FFV1 vs. H.264/H.265 Lossless vs. Huffyuv

[VideoFan576]

How do I encode videos to FFV1 using ffmpeg? Which version of it is the best one to use? Is it smaller than H.264 lossless, H.265 lossless, and Huffyuv?

[Sharc]

How do I encode videos to FFV1 using ffmpeg?

Try

ffmpeg -i "your_source" -c:a copy -c:v ffv1 "ffv1_out.avi"

Which version of it is the best one to use? Is it smaller than H.264 lossless, H.265 lossless, and Huffyuv?

Search the forum. It has been discussed many times.

[jagabo]

basic encoding with each:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v ffv1 ffv1.mkv
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v huffyuv huffyuv.mkv
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -qp 0 x264.mkv
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx265 -qp 0 -x265-params lossless=1 x265.mkv

sizes vary depending on the source. But ffv1 is usually smallest, huffyuv biggest, x264 and x265 between them but closer to ffv1. Test for yourself.

[hello_hello]

I recall reading a very old thread recently, probably at doom9, where one of the developers said using B frames in lossless mode for x264 always hurts compression and they should be disabled with --bframe 0 because x264 doesn't do it automatically. I don't know for certain that's still the case though.

Edit: From here https://x265.readthedocs.io/en/stable/lossless.html

In HEVC, only QP=4 is truly lossless quantization, and thus when encoding losslesly x265 uses QP=4 internally in its RDO decisions.

What happens when -qp 0 and lossless are specified together?

[jagabo]

What happens when -qp 0 and lossless are specified together?

It automatically switches to -qp 4.

[Quint]

By the way...
Does anyone know why this one (had the smallest filesize of all lossless codecs) was not developed further?
http://www.yuvsoft.com/2d-technologies/lossless-video-codec/