Lossless compression CODEC for archiving DV25/MiniDV Files?

[axolotls]

I have about 500GB of DV25 files transferred from miniDV to the PC. What is the best lossless codec that I can use to shrink and archive these?

Only one I can remember is Huffy. Been a while since I did this stuff.

TIA

[jagabo]

Compressing your DV video with a lossless codec will involve decompressing it to a YUV or RGB colorspace and then compressing it with the lossless codec. The result will usually be larger than your DV source.

Some better lossless codecs if you want to try them: lagarith, MSU lossless video codec. Both can compress more than HuffYUV but are much slower.

[edDV]

There is no quality advantage to recompressing to a lossless codec. Better to leave it as first generation DV format for archive. Any further compression (e.g. MPeg2, Mpeg4) will be lossy.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Agreed - stick to the existing DV format.

Additionally, I'd think very carefully what medium you intend to use to archive the material. Recordable DVD is starting to get very bad press - if you use the cheap blanks, don't be surprised if the footage is corrupt in only a few years. Either invest in archival gold DVD blanks (typically $2 each for 4.7GB), buy a dedicated external harddrive with enough capacity (though for 500GB, that's maybe $200 to $300) OR, recommended and practised by many, stick with miniDV tape.

Each 60min tape holds the equivalent of about 12GB.

A 500GB external hard drive will hold the equivalent of 41 tapes.

In bulk, you can get high quality 60min miniDV tapes for $4. 41 of them = $160 or so.

Going the archival gold DVD route, 500GB / 4.7GB * $2 = approx. $200.

Again - if you really value the footage and truly want to archive it, avoid cheap DVD-Rs and don't compress to DVD/MPEG2.

[jagabo]

There are some types of video that will compress better with a lossless codec. Some computer animated video with large areas of solid color for example.

I just ran a test compressing a 60 second all black, 720x480, 29.97 fps video with Lagarith. The AVI file (no audio) was 70 KB!

[axolotls]

Thanks all for the great responses. I forgot about colorspace conversions!

I will leave it as they are as the footage is one of a kind and worth something. I will just mirror the drive that it is on.

I don't keep the DV tapes, as they usually go straight uncompressed to the computer and/or MPG2 CBR 8000 to a TY DVD-R if around an hour long.

Actually, I am as weary of DVD-R's, as miniDV tapes, so they stay on external drives (mirrored usually).

The stuff I have isn't animated, actually quite noisy old school concert footage from the 80's when the consumer video cam's first came out.

8)