Best lossless codec for saving as a master file and future compatibility?

[facp]

A couple years ago, I started purchasing equipment for the purpose of digitizing old family videos off Betamax, VHS, Video8, Hi8, miniDV. It’s a lot and I just didn’t have the time I thought I would have to start and finish the project. We also moved so all my gear was boxed up and kinda forgotten. So 8 years later, i got them all out, cleaned, tested and connected. Did some test captures and all seem to be in good working order. I did a short test capture using Virtualdub with Huffyuv lossless compression. Which leads me to my question…

What would be the best lossless codec to use for archival purposes? When I did my research back then, Huffyuv was recommended. But i tried deinterlacing with QTGMC on my current Windows 11 PC and i’m getting avisynth decompressor errors. I’m not planning on post editing or restoration just yet. I just want to capture to a lossless codec that is universally accepted and readable on both Windows and MacOs. I feel like Huffyuv is more trouble and may become unsupported?

So which of the following do you think is best? Huffyuv, Lagarith, or UtVideo? Any others that has more compatibility for years to come? The avi captures will be saved as master files to 2 or 3 hard drives (backups). Any advice would be much appreciated.

[oln]

ffv1 is what's most used by actual archives like the US library of congress and has good support in ffmpeg and also in recent versions of davinci resolve (though not sure if it works with .avi or just .mkv containers), utvideo is also still actively developed and is supported in ffmpeg and as a windows codec and separate library for the latest variants.

Not aware of either having any support on macos outside of open source applications based on ffmpeg and resolve with ffv1 as I don't think macOS has anything equivalent to directshow/media foundation installable codecs any more. For commercial video editors and apps on macOS (and windows to some extent) converting to prores which is only near lossless (make sure to set correct interlaced flags!) is probably still the most practical option (unless you have tons of space and want to go fully uncompressed).

Huffyuv also still works with ffmpeg but it's less efficient and not really maintained or have much if any advantage over the former two these days and also has pretty limited video format support while lagarith only has decoding support in ffmpeg I think and needs a separate windows codec which is no longer maintained to be usable so neither is really all that ideal.

[pandy]

ffv1 seem to be wise choice - alternatively h.264 or h.265 in lossless mode should be also good choice

[jagabo]

I just want to capture to a lossless codec that is universally accepted and readable on both Windows and MacOs.

There's no such thing.

So which of the following do you think is best? Huffyuv, Lagarith, or UtVideo? Any others that has more compatibility for years to come?

Huffyuv is still around. But I would suggest use lossless video codec fully supported (encode and decode, YUV 4:2:2, interlaced) by ffmpeg. Which includes huffyuv (original and ffmpeg variant), UTVideo, and ffv1. Even x264 lossless and x265 lossless. Then, if necessary, you can convert to another lossless codec in the future.