Which lossless video codec to use?

[spoRv]

In theory, every lossless codec should be the same - same output as the input, bit-for-bit perfect... this is true, but there are some reasons to use one over another...

HuffYUV - one of the oldest, good compression, and still works well also with old PCs, even in real time, but as it works only in RGB and YUV, I reccomend to use it to capture analog SD video.

Lagarith - newer, very good compression, quite fast, works with RGB, YUV, YV12; I used it everytime, until yesterday... I tried to encode with x264 a file encoded with Lagarith, and it gave up, too much errors... thought maybe I encoded with too many opened software, re-encoded it... same problems... I tried four times, always the same...

MagicYUV - newest, good compression, final size bigger than Lagarith, but faster, and when I play the encoded file, it's possible to jump to every point without waiting, plus VirtualDub plays it in real time without stuttering... I should test it further, but I think this will be the only lossless coded I'll use in the future!

What's your experience with these, and other, lossless codecs?

[DoomBot]

I found less problems with MagicYUV as well although like you said Lagarith has done great for along time and still does on most files. These are the only 2 i have used and continue to use.

[spoRv]

Lagarith did a good job until now, but I can't trust it anymore...

So, it's time to say good bye to it, and welcome MagicYUV - hoping it will not have problems in the future!!!

[Booshman]

Lagarith did a good job until now, but I can't trust it anymore...

So, it's time to say good bye to it, and welcome MagicYUV - hoping it will not have problems in the future!!!

I started on HuffyUV. Then moved to Lagarith for later projects. I've had no issues with Lagarith, but I'm up for giving MagicYUV a try though.

[AntcuFaalb]

If you're OK with sticking to 8-bit, then check out UtVideo. It's actively maintained; gets a great compression ratio; has cross-platform support with pretty good performance; and even has an encoder and decoder builtin to FFmpeg!

http://umezawa.dyndns.info/archive/utvideo/

[jerryshadoe]

Assuming you are working with retail/hdtv releases, they will be 8-bit anyway. You only have to worry about something better if dealing with something like a 16mm/35mm film scan.

You state that the compression rates are decent. How do they compare to the other formats and how much is the time of encoding affected by using this codec in comparison to the others?

[AntcuFaalb]

Assuming you are working with retail/hdtv releases, they will be 8-bit anyway. You only have to worry about something better if dealing with something like a 16mm/35mm film scan.

You state that the compression rates are decent. How do they compare to the other formats and how much is the time of encoding affected by using this codec in comparison to the others?

We often work with 16mm and 35mm film scans. I now have more >8-bit material to work with than 8-bit material!

I'll try to dig up some benchmarks later today (3AM here).

[jerryshadoe]

No worries, it's nearly 1 am here and I'm still working on my current project, LOL

I understand that for the purposes of projects on Fanres you need something better than 8-bit and I think MagicYUV is the best option there.

It's impressive that you have more >8-bit material than 8-bit material - honestly, I'm a little jealous

No rush on those benchmarks as I'm asking more out of curiosity than needing to use the codec at the moment, but I'm sure there will be some others that are wondering as well how this codec holds up against the others.

[BrotherOrchid]

I use UTVideo for capturing whatever I need.

[bendermac]

since all of the above discussed lossless codecs are windows only, lets go over to the mac.
here we have a few options...

apple prores
quicktime animation codec
avid's dnxhd

there are a few more, but these 3 are the most common ones.

apple prores has a variety of settings to match the best usage of your project and what you want to do with your footage. if you simply just want to edit something, at the same time doesn't take up tons of space, go proxy. when you're in the finishing state, switch from proxy to prores 422 for sd or proress 422 hq when editing hd. prores 4444 should only be used if you're going color correction and vfx works.
i highly recommend to stay away from prores created with ffmpeg, as it can result into problems with final cut pro and nle or graphic applications such as after effects. trust, i went down that road and it wasn't pretty.
if you're on windows and you get prores files, simply install the official prores quicktime decoder plugin and you're set to go.

the animation codec is very good for graphics and animation created in such tools as after effects and the like. in pure video projects, e.g. editing, i wouldn't recommend it as file size can be an issue. use prores instead.

as for avid's dnxhd... if you work a lot with avid, the usage of this codec is recommended over prores. avid works with prores pretty smoothly, but dnxhd still works better. the codec is also available on windows, which makes working on both platform using avid even smoother.