How big do you keep your HD?

[Chicken Warrior]

So uploading HD files to Vimeo has got me thinking.

Normal HD projects on my hard drive take up between 8 and 30+ GB, untouched (or edited but not compressed). Vimeo uploads are limited to 500 mb. Now I know Vimeo HD is 1280x720 and even for those dimensions, not the best HD in the world, but it's still a huge difference in file size.

I'm about to get a 1TB hdd, but I know I'll eat it up in a matter of months (I have to make a habit of exporting back to miniDV).

So just out of curiosity, how many of you keep uncompressed files? If you keep files for everyday viewing on your computer (or via your ps3/360 to your HDTV) what compression settings do you use? What is your HD compromise?

[lordtangent]

I don't keep around uncompressed or intermediates once I'm done with my edit. I keep the original unedited footage in either HDV on disk or on the HDV tapes. Sometimes I DO keep around an "uncompressed" (actually Lagarith or HUFFYUV) version of the final cut though. I'm trying to work out a solution for MY data warehousing needs also though... The final edits are valuable to me but they take up quite a bit of space!

My concern is generation loss. I COULD simply encode my final edit to really high quality h.264 and make that my archive of the edit. But what about when a better codec comes along? There is no better master than uncompressed.

I've been experimenting with the various free lossless codecs. The best for size is FFV1 (available on windows though "ffdshow-tryouts") with Lagarith a close second. Lagarith tends to be faster though. The only problem with it is it isn't well supported by other open source software. HUFFYUV is another good lossless format, but there seems that there are two variants now so you can get yourself in trouble with it if you aren't careful.

[Lunchbox]

Lord, I have a high quality intermedia codec free to use. If I give you a copy, can you evaluate on how effective the codec is? Let me know so I will email you the codec file.

[racer-x]

I export my timeline to many formats and resolutions, but I always export back to HDV for archival and quality purposes.

Taky wrote:

I have a high quality intermedia codec free to use. If I give you a copy, can you evaluate on how effective the codec is? Let me know so I will email you the codec file.

Send me a copy, I'll test it out when I get a chance.

[2Bdecided]

Are you using ffdshow huffyuv? Or is there another way to use YV12 with huffyuv now?

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpB...ic.php?t=83785

Cheers,
David.