"Most efficient" lossless codec for compression?

[Inventive Software]

I might get lynched for saying the "b" word, but I'm after something that delivers the best compression, therefore I believe I'm entitled to ask cause perceptive quality don't exist with lossless codecs. ;)

Currently, I capture with HuffYUV, then re-encode with FFV1. However, FFV1's a little slow due to no multi-threading and it's slow de-compressing. I was thinking MSU Lossless would be better, but what do people think? (EDIT: After testing, MSU's faster de-compressing, but about 4x realtime slower encoding :()

EDIT: That better neuron2? ;)

What I'm after essentially is a relatively fast de-compress speed (i.e, around 25 FPS) and an efficient encoder.

[Guest]

You won't get lynched but you'll get struck if you don't edit your post and title to comply with the forum rules. You have enough posts under your belt to know better.

You say all you care about is compression, but then you mention performance, so you're contradicting yourself, too.

[End_of_Eternity]

You won't get lynched but you'll get struck if you don't edit your post and title to comply with the forum rules. You have enough posts under your belt to know better.

You say all you care about is compression, but then you mention performance, so you're contradicting yourself, too.

I think it's pretty easy to see that he is focusing on compression, but he still cares about other issues. Obviously a codec with excellent compression, but which requires $2000 hardware to decode is not doing the trick! Be helpful and don't try to act like a Doom9 regular.

On topic, I think you should try x264's lossless mode, IMHO it compares with other lossless codecs pretty well and it is h264 so it should be more compatible/futureproof.

You could also try Lagarith (especially considering it is a successor to HuffYUV.

http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

[Guest]

Be helpful and don't try to act like a Doom9 regular. In case you hadn't noticed, I am a forum moderator performing my duty to enforce the forum rules.

[foxyshadis]

I might get lynched for saying the "b" word, but I'm after something that delivers the best compression, therefore I believe I'm entitled to ask cause perceptive quality don't exist with lossless codecs. ;)

Currently, I capture with HuffYUV, then re-encode with FFV1. However, FFV1's a little slow due to no multi-threading and it's slow de-compressing. I was thinking MSU Lossless would be better, but what do people think?

It wouldn't have been hard to give MSU a quick test, which would quickly tell you that it's both lower compression and about half the speed of ffv1, even on a dual core.

My order of preference is FFV1->Lagarith->ffvhuff, except for screencaps where msu screen lossless rules, and long-term archival with a near-lossless xvid if necessary.

Obviously a codec with excellent compression, but which requires $2000 hardware to decode is not doing the trick!
I can recommend a couple of those too, but I don't think it would be helpful. :p ffv1 is about the same speed as xvid, encoding and decoding, for reference.

[AVIL]

Hi,

I'm testing YUVsoft's lossless codec. Just starting to test but compress well.In my clip :

Lagarith : 11 GB
YUVsoft : 8 GB

I'm using "max compression" mode. Its very slow (less than 2 fps with my athlon 64 3200+)

I haven't tested if is true lossles (yet encoding). It's the codec with a higher compression ratio i've tested.

Download it at:

http://www.yuvsoft.com/download/lossless-codec/YUVsoft-ls-codec.zip

[dragongodz]

Be helpful and don't try to act like a Doom9 regular.
thats got to be the silliest post of the year doesnt it ? ;)

Inventive Software - please be more clear. as neuron2 said you contradict yourself. what exactly are you after , compression size, speed or a good mix of both ?

[bond]

while it seems that for lossless codecs its easy to find out the "best" i have to mention even if he would define that he "only" cares about speed or "only" about compression, the results would differ depending on the source, used system, bla bla (not to speak of the most likely situation, a mix of both)

in the end there is no ultimate "best" :)

[Inventive Software]

See my first post. I made things a little more clearer I hope.

[zambelli]

Last time I checked, I think HuffYUV was still the fastest codec to decode. If you plan on using a lossless codec in, say, non-linear editing, then decode speed would be the most important factor.

[akupenguin]

Fastest lossless codec, of course. Just about any lossy codec is faster to decode than just about any lossless codec, simply because of the less data to process. (e.g. huffyuv is about 4 times slower than mpeg4sp cq1, or 2 times slower than mjpeg cq1).
And even among lossless codecs, huffyuv is about the same decoding speed as h264 lossless w/ cavlc (using libavcodec for both). h264 is more complicated, but it compresses better so there's fewer bits to parse. But I guess you'd exclude h264 for non-linear editting if you don't like inter-frames (if you restrict h264 to I-frames only, it's slower).

[Inventive Software]

I'll give Lagarith a try and see how that goes.

[Inventive Software]

Just a quick update: Lagarith had better compression than HuffYUV, and was not much slower, so that'll probably be my replacement for the capture codec. FFV1 or MSU will be the archive codec, depending on the length of the source (I have 3 hour races on VHS, and MSU's 4x realtime slower in the fastest mode).