Best movie format for long term archival storage

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Level 6

19,976 points

Best movie format for long term archival storage

I am finally getting my home movies off of DV tape and into the computer.

I can get them into iMove, but the iMovie library is not really suited for long term storage and easy retrieval.

I think the best way to do it is to create a separate Photos library with these moves split up into scenes and dated and titled appropriately.

Any, back to the question, what format should I save them in? DV is getting harder and harder to use.

iMac 24″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jul 5, 2021 1:23 PM

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Answer 1

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Old Toad

Level 10

208,289 points

Jul 5, 2021 1:30 PM in response to Keith Barkley

MP4 is probably the most universally supported format.

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Answer 2

Jul 6, 2021 12:10 AM in response to Keith Barkley

I have all old iMovie 1.0.2-6.0.3 DV projects exported as .dv files (max 9 min 27 sec = max 2GB which was the upper limit in older iMovie versions) in the archive with original quality (minus a few dropped frames per hour). I had also exported them all as video-DVDs with iDVD but optical media is so clumsy to use that I have not touched them in years.

A few years ago I exported all .dv (PAL) files as deinterlaced 25fps H.264 .mp4 via MPEG Streamclip, set the movie metadata dates and imported them to Photos.

Last autumn I re-exported all .dv files as bob-deinterlaced (i.e. preserved both fields) 50fps H.265 .mp4 via ffmpeg, set the movie metadata dates and imported them to Photos with somewhat better quality with about the same file sizes (Mac mini 2018 was going full blast a few days doing that in batches).

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,588 points

Jul 5, 2021 2:33 PM in response to Keith Barkley

The TV app actually has a section for Home Movies, and rather makes more sense than Photos for this material. Also, as these file sizes can be quite large, it's easier to store them on externals.

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