Best video archival format - suggestions?

#1

I have some home VHS, Sony Hi-8, and Sony miniDV tapes to convert for viewing and I am hoping the target format may be supported in the industry for another 20-30 years.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best target format for:
a) importing to Channels and viewing
b) viewing via streaming from a cloud service

My current thinking is to convert (or pay someone to convert) all of the above home tapes to AVI (my understanding is the miniDV tapes are already some form of AVI) and then use some bulk tool to convert to the target viewing format.

And, what tools might be useful for doing this? VideoRedo? Other?

I have both Mac and Windows PCs and could use Linux if needed.

1 Like
#2

Don't do this. If you convert from one digital format, only to convert to a different digital format, chances are quality will be lost in the process.

Convert your analog recordings direct to the digital format you wish to keep for archival the first time around. H.264 or H.265 for the video, and AAC or Opus for the audio; stored into a Matroska (MKV) would be my preference.

I'm sure others will have their own recommendations, too.

1 Like
#3

For something so important. I would get them converted to high bitrate HEVC in an mp4 container.

HEVC can play back on almost anything now and is the best and most modern codec currently. I would use high bitrate so that any sort of upscaling that needs to happen can occur while keeping the quality high. I wouldn't go under 10Mbit per second.

As for resolution, I don't even know what kind of options there are for these analog formats, but I'd go as high as possible, IE, 4k.

1 Like