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Video Formats That Will Be Usable in 25 years?

Posted by Cliff on from the sometimes-analog-is-better-than-digital dept.

El_Nofx asks: "I have several home videos and hundreds of video clips stored in dozens of CODECs that I want to consolidate into one format so 10-15 years from now I can show them to my children. One in particular I don't want to loose is a video of 9-11 put out in Shockwave Flash. Has anyone thought of a better way to do this, as opposed to convert them all to full-frame AVI. Is there a CODEC out there that in 10 years will still be backward compatible enough to play those old clips. There seems to be a lot of buzz around about doing everything digitally with regards to pictures, movies, etc. But what use is it if 15 years from now you can't find anyway to watch them. What really bothers me is the CPRM movement. If not done correctly, that could negate the work all of us have done to digitize video. Any thoughts?" Open Formats and CODECs will beat any proprietary format for this exact problem, and with that usual twist of computing irony, these are the formats that are least used when dealing with multimedia. Many people cite better compression with closed formats as their main reason for using them, but when the CODECs are obsoleted, they'll be then feeling the crunch. For now, consider dumping your digital videos to VCD or DVD, as these should be viewable on the consumer level players which exist. For those looking for a more economical route: VHS/Beta is also an option. Proprietary digital formats, especially the bleeding edge formats involving high compression CODECs, should be avoided at all costs.

6 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Theora (eventually)?... by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From the earlier story, it sounds like the "Theora" project (VP3.5 video/Vorbis Audio in a .ogg file) might be a way to go...if it manages to get an implimentation available anytime soon. This is probably dependent on how quickly they get a spec written... It ought to be available for quite some time.

    On a related note - does anyone know of a good way to "capture" a flash animation to a more "standard" video file, e.g. .mpg or something similar? It'd be nice to take some of these flash web-cartoons and make personal-use VCD's out of them so everyone wouldn't have to cluster around my little monitor so that I could show them...

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  2. Well, what's already lasted 25 years? by hitzroth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Film, mostly.

    Given the fast pace of technological change, there's no way we can predict to that kind of detail (specific codec) what we're going to have to work with 25 years from now. Or perhaps even 5 for that matter.

    Other than film, your best bet is probably to pick a format that is widely used right now (mpeg or avi for example) and burn those babies onto DVD and toss 'em into a fireproof lock box for safe keeping.

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    In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
    --VonNeumann
    1. Re:Well, what's already lasted 25 years? by erpbridge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I wouldn't use AVI, because of all the codec confusion (to Divx or not to Divx). Hell, I even have trouble playing a Divx file made 18 months ago, and the only step I can find to fix it is to install the 3.11 codecs. In this case, I'd reccomend MPEG. MPEG has lasted as a standard for a while now, and should last as a standard for a while to come. Also, as a note: Make it as high-res as you can. Remember: You can always shrink quality, but you can't expand them.

      Now as for archiving, I'd say make two copies: One on CD for a lockbox at a bank, and one on CD for a lockbox at home. (Or, if you want, one for a lockbox at home, one for the CD-binder at home.) DVD-R/RAM formats are still up for grabs, I'd give it another 6 months until I'd consider DVD-R media. The reason I say 2 copies: one for safe-keeping, and one to use for when you want to actually use it or transfer it to another type of media in a year or two.

  3. "futureproofing" video is nigh impossible. by fraxas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your best bet is to archive not only the video material, but also the codecs themselves -- AND the O/S required to run them. If you were really paranoid, you'd but a P2 300 (or some other old, but serviceable machine) in cold storage with the disks, since you never know what the computer hardware world will be like in 15-20 years, let alone further ahead than that.

  4. Your solution by GrandCow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Best thing I've heard from people is to backup your movies and pictures onto a CD... and put a copy of the decoder and codec onto the CD also. That way even if the codec gets banished to the depths of hell you still have a copy that you are able to use to open the material.

    BONUS: Back it up with a codec and player that are without DRM built in and you don't have to worry about not being able to play the stuff in the future.

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    "Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
  5. don't use JPEG's for video by Miska · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you want maximum compatibility nothing is going to beat a huge sequence of still frames stored in a commonly-used format. Almost any of the common Internet standard formats would work. JPEG is probably the best choice for video still frames since it will save you a bunch of storage.

    Sorry, JPEG is a lossy compression, and, frame to frame, the visible compression artifacts will appear in different places.
    This means that, once you reassemble the images into a sequence again, it's as if you suddenly got a whole lot of dust (or visual artifacts) on it.

    As the parent poster mentioned in their subject, use a nonlossy format such as TIFF. (Or why not PNG, as I head it's Open).

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