Best video file format for future compatibility

panzer948 wrote on 12/19/2012, 1:39 PM
Hi all, going to get back into editing after taking a break for a couple of years. I want to capture / edit both my current HD footage as well as converting some of my old VHS analog tapes to the digital era. So thinking ahead, what HD file format (and non HD) is the best to save the final edited versions for future playback on computers. I no longer am interested in burning videos to DVD as I think the medium will have a similar fate as my old VHS stuff. Previously I saved as bunch of stuff as .avi files.

Thanks,
Bryan

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/19/2012, 2:16 PM
Really isn't any need to store digitized VHS as HD. VHS barely even qualifies as SD, so you don't gain anything by using a higher resolution. If you are desiring upscaling resolution of the videos when you watch them on an HD TV, real-time upscaling by the playback hardware is effortless and probably better than software scaling when creating the file, and it will only get better in the future.

".avi" covers a few thousand different formats so we don't know what you mean when you say ".avi files". DV .avi isn't a bad choice as it's very robust and well recognized. Vegas lets you do cuts only editing on DV with zero quality loss, and any editing that does result in re-encoding has extremely minimal loss. It's also the format you'll get if you are digitizing with a "firewire" analog->DV converter box so no further conversion is necessary. How you are capturing/digitizing your VHS material would probably play a big part in making the storage choice.

MP4 h.264 variants may produce better quality with smaller files, but the format is still somewhat in flux and not all playback devices play back files from various sources perfectly. MP4 is also a lossy format that doesn't hold up to editing and re-encoding well.

There's always uncompressed .avi, but that takes up a heck of a lot of space! There are some near-lossless codecs you could consider such as lagarith, but the file sizes are still closer to uncompressed than to DV, and you may run the risk of not finding a decoder handy in the future.
panzer948 wrote on 12/19/2012, 2:26 PM
Yea, I'm a noob to this format stuff. Forgot that about .avi. Also, should have made it more clear about the VHS stuff. I don't plan to digitize it into an HD format. I will simply capture it as lower DV quality. But in the end, I would like the final file to be just as compatible as my HD stuff. So are you basically saying that uncompressed .avi's are the way to go for future playback?? I don't mind that they are large files as I have plenty of space and not a lot of vids compared to some. A couple of years ago I saved some of my HD footage as m2t files. Just really confused and would like to simplify this to a single file type for all (I know the format would have to be different between HD and DV quality).
john_dennis wrote on 12/19/2012, 2:44 PM
Keep your source files. Disk space is cheap-----ish.

I've been saving my edited material to the Sony AVC codec as Blu-ray image files. I don't make that many Blu-ray disks, but wrapping the Blu-ray iso files to .mkv plays perfectly fine on my Sony Blu-ray player from removable storage on the USB input ports. I even get chapter navigation.

About the future of file formats, I'll let my heirs worry about that.
JJKizak wrote on 12/19/2012, 3:00 PM
Might wait for the newer Quantum Mechanics based codecs maybe in 50 years. Render time for any length project---"0". Data error rate---"0".
Render media---"Anything in all Universes and all dimensions".
Playback rate---"infinity"
Media involved---"all 3D holographic transmitted matter in all universes and dimensions."
You might call these new codecs the "God Codecs" MIT researchers are trying to create a computer that uses one bit per atom utilizing the spooky behavior of particle physics.

Hey, I like to "Lighten" things up a bit.
JJK
PeterDuke wrote on 12/19/2012, 5:05 PM
"There are some near-lossless codecs you could consider such as lagarith"

Actually, Lagarith is lossless, as is HuffYUV. Popular near-lossless encoders include Cineform and Avid DNxHD.
PeterDuke wrote on 12/19/2012, 5:11 PM
"About the future of file formats, I'll let my heirs worry about that."

I know my heirs won't worry at all! Straight into the bin.
riredale wrote on 12/19/2012, 6:53 PM
Yup, future generations won't give a darn about all the hard work I'm doing now. They will have their own work cut out for them and won't give all my brilliant projects a second thought.

At the rate things are changing, it looks like those future generations will be planting crops and scrounging to survive. Ah, the Middle Ages. Good times.
astar wrote on 12/19/2012, 7:27 PM
You could just follow the progression of VHS formats.

VHS -> DVD (MPEG2) -> Blu-ray (MPEG4/h.264/AVC) -> h.265 (HEVC)

Any of those formats will be playable into the future. I have been doing a 5mbs VBR h.264 for my VHS. H.264 will be playable for a very long time into the future given all the hardware codecs installed in phones, cameras, and even CPUs now. DNxHD would be another good choice if you actually think you will use your VHS footage someday.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/19/2012, 8:35 PM
To the OP:
You have asked two different questions here, and they need to be addressed accordingly; 1) Analog to Digital conversion (VHS->File) and 2) Digital to Digital Archive (your existing HD footage, will assume AVC/h264). So let's be pragmatic, ok?

1) Besides Kelly's "robust" comment, DV-AVI has another advantage for preservation of your VHS content over MPEG-based encoders. VHS (NTSC) is 4:1:1 or 4:1:0.5 chroma subsampling, pretty crappy at its outset, so let's preserve as much as we can, ok? The problem with any 8-bit MPEG encoder, besides a different compression format, is that they are 4:2:0, giving a net subsampling ratio of 4:1:0, see the loss? So, DV-AVI is a worthy archive format for VHS, because it preserves everything in the third (Cr) column. A lossless RGB codec would do the same thing, at the cost of a much larger file size, so DV-AVI is the logical choice here.

2) In order of accuracy, the archival integrity of Digital sources follows this hierarchy:
a) An exact copy or direct stream copy ("smart render") of the source.
b) A lossless RGB render from the source.
c) A render to the same format and encoder as the source (where smart render is not possible).
d) A transcode to a different format (not usually recommended).

The persistency and durability of formats in the future cannot be absolutely guaranteed, but with ISO/IEC/ITU/IEEC collaboration and agreement on the standards, which has not always been the case, it all can be safely assumed.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/19/2012, 8:36 PM
DV & HDV will be around longer then most other codecs. They've got hardware to back them up, many codecs are just "flavor of the month" ones and many older ones that were popular several years ago aren't used normally any more, but DV still is and so is HDV.
panzer948 wrote on 12/20/2012, 2:14 PM
Hi, thanks for all the info guys. So just to make sure I was checking my render settings in Sony Vegas. In the past I have selected MainConcept MPEG-2, then one of the several HDV selections to match the original files as close as possible. So it looks like I've been using HDV for my HD stuff for awhile now. Just want to be sure that is the same HDV format/file you indicated. Because I'm kind of new to this, its confusing one one refers to HDV but that ends up being a sub-selection of MainConcept MPEG-2, which I'm not as familiar with.

Thanks,
john_dennis wrote on 12/20/2012, 2:29 PM
"one refers to HDV but that ends up being a sub-selection of MainConcept MPEG-2,"

The Liberal Arts, non-technical answer is that HDV is a flavor of MPEG-2. MPEG-2 encoding services in Vegas Pro are provided by Mainconcept.
panzer948 wrote on 12/20/2012, 2:58 PM
thanks, that is what I thought but just wanted to be sure. I'm trying to learn again.... BTW, I have a professional degree; not a Liberal Arts degree. However, you do not have to have a fancy education to learn how to edit video and understand the theory and concepts for what you are doing. Just some practice and knowledge gained from others, etc. etc., which is why I went to this forum. The "Liberal Arts" comment was unnecessary.
Former user wrote on 12/20/2012, 3:11 PM
Darn, I guess those of us who did get a degree in film and tv just wasted our time. :)

Dave T2
JJKizak wrote on 12/20/2012, 3:27 PM
Vegas is almost the magic bullet. What/how many formats cannot be imported to the timeline?
JJK
john_dennis wrote on 12/20/2012, 3:38 PM
"The "Liberal Arts" comment was unnecessary."

My use of the term best describes my level of knowledge of the subject of codecs and encoders. It was not meant to imply that I'm making it easier for you to understand. No offense meant.
Laurence wrote on 12/20/2012, 4:38 PM
I rally like mpeg2 for any sort of HD archiving because it smart-renders into new projects and is relatively compact. You can also smart render between HDV m2t, XDcam .mxf, and XDcam .mp4 container formats which can be very handy. XDcam .mxf makes a great source format for Handbrake Internet renders.
ushere wrote on 12/20/2012, 6:03 PM
i think the winner is going to be....... betamax ;-)

pretty pointless really, i mean what's great today will probably seem archaic tomorrow. and, as new codecs come along. surely (if the material is important enough) it will be transferred to the 'better' codec.

frankly i doubt whether anything 'we' produce (and i'm not being demeaning here) will be of any value in what, ten, twenty, fifty years? if it is, then it will more likely be sitting around somewhere on the net rather than on a shelf.

i wrote some time back about my friend who's head of a major hospitals nuclear medicine unit.... they had to 'future proof' all their existing records. hp, dell, ibm, et al came along with various (expensive) options.... final decision was to microfiche - guaranteed readable into the future WITHOUT any sophisticated technology.

mind you, how that would adapt to video - perhaps tga / jpg / tiff sequences?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/20/2012, 8:45 PM
mind you, how that would adapt to video - perhaps tga / jpg / tiff sequences?

That's why I suggested DV/HDV, because it's a standard that everyone uses, just like tga/jpg & bmp (tif? I haven't used a tif in close to a decade, thank Apple for that). don't forget the audio (PCM WAVE seems to be the one that won't die).

While HDV is mpeg-2, it's the hardware tape standard so it's able to be easily transferred to take, quickly re-rendered, etc.
Laurence wrote on 12/20/2012, 8:56 PM
The trouble with HDV is that the audio is data compressed and will lose a generation of decompression/recompression if you reuse it. XDcam .mxf or XDcam .mp4 both use the same mpeg2 video compression but the audio has no data compression. You can smart-render both the video and the audio.
PeterDuke wrote on 12/21/2012, 5:53 AM
HDV is only 1440x1080. You would lose a bit of resolution if you started with 1920x1080.
Chienworks wrote on 12/21/2012, 6:56 AM
http://www.aktyler.com/edison/recreations/oh_theyre_such_nice_people.mp3

Audio recording from my grandfather's old Edison wind-up recreation player. The disc is just about 100 years old, 7mm thick, and made of hard wax. It still plays better than most of the vinyl that people bring in to me for transfer.
panzer948 wrote on 12/21/2012, 4:18 PM
Good point about HDV losing resolution for original sources at 1920. My SLR shoots at that. Any recommendations on a good format that will go forward for many years to come. As far as this stuff not being worth anything in 10 to 20 years, I beg to differ. These are personal videos of my 15 month old that I (and hopefully she) will want to see years from now.
ushere wrote on 12/21/2012, 7:02 PM
@ panzer - i didn't mean to imply that the videos we create would be 'worthless' in the future per se, i'm sure (like you) family interest videos will be of great interest to future generations, however, i'm not sure that they'll be that interested in what codec was used as long as it's viewable, just as we're happy watching vhs / hi8, etc., it's (as always) content that matters....