[FFmpeg-user] Compressed AVI to useable format

[Tobias Rapp]

On 12/04/2022 18:29, Ferdi Scholten wrote:
> On 11-04-2022 21:48, Zach Beal wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>>                  I have compressed AVI files that I want to convert to 
>> an uncompressed format. I do not know what the files are compressed 
>> with because they are exported from data acquisition software as 
>> "compressed AVI". How can this be accomplished with FFmpeg?
>>
>>
> I don't think you want uncompressed format. The avi container can have a 
> lot of different compressed audiovideo formats. There is however no 
> clear specification of codecs for avi containers as it is a fairly old 
> one, avi was superseded by asf. both formats were developed by Microsoft.
> 
> Try to use ffprobe to find out which codecs are used in the avi 
> container. Most likely it will be something like 
> divx/xvid/realvideo/cinepack as those were the usual suspects in the avi 
> days.
> 
> Most flexible modern container is matroska (mkv). It can most likely 
> handle those old codecs. Converting them to newer codecs will only 
> degrade the quality that probably is not very good to begin with.

That applies only when re-encoding with some lossy target codec. When 
using a loss-less target codec like Uncompressed (UYVY, v210), HuffYuv, 
or FFV1 there is no (additional) generation loss from encoding.

And a suitable container format depends on compatibility with the used 
media software. I think support for AVI is generally more common than 
for ASF. I agree that Matroska would be good choice if backwards 
compatibility is not an issue for you.

Regards, Tobias