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I have a 90TB master files (Videos) and I want to archive them for a very long time.
I know Matroska is an open source and QuickTime is from Apple. Matroska has a lot of features and QuickTime aswell. I can not decide how it will be in the future? Maybe Matroska won't be as popular as right now but QuickTime could stay more longer?
Which one should I choose?
xmux
Posted 2013-01-23T12:30:19.707
Reputation: 229
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I would choose neither and remux them to an MPEG-4 Part 14 (ISO/IEC 14496-14) container (known as "MP4").
The QuickTime File Format (QTFF) was the basis for MP4. They offer (more or less) the same support for video, audio and subtitle codecs. However, you will find many devices being unable to read MOV files at all. Playing MOV files natively in earlier versions of Windows is not possible, for example.
Matroska, while being open source, is not standardized by the ISO. This might not really matter—and in fact, it is an open standard—but device playback support for MKV files is only picking up very slowly. It is a promising container format but you will probably never see it being used for any real application, other than sharing video on the web.
The past has shown that when companies build applications or services that are deployed for consumer electronics or any kind of public interest, they rely on well-established standards, which in turn are mostly those published by the ITU or ISO.
Think about DVB broadcasting, which uses MPEG-2, the DVD, which uses MPEG-2 as well, or Blu-ray discs, which use MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC) video. All video cameras record some variant of MPEG-4 video these days and use storage formats defined in MPEG-4 or strongly related to those (e.g. AVCHD).
Recent initiatives have brought up the discussion about software patents in various video and audio codecs—especially with regard to HTML5 Video—but this is not really an issue with storage formats such as MP4.
slhck
Posted 2013-01-23T12:30:19.707
Reputation: 182 472
This MPEG-4 Part 14 container will keep the quality of the videos same as it is or there will be any loss of data/pixels? – xmux – 2013-01-23T15:55:51.027
If the video and audio codecs are supported by MP4, then yes, you can copy the bitstreams without quality loss. E.g. with FFmpeg: ffmpeg -i input.mov -c copy -map 0 output.mp4. For supported codecs, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats
The master files (Videos) are right now in QuickTime format. And if i copy them to MP4, the size of the files will be less then now? – xmux – 2013-01-23T16:14:11.847
If you just copy the video and audio bitstreams, the size will be the same (± a few kilobytes maybe). As I said, QuickTime and MP4 are mostly identical, since MP4 was based on the QuickTime format when it was created. – slhck – 2013-01-23T16:15:57.567
As you said, that QuickTime container has MP4 format inside, so i can just keep the master videos in QuickTime Container format for a better release of MP4? – xmux – 2013-01-23T16:20:16.857
The QuickTime container doesn't "have the MP4 format inside". There is 1) MP4 and 2) QuickTime. They're similar but not the same. There will be no "better" release of MP4, as it's already standardized. So, you can just move your video/audio data from a QuickTime container to MP4. – slhck – 2013-01-23T16:26:26.737
Sorry but i don't get it. If they are similar where is the catch to convert them to MP4? – xmux – 2013-01-23T16:30:19.443
There is no catch really. If the contained audio, video and subtitles are supported by both, you can just copy the bitstreams, for example with FFmpeg :) – slhck – 2013-01-23T16:42:14.107
what are the bitstreams? :) – xmux – 2013-01-23T16:53:51.567
Please read: What is a Codec (e.g. DivX?), and how does it differ from a File Format (e.g. MPG)? – in essence, your container (MP4, MOV, MKV) is only there to hold video, audio and subtitle (bit)streams. Not all containers support all kinds of streams, but if they support them, you can just "swap" the container on the outside but keep the audio, video and subtitles as they are.
– slhck – 2013-01-23T16:55:52.620
One note: If they are the master files and you want to keep the quality, do not just re-encode them. If possible (yeah, I know, 90TB!), keep both originals and the future-proofed versions around. – Hennes – 2013-01-23T14:02:32.530
Yeah definitely i must keep the quality and there can not be any loss of the pixels. I wanna keep the originals but the cost of the storage plans are really high as well :( – xmux – 2013-01-23T15:52:46.803