Archiving Uncompressed .avi - More manageable? Easier to play? Still Archive worthy

H

hurleyreyes

Member
I've got a bunch of films in .avi form (YUV codec). These files are huge and are also not the easiest/most flexible to use on a mac. I'm considering my options for archiving these films. Should I convert them into a smaller (more compressed) format? If so, any suggestions as to codec and what software to use? In general, the idea of introducing compression seems wrong - but archiving several films that are in the 180gb-250gb range also seems a bit crazy.

Anybody have thoughts on this?
 
You could try Huffyuv. I've been converting the uncompressed .mov's from the Hyperdeck Shuttle to Huffyuv .avi's and it's works for me. The files are about half the size and the compression is lossless. I'm on Linux, but Huffyuv is open source, so there is probably a Mac port. It's only 8-bit though, so if you need 10-bit that could be an issue.

Years ago, when I was still using Macs, I played around with the Sheervideo lossless codec. It worked fine, but it's not free. As it's propriatary, it probably isn't the best choice for long-term archiving, though.
 
If you want a future proof archive format, consider saving the material in a dpx or tiff image sequence. That will not save any space. If you want to save space, convert it to either ProRes or DNxHD.
 
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