I recently cut up and edited 3 1/2 hours of video shot in 2000-2001.  This includes Kristen’s birth and some of the cutest footage of the kids when they were young.

My goal was to create small clips that can be viewed one at a time or in a playlist.  This has the best chance of friend and family being interested in watching.  So much of what ends up at home  is LONG footage where only a fraction is actually viewable outside of the immediate family.

My second goal was for the final files to be viewable on Windows, Mac, and an  XBOX.  I would like to able to  browse and play video in our Living room  on our HDTV which has an XBOX hooked up to it.

I”m struggling to find just the right settings/format/codec to use that will  result in good  quality and not take up tons  of space.  I had captured the original footage from  tape using a USB capture device and software which created a 7Gig MPEG-PS file.  For now, I am exporting to MPEG2 which appears to be the best balance of quality size and compatibilty.  However my XBOX360 can’t stream MPEG2 for some reason so I’ve also been exporting to MPEG4.  This streams on my XBOX but is highly compressed and not very good quality

I use Sony Vegas to cut up and create individual clips.  I export to MainConcept MPEG-2.

Jeff describes his setup to playback Blu-ray from his HD.

Converting video for your video iPod