digital storage and streaming

[dragonfan79]

Hi, I have a quandry I have been pondering for some time, searched lots of sites but still undecided I'm hoping for some advice!

I want to copy all my CD's to digital storage. Currently I use iTunes for this as I like the ease and linkage to my ipods. However these are currently in AAC. I would like to rip all my CD's in better quality. I understand this would be AAIF or WAV but I know these take up a lot of space. Apple Lossless seems a good option but I want to be able to stream my music to my HD TV and receiver and I know that Apple TV does thsi but, for example WD TV live doesn't. The other thing I have is lots of photos of my kids and family and home videos of them as well and I woudl like to view them on the HD plasma as well. So my questiosn are:
- I need a format for ripping and toring music which has high sound quality but is not TOO memory intensive and can be streamed to my TV/receiver and also be able to send photos and my home videos and maybe in the future copies of my DVD's

Is there an answer? Apple TV does Apple lossless and photos but not sure on my videos?
WD Live TV does the vidoes, I think and photos but not iTunes lossless?

Also, just to be difficult if I went lossless can I upload those to my ipods and/or can you convert them to a less memory hungry format for that?

I currently use a PC with Xp but will upgrade this year to either a PC with windows 7 or a Mac

Any help would be great! Love the podcasr BTW, always fun and informative!

[tardis3]

I'm not an expert in some of the technical definitions however, my opinion (and the way I've gone) is to choose the most popular/available standard.

For Video - I choose avi - (making it with either xvid or H.264) To convert to this format I use autogk
For Audio - I choose Mp3 - can be selected in itunes to convert to mp3
For images - I choose JPG

[dragonfan79]

Thanks Tardis. That is pretty much what I do now but for better sound I was looking to rip to a more enhanced format than Mp3. trouble is that requires a lot more storgae space and not all the streaming devices seem to play all the formats. I have my home movies already as avi, I think so that should be ok. Maybe I'm after a holy grail that doesn't yet exist?!

cheers

[philedmonds]

My first reaction on listening to the Podcast this week was to say if you don't want the space of Wav files then for maximum compatibilty with multiple devices rip your tunes as 320k MP3's.

If you're listening on a iPod or TV - or even your average home "hi-fi" system you'll be extremely hard pressed to spot the difference between 320k mp3's and uncompressed.

I bet you even Andrew will tell you that in his TV work he'll often be dealing with music files distibuted at 320k MP3 for his broadcast work - of course once he starts working on it it'll be decoded to uncompressed for editing work.

[dragonfan79]

Thanks Phil. If the 320kb MP3 sounds htne like a good compromise; good quality and ease of storage and transfer. Now I just have to choose between Apple or PC!

cheers

[peterh_oz]

A comparison between MP3 and AAC if space is an issue:

4min 20sec song:
320kpbs MP3 = 10Mb
320kpbs AAC = 10.5Mb

4min 37sec song:
256kpbs MP3 = 8.6Mb
256kpbs AAC = 8.7Mb

Each use the same song (well, 2 songs but the same song in each format). Also, VBR was on for each which can also reduce the size without affecting quality.

I'm told AAC is a better format but I haven't compared them.