How to store your converted videos?
 

Hi again everyone,

So following the guide, I'm correctly using HuffYuv. Being a lossless compression, the end result is quite big (couple of GB for a tape). Couple of questions:

1. Do you keep the Lossless video? Of create a smaller lossy Video and store just that?
2. When you create a Lossy video, do you encode it from a Lossless video?
3. Some people in the forum here use Handbrake. But I think VirtualDub can also do that?
4. Are there any recommended settings that will output good quality videos but smaller in size without hurting quality too much?

Thanks!

I don't think you will get one standard answer for your questions, and the answers will depend on your specific needs and how much money you want to invest in storage and how many videos you have. I have a 32tb NAS for my storage needs, but some use external hard drives. Just make sure to make offsite backups, at a regular basis. You don't want to spend all this time encoding/saving all your videos and loss them when multiple hard drive fail or a flood/fire.

As for question 1, that will depend on if you plan on doing any future editing on the files, if so you will want to keep the best lossless version you have, if no more editing, then compress them with a h264 or h265 codec, or any one you like. I use ffmpeg myself.

Question 2: Yes, always work with your highest quality version to compress. Try to stay away from re-encoding a video multiple times. So, don't encode a mpeg to 50% compression, then take that resulting mpeg and re-encode it to another 50%. You should take the original video and compress it to 75%.

Question 3: I don't think you can re-encode from VirtualDub, but you should be able to use it to capture to a compressed format. (I don't use VirtualDub, but I don't recall anyone saying it encodes videos from existing files.)

Question 4: h265, the settings will depend on the types of videos and the content.

This is just my 2 cents, I am sure others will have more cents to throw in.:)

Hello bstenger!

HuffYuv is a loseless format. So technically - I should create out lossy format from it? (or in other words, the .avi file the capture outputs?) I was reading the ffmpeg docuemtation, and it seems like you can control quality with the -q flag. I'm not sure what is 75%, but It was mentioned most of the people will use Q 20 to 30. I guess I will start with 20, and see if the quality and file size is accept-able.

I appreciate it, thank you!