VP9 and HEVC are more efficient than H.264 in terms of how much space they require, but they may take longer to encode. If you can sacrifice quality, you can reduce the file size drastically. ffmpeg -i -c:v prores -profile:v 3 output.movįfmpeg -i -c:v libx264 -crf 10 -preset ultraslow output.mp4

You can also do visually lossless encodes with libx265 or libx264 by specifying a low enough CRF value ( explanation of CRF here), e.g. So-called 'intermediate' codecs such as ProRes (see here) are often used for this purpose. Visually lossless encodes throw away some data but preserve quality in such a way that humans are likely not to notice any difference between the original and the encoded video. libx264 (H.264), libx265 (HEVC) and libvpx-vp9 can also be used in lossless mode: ffmpeg -i -c:v huffyuv output.aviįfmpeg -i -c:v libx264 -crf 0 output.mp4įfmpeg -i -c:v libx265 -x265-params lossless=1 output.mp4įfmpeg -i -c:v libvpx-vp9 -lossless 1 output.webm These are often used for archival purposes, where the original material needs to be preserved, and generation loss is to be avoided. Here, codecs such as HuffYUV or FFV1 could be used. You can then extract individual frames from the video without any quality loss. Lossless encodes will of course result in higher file sizes, but they offer the benefit of preserving the original data. However, you first have to think about whether you want to do a (mathematically) lossless, visually lossless, or lossy encode:

If you want highest quality and minimal file size, you should use a compression-efficient codec.

Ffmpeg images to video high quality