Good codec for black and white video

[AlexeyS]

Which codec will be better than others for B&W video (1939-1945 videos)?

[ultimatebilly]

XviD, because it offers the possibility to encode in greyscale mode.

From doom9's guide for XviD 1.1:

"Greyscale enables a mode optimized for greyscale (black and white) content. It discards all information from the U/V plane (that's where color information is stored) and you end up with a black and white picture."

[stephanV]

Basically any codec that uses a YUV colorspace should do pretty good on black and white, as the U/V planes should compress pretty easily.

[AlexeyS]

XviD, because it offers the possibility to encode in greyscale mode.
This movies have 1-2% of color video. Will this video become B&W too?

[ultimatebilly]

Sin City or what? ;)
No, you can define zones in XviD, with separate parameters...
Just read the guide:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/xvid-vdub-11.htm

If you don't define a separate zone for the colored parts, you will have anything in b&w of course...