Best video format for long term storage of home movies

[Airjrdn]

I have quite a few videos of my kids going back to 2001 that were taken with whatever device I had at the time. The devices ranged from a Sony DCR-TRV530, to Sony & Canon digital cameras, and lately Flip and iPhone 4 videos. The majority of them are .avi files, but there are some older .mpg, .mov, and even a couple of .wmv files.

I've always kept the originals in RAR files with recovery records. Often times, they are very large for longer recordings., and in the past, I've encoded them into xvid .avi files using mencoder with what appears to be very little quality loss, but much smaller files. Note that historically, I've kept the originals (pics & vids) in the RAR files, but also in the folders were lower res versions of the pictures, and xvid versions of the videos. I'm now thinking of replacing the original videos with ones that take less space.

I'm thinking of replacing the originals with a format that compresses better and offers little noticeable quality loss, but want to choose a format that I'm fairly sure will be around and playable in 20 or 30 years when these videos are likely to mean much more than they do today. Based on that, I'm thinking something open source would be best, but I'm not a guru in this area and am looking for input on what others think or have done.

Looking at some of the videos, VLC shows their codec details as being:

• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 30fps with MS ADPCM audio, Mono, 44100 Hz, 16 Bits per sample
• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 30fps with PCM S16 LE (araw) audio, Mono, 44100 Hz, 16 Bits per sample
• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 30fps with PCM U8 (araw) audio, Mono, 11024 Hz, 8 Bits per sample
• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 15fps with PCM U8 audio, Mono, 44100 Hz, 16 Bits per sample
• JPEG Video (jpeg), 320x240 15fps
• H264 MPEG-4 AVG (part 10) (avc1) 1280x720, 29.968079fps with MPEG AAC (mp4a) audio, Stereo, 44100 Hz
• MPEG-1/2 Vieo (mpgv), 320x240, 25fps with MPEG Audio Layer 1/2/3 (mpga) audio, 32000Hz, Bitrate 64 kb/s

Thoughts? Is going to a standard format and losing the originals even a good idea?

[robjv1]

I assume you want a format for archiving only and not a format that you would be going back and editing?

If those are the codecs of your original files, then for the most part -- your files are already quite compressed. Applying further compression will shrink the file size, but the quality will go with it. Perhaps your eyes tell you the further compressed files look as good as the old ones, but what display are you viewing it on? On a 65" screen, can you tell one from the other? It also may be the case that certain videos (shot on a tripod, in lots of light) will re-compress better than others, so try not to seek an all in one standard, you will have to take the videos on a case by case basis if you're going to apply more compression to them.

I'm not 100% familiar with RAR recovery records -- but it's been in my experience that compressing video files using RAR is 1) inefficient due to the negligible difference in file size and 2) dangerous, because if the file becomes corrupted, it's possible to lose a great deal or all of the video data.

If your worry is more along the lines of -- will I be able to play all these videos in many years, with all these varying standards and codecs -- then I think archiving re-compressed BACKUPS and not replacing the originals is probably a good idea, but only as a fail-safe, if for some reason, you can't play these videos on a more modern system. MPEG4 is probably a good choice, although I'd keep away from any proprietary flavor of it.

If I were you though -- hard drives are cheap -- keep all of your originals and a backup of them on two separate hard drives. That way, as long as you can play your originals still, you can always re-compress them to the open source standard of the day, instead of hedging your bets on MPEG-4 now.

[Bonie81]

...Note that historically, I've kept the originals (pics & vids) in the RAR files, but also in the folders were lower res versions of the pictures, and xvid versions of the videos. I'm now thinking of replacing the original videos with ones that take less space.

I'm thinking of replacing the originals with a format that compresses better and offers little noticeable quality loss, but want to choose a format that I'm fairly sure will be around and playable in 20 or 30 years when these videos are likely to mean much more than they do today. Based on that, I'm thinking something open source would be best, but I'm not a guru in this area and am looking for input on what others think or have done.

Looking at some of the videos, VLC shows their codec details as being:

• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 30fps with MS ADPCM audio, Mono, 44100 Hz, 16 Bits per sample
• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 30fps with PCM S16 LE (araw) audio, Mono, 44100 Hz, 16 Bits per sample
• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 30fps with PCM U8 (araw) audio, Mono, 11024 Hz, 8 Bits per sample
• MPEG-4 Video (XVID), 640x480, 15fps with PCM U8 audio, Mono, 44100 Hz, 16 Bits per sample
• JPEG Video (jpeg), 320x240 15fps
• H264 MPEG-4 AVG (part 10) (avc1) 1280x720, 29.968079fps with MPEG AAC (mp4a) audio, Stereo, 44100 Hz
• MPEG-1/2 Vieo (mpgv), 320x240, 25fps with MPEG Audio Layer 1/2/3 (mpga) audio, 32000Hz, Bitrate 64 kb/s

Thoughts? Is going to a standard format and losing the originals even a good idea?...

I am not a pro or a guru either.
It is always recommended to preserve and maintain original source, as you already did.
For better compression you may try x264 which offers best compression over quality, there are tons of free video converting tools available here, you may wish to try x264 (CLI), MeGUI, HandBrake or XMediaRecode or any of your own choice which offer detail configuration of x264 to suite your quality taste. Play around with x264 settings and figure out best settings per your own taste.

You may also prefer mkv as a container which is playable by many stand alone players. I observed most of your videos contains mono audio stream, I would probably convert mono stream into stereo with (100ms channel delay) @ 48000 Hz which will produce better sound while playback in stand alone player.

[RabidDog]

A RAR fie with a recovery record(S) is called a PAR isnt it? It *is* inefficient to try to (further) compress video files with RAR but adding the recovery bits adds a touch of redundancy. Seriously tho, How much does all this add up to? I can imagine its a lot less than 2tb, or probably less than 3tb. In which case save the originals to a single 2tb Or 3tb disk ... $100 .. In five years time re-visit your choices and maybe save off the same files to your new 64tb SSD.

[Airjrdn]

robv1 - I'm looking for a format for archiving & playing, but no, I won't be editing them. As to whether or not those are the codecs of my original files, that's a good question. I'm going to find out for sure though. As for viewing, I've typically viewed them on a 1920x1080 24" monitor, so you're right, on the TV, the difference may show up more.

I RAR everything into folders named the date it was taken as yyyy\yyyy_mm_dd. The RAR files with recovery records are simply for preserving the originals, so I can fix red-eye, colors, etc. but never mess w/the originals. I figure photo software will only improve over the years, and I don't want to keep re-compressing things lossly.

My concern is two-fold, storage (offsite costs mostly) as well as ensuring they are playable in the years to come.

RapidDog - It's funny you ask about them being PAR files, as I create par files as a 2nd form of redundancy.

My storage for Pictures & videos is:
1 - Primary HD - Originals in RAR files w/reduncancy records
- PAR files built for 25% redundancy of RAR files
2 - Local Synced Mirror of #1, different drive manufacturer
3 - 2nd Local Synced Mirror of #1, different drive manufacturer
4 - Offsite backup of RAR files to CrashPlan Central (preserves previous versions)
5 - Offsite backup of RAR files to family member's house 3hrs away using CrashPlan application (preserves previous versions)
6 - Pictures (originals, same as in RAR files) offsite at http://www.Fotki.com

With Mozy's $5/month all you can eat plan going belly up, I have to plan for the fact that CrashPlan could do the same at some point. With the amount of storage I'm using at CrashPlan for this stuff, plus music, etc. it would cost me close to $100/month on Amazon S3. I figured, if I could retain 95% of the quality at say 40% of the storage on the home videos, it might take that $100/month figure down to something more palatable should I need to use something like Amazon at some point.

I'll double check the videos and make sure the formats I listed above are the original formats. I can run a single cmd prompt extract and recursively extract everything to check.