Ideal video codec for video encoding?

[Guernsey]

I would like to know what is the ideal video codec that ideal for encoding videos and uses a small video size? I use Xvid and I want to know id that works for encoding videos?

[pandy]

On different forums your question will be removed as a violation for basic rules but on this forum it is acceptable.
There is no ideal codec and probably will be never created - ideal codec will be lossless yet delivering at the same time very high compression that is close to infinity.
In real life codecs are selected based on other criteria than ideal - for example player capabilities, amount of bandwidth tht can be used for data delivery etc.
In your case i can only assume that you are not limited by player capabilities however i would recommend to stay with very good H.264 (AVC) codec - for today is mature enough to deliver one of best combination of performance (encoder\decoder side) to quality and used bandwidth.
One of best H.264 encoders is free x264 this may be important for you also.
If from some reason you searching for something less standard but for example at least in theory better and at the same time free then perhaps VP9 will be good for you - alternatively to VP9 you may consider H.265 but with remark that VP9 and H.265 are less mature than H.264 and they have reduced compatibility (limited number players capable to decode them) also they are (usually) at least ten times slower at the encoding process than x264.
So my personal first codec on list will be H.264 then VP9 but i like also very simple and nowadays almost old MPEG-2/1.
For lossless encoding which is different topic i would recommend Huffyuv and FFV1.

[Guernsey]

On different forums your question will be removed as a violation for basic rules but on this forum it is acceptable.

I will keep that in mind.

There is no ideal codec and probably will be never created - ideal codec will be lossless yet delivering at the same time very high compression that is close to infinity.
In real life codecs are selected based on other criteria than ideal - for example player capabilities, amount of bandwidth tht can be used for data delivery etc.
In your case i can only assume that you are not limited by player capabilities however i would recommend to stay with very good H.264 (AVC) codec - for today is mature enough to deliver one of best combination of performance (encoder\decoder side) to quality and used bandwidth.
One of best H.264 encoders is free x264 this may be important for you also.
If from some reason you searching for something less standard but for example at least in theory better and at the same time free then perhaps VP9 will be good for you - alternatively to VP9 you may consider H.265 but with remark that VP9 and H.265 are less mature than H.264 and they have reduced compatibility (limited number players capable to decode them) also they are (usually) at least ten times slower at the encoding process than x264.
So my personal first codec on list will be H.264 then VP9 but i like also very simple and nowadays almost old MPEG-2/1.
For lossless encoding which is different topic i would recommend Huffyuv and FFV1.

I will give those a shot. Thanks.

[DB83]

On different forums your question will be removed as a violation for basic rules but on this forum it is acceptable.

Has something been lost in translation ?

If I was the OP, I would be puzzled by this reaction to an apparent simple question. Maybe you would care to expand on this for the mutual benefit of all.

[manono]

It's definitely a violation of the rules at Doom9 and, I expect, at other sites as well. The reason for that is there's no answer to the question of "What is best?" At Doom9 the rule is worded like this:

Do not ask "what's best" because this question cannot be answered objectively. Each and everyone has their own view about what's best in a certain area. The best is what works best for you!

And I agree 100%. Others may not and, as pandy mentioned, things are more lenient here.

[KarMa]

It's the Newbie / General discussions section. OP asked a Newbie question. And the Earth keeps spinning.

@OP
x264 would probably be best as just about everything made in the past 5 years will play H.264, which x264 conforms to. x264 is also much more efficient than Xvid will ever be. As far as VP9 or H.265 they are more on the cutting edge, so I think you should save those until you get comfortable with x264. Handbrake and Vidcoder are pretty easy and free programs for encoding with x264, and there are many others.

No idea why MPEG2 was brought up, that's a step down from Xvid. And it was pretty absurd to be bring up lossless Huffyuv and FFV1, when that is a whole other topic which shouldn't be mentioned without explanation to Newbies.

[DB83]

It's definitely a violation of the rules at Doom9 and, I expect, at other sites as well. The reason for that is there's no answer to the question of "What is best?" At Doom9 the rule is worded like this:

Do not ask "what's best" because this question cannot be answered objectively. Each and everyone has their own view about what's best in a certain area. The best is what works best for you!

And I agree 100%. Others may not and, as pandy mentioned, things are more lenient here.

Well I can understand that. In fact I recall making a similar point in a topic a while back.

However, the OP did not use the words "What is best" - unless the topic was edited before I read it. "Ideal" is the word I read here.

[pandy]

On different forums your question will be removed as a violation for basic rules but on this forum it is acceptable.

Has something been lost in translation ?

If I was the OP, I would be puzzled by this reaction to an apparent simple question. Maybe you would care to expand on this for the mutual benefit of all.

Ok, not native English and i agree it is kind of fuzzy... so allow me to rephrase all this:

There is at least one forum where such question will be considered as a rule violation and probably removed, luckily to OP this forum has other approach and such question is allowed.

(as explained by Manono there no objective answer for general question with plenty unknowns inside)

Ideal means same as best - of course we can play with words but luckily this is not lawyer forum.
For lossy coding best=ideal IMHO ideal looks more like not yet exist.

No idea why MPEG2 was brought up, that's a step down from Xvid. And it was pretty absurd to be bring up lossless Huffyuv and FFV1, when that is a whole other topic which shouldn't be mentioned without explanation to Newbies.

Well depends what is your goal - MPEG-2 (and 1) are capable to provide quite good results and they not require high CPU, also for example MPEG-1 is one of most deployed codecs worldwide (AFAIR supported from NT4) side to this it is capable to deliver video with resolution higher than 2048 pixels in line (AFAIK 4096x4096) - MPEG1 and MPEG2 are first consumer HW decodable codecs on the world...
As OP asked what is ideal...
Ideal codec will use 0% CPU for encoding/decoding and provide almost 100% compression without any limitations (color space, sampling, resolution, framerate) all this without loss.
I mentioned some codecs i like to use and i can recommend depend on usage context.

[_Al_]

I would like to know what is the ideal video codec that ideal for encoding videos and uses a small video size? I use Xvid and I want to know id that works for encoding videos?

Use H.264 and choose x264 encoder or any x264 frontend (Handbrake , Staxrip and many others)
then you might select appropriate profiles, depending what device it is meant to be.

Or check latest x265 encoder encoding HEVC video (also in those same softwares), using low bitrates, but HEVC format is still not widely used like H.264 today (and who says it actually will be).

In both cases you generate MP4 or MKV container (with video and audio in it) where video codec would be H.264 or HEVC.

I do not think you want to generate visually lossless videos with huge volumes, bigger than originals.