Video format to archive videos [closed]

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I hope you have had a good start into the new year, over the years, several films have collected. All are in different formats, and many are very large. I will mainly save space. It's not bad if some lose quality. Some videos should be rotate. I need a format that is also supported in many years. It must only be playable on the PC. I do not need compatibility with DVD players and mobile phones. The audio quality may be uniform for all. It is no problem to use avidemux manually, I would look through many videos to name them. I have no problem using ffmpeg via command line. I only have no idea of the choice of the format (Container, Video, Audio).

Here's a quick overview of the chaos. Thanks for any help.

I think this could be optimal: Video: MPEG-4 AVC Audio: AAC (Faac) Format: MP4

some long: {MPEG-4 Video (XVID) 768x576 fps:25 Planar 4:2:0 YUV MPEG Audio layer 1/2/3 (mpga) Stereo 44100 Hz 128 kb/s}

some old: {MPEG-4 Videos (DX50) 176x144 fps 10 Planar 4:2:0 YUV MPEG Audio layer 1/2/3 (mpga) mono 44100Hz 128 kb/s}

some from camera: {Motion JPEG Video (MJPG) 640x480 30.000300 fps Planar 4:2:2 YUV full scale PCM S16 LE (arar) mono 8000 Hz 16bits/sample}

only one bad quality: {MPEG-1/2 Video (mpgv) 720x480 59.940060 fps Planar 4:2:0 YUV MPEG Audio layer 1/2/3 (mpga) Stereo 44100 Hz 128kb/s}

many from camera: {Motion JPEG Video (MJPG) 640x480 29.970030 fps Planar 4:2:2 YUV full scale PCM MU-LAW (mlaw) mono 11025 Hz 8 bits per samle}

many from cell phone: {MPEG-4 Video (DX50) 176x144 10fps Planar 4:2:0 YUV MPEG Audio Layer 1/2/3 (mpga) mono 44100Hz 128kb/s}

many from camera: {JPEG Video (MJPG) 1280x720 29.969730 fps Planar 4:2:2 YUV full scale IMA WAV APPCM Audio (ms) mono 44100 Hz 16 bits per sample}

many from cell phone: {MPEG-4 Video (mp4v) 320x240 27.857868 fps Planar 4:2:0 YUV MPEG AAC Audio (mp4a) Stereo 3200Hz}

Answer 1

"I think this could be optimal: Video: MPEG-4 AVC Audio: AAC (Faac) Format: MP4" - correct, I think so too. AVC decoding is now in every gpu (nvidia, amd, intel), in every bluray player, and in every ios/android device (plus of course open-source support in ffmpeg), which means very nearly every multimedia device today. AAC similarly is the standard for iTunes and in almost every device. MP4 (or 3GP/mov variants thereof) are probably the most widely supported container other than MPEG2 transport streams. So this is a good combo :)

The devil is in the details of AVC settings. For widest compatibility, use Main (or possibly Baseline) profile, the lowest level that matches your resolution/fps, 1 ref frame, no B frames. This should be compatible with any legacy devices (as long as they can handle the resolution at all) and understood for many years in the future.

The answer in the library world of video archival is different: they seem to be converging on MJPEG2000 and MXF.

See: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

Video file formats supported in iPhone

http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/dav-faq.html

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/content/video_preferences.shtml

http://cool.conservation-us.org/bytopic/video/