What is the FLAC of video fomats?

[Satellite_6]

I know plenty about audio formats but nothing about video formats. I have a bunch of 480p movies taking up about 5 GB ea. and I also dl'd an entire series in 720p and somehow it only takes up about the same amount of memory as one movie 0_o. So what format should I use just for use on my computer in VLC media player? What program can I use to convert everything?

I shall be googling for the answers but I'm sure you guys will have the best answers.

Thanks.

EDIT: should I use SUPER and H.264? Does the container matter?

[CrowdAds]

[TackyTiger]

If you're looking for a lossless video codec, I remember Huffyuv being good;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffyuv

It's been a while since I did anything with it though, so something with better compression could be available nowadays. Just throwing it out there...

[jupitreas]

There is no such thing as lossless video, at least not as far as the consumer is concerned. Lossless video takes up a lot of space so it would be silly for the consumer to use such files. Moreover, most of the source files that come from the cameras are already lossy, encoded using MPEG4 AVC. Similarly, all video media on the consumer market (DVDs, BluRay, downloadable content etc.) is already lossy.

Generally speaking, if you want the highest possible quality, try to eliminate the transcoding as much as possible. Try a bunch of different codecs and see what looks good for you. MPEG4 AVC (ie. H.264) is probably your best bet.

[Satellite_6]

All video is lossy? That's some crazy sh*t! I really can't compress the videos I already have without losing data?

[jupitreas]

Uncompressed (or rather, as uncompressed as available to the consumer) HD video would take up about 400-600 GB per hour. Yes, you read that right.

[Satellite_6]

Bummer. I think I get it, but FLAC is basically zip for audio, and there isn't something similar for video, that sucks.

[TackyTiger]

I gave you a link to something similar for video.

The problem is that a lossless reduction to 50% of the original size of uncompressed video (as an example of the rough performance of flac with audio) still results in massive files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompressed_video

[Satellite_6]

Ah, I see. . .

[tovarnak]

dunno if its still actuall, but I have some input for this topic

since I have been working with video (cutting, syncing, some special effects etc) for few years (as amateur, making movies from FPS games), I could recommend you Lagarith and Huffyuv (lossless) codecs. I personally prefer Huffyuv since its a bit faster, but the choice of right codec depends on what you actually want to do with video. But lossless codecs (for video) arent good for final encoding, basically just because of the fact, they will reduce only by ~40-50% (depends on color depth, motion etc). It would be better to use some high profile codecs such as h264 with high bitrates (this depends on encoder settings, resolution and fps), it would save much more space and it would be unnoticeable difference with extremely high bitrates.
Btw, every device is recording video in some lossy format (I mean other than PC, like cameras, phones etc), just imagine uncompressed video in 720p 16:9 (1280x720) at 25 fps, you would need more like 4GB for just 1 minute long footage (assuming its 24-bit color depth).
If it comes to actuall video encoding, for final versions I use h264 in mkv container with Megui tool. Its kinda heavy gun for newcomers because its not very intuitive and generally not designed to be used by "newbies", but there are plenty presets which can be found on inet without knowing whats actually under the hood. If you would be interested I could look for preset I was using for my videos (u can check result here, http://beta-gaming.de/et/drj3w/iwill...by%20filus.mkv ).