Lossless Compression Issues

[justchance.livejournal.com]

Hello.  I'm pretty new to vidding and still learning.  I have a question about HuffYUV. I have Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. I have read all kinds of documentation that it's finicky and does not like Divx/Xvid encoding and that it's best to use HuffYUV or Lagarith.  As I understand it, HuffYUV files are larger due to the lossless compression but is it normal for them to be around 12G for 25 minutes of footage?  I read that I should expect 4-5G for the same time which is more than fine, 12-15 is a little much. I'm using DVD Decrypter, Avisynth & VirtualDubMod for this process.

I'm ripping directly from the DVDs and the quality of the .avi is beautiful.  I can't honestly tell the difference, but I had planned to rip several seasons and store them by episode.  This way I could just go back to them and create clips from them on an as needed basis. Am I doing something wrong with this whole process, or did I just underestimate the size of the files?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

[jagwriter78.livejournal.com]

The Size also depends on what size you make your avi. Of course, if you rip it at say 640x480 for 4:3 the file is gonna be bigger than if you eip at 64x360 for 16:9. It also depends on whether you rip from DVD or DivX which à lot of People do. I would say your Size is about right for à DVD rip.

[justchance.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm a moron. I didn't even think of that. All these new terms and techniques are taking up too much space in my brain trying to learn it all and I completely overlooked the obvious. Thank you. =)

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

Yes, from my experience, that's normal. If you want to keep several seasons worth of episodes, you should perhaps just store the VOBs, d2v files and Avisynth scripts on your hard drive and then create Huffyuv clips from them as needed for particular projects.

And there's a method to serve Avisynth scripts into Premiere without clipping, which would avoid storage issues -- don't know if it works for CS4 and I don't personally do it (not compatible with how I swap around between Premiere and AE), but someone else could provide more info.

[justchance.livejournal.com]

Storing the VOBs/d2v/avs sounds like the best option. Even with virtually 2TB of storage, I think I would run out of room faster than I would like after ripping 4 seasons. Thank you! =)

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

You're welcome (and happy vidding)! Because of the file size, I'm selective about what I clip and definitely don't keep those clips around after a project is done (unless I'm moving right into another vid that uses some of the same footage). It's kind of a pain in the ass, but I suppose it keeps me focused and forces me to be thoughtful about exactly what I plan to use.