt capture the video in it's native format. If I dump back to the tape...it'll render the files back to 19.7Mbps. The other problem with printing to tape is that I wont be able to print anything that isnt 30p. So archiving those files must be as data.

Or..I jsut thought of this...I might just put the files back into Liquid and re-fuse them out split...which will be a pain in the butt...Then run tsmuxer and transcode them to m2ts so Vegas can read them. At least that way the files will be split and no loss of quality from what they are now...since fusing them out of liquid is the same as smart rendering anyway. Then just archive them that way.

blah...gonna be a fun project...lol

-alan

oh yeah...I love using tsmuxer..lol.

So basically what I decided to do is dump the fused files back into Liquid and then go through them all and make splits on the time line for each clip and then export each of them out fused again. Since tsmuxer cant mux the wav file to a m2v file...I need to dump those files to Vegas and render out the audio in HDV. Then take that new file and demux it to pull the audio stream (I use Super for that). Then use tsmuxer for the extracted audio stream and mux it with the m2v file and output to .m2ts or .ts for archive. Wow...thats a messed up workflow!