Is There A "Best" Video Format To Save Family Videos?

For Christmas my wife gave me a Diamond OneTouch Video Capture kit to convert our Beta, VHS and 8mm Videotapes to DVD. I haven't opened the package yet, but I was wondering if there's a "best" video format to covert to (such as MOV, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, FLV, etc.) or if I convert to play on a DVD player the decision is made for me by default. I also have AVS Video Editor 6.2 software.

I won't be uploading anything to social media sites; this is just for our family use in a DVD player. I'm looking for an accepted, well-recognized, common and efficient format that will hopefully survive, a sort of "jpeg" for video. I hope this makes sense. Thanks for any thoughts!

Sandpatch

From my experience, such software packages take you step by step in converting the uploaded (downloaded?) file to the proper format for playing in a DVD player. I don't think you should really worry about all the file types, since the software will guide you to get it on the DVD. I have a Canon Elura that uses Mini DV tapes and i just plug the firewire in, program pops up and it's step by step until the DVD is burned and i play it in my DVD player.

Like AC016 said, when you convert and set it to DVD for output the only things you will really need to mess with is (and this is generic) whether to save at best, medium, or lowest quality and whether or not you need NTSC or PAL output depending on where you are in the world.

The other formats you're referring to are generally for computer/internet use. MP4 is great for compression and quality but is NOTORIOUS for causing "out of memory" codec issues on longer files that often times cannot be resolved.

Thanks very much for the insight. This should be a fairly simple process then, which is welcome.

All of my ripped DVDs are stored in M4V containers and I've never had a problem with them. MKV is another popular container for long files.

If you aren't going to have backups stored on a computer, just do whatever the default is for burning.

As an update, everything is working out well. I'm using AVS Video Editor software and it offers all sorts of file saving options, including a simple Save To DVD. It's been so much fun viewing, editing and adding titles to 30+ year old Betamax videos (thank heaven my Betamax machine still works!). It does take a lot of time, but that was to be expected. Thanks again y'all.