What is the best way to archive this film?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Sampler Low-res Home Movie 2011968 4730 10x D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C. : D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is a 10x sampler I made. The original download is about 137GB. It is a .MOV file. The film is only 8 minutes long, but the way they did it made it too big for me to deal with. 

Frame size is 5120x3840

Data rate is 246741kbps

How would you save this file, at a fraction of the size of the original, and still do justice to it? Is there software that can turn this into a ProRes file that is high quality and much lower size?

Edited December 25, 2025 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Tyler Purcell]

I mean Resolve will export Pro Res HQ 4k, thats all it needs to be. 

[Simon Wyss]

You’re talking about binary data files but want to preserve a film. What now?

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Simply reduce the frame-dimensions to 640x480 pixels and save as a HEVC-file. 🤣

Okay, serious answer: „MOV“ is just a container-format. Please state the used codec - the file could already be in Pro Res HQ 4k.

You should also state whether the software should be for Linux or Android (or iPadOs or ChromeOS or maybe even Windows XP, MS-DOS 6.22 or whatever).

Another problem is: What do you want to do with the file on the long run? Just store it and play it back? Or edit and hence re-encode it? As for storage: Will Apple-codecs still be available in 10 years for your platform? Or will you encounter the same problems as e.g. with the abandoned „QuickTime for Windows“? Will the software support upscaling to the 8K-Displays that we all might have at home in 10 years? 

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Another thing to keep in mind: unless the MOV is using a lossless codec, any re-encoding might increase the amount of compression artifacts.

[Perry Paolantonio]

5 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Another thing to keep in mind: unless the MOV is using a lossless codec, any re-encoding might increase the amount of compression artifacts.

This applies to any format that has compression. HOWEVER, Prores really isn't subject to generational quality loss, which is a bit of a red herring argument anyway, because you don't typically export a file, reload that file and export again multiple times. But if you do, you don't have a ton to worry about with ProRes, unless you're exporting to a lesser quality flavor (like LT or Proxy). We tested this exact scenario several years ago. There is no quality loss with multi-generation prores 4444 compression. https://www.gammaraydigital.com/blog/prores-or-how-we-learned-stop-worrying-and-love-compression

As for whether Apple will support it - who cares? ProRes is very much out there and not going anywhere at this stage. Resolve supports prores reading and writing on all platforms including Linux. Premiere on Mac and Windows. Even if Apple drops support for it, so many ProRes files have been made over the past 15+ years that it's been around, that support for reading those files will remain and you can convert it to whatever the new format is.

And the notion that you should find a single format that you can access forever is misguided anyway - tech changes and you have to migrate your data to whatever the flavor of the day is. This is inevitable, just like it is with backups of files - that USB hard drive you use today probably won't work in 20 years because USB may not be a thing then, so you need to constantly migrate the data to some currently accessible format. 

Edited December 26, 2025 by Perry Paolantonio

[Joerg Polzfusz]

I didn’t say that you should find a single format. I was just raising the simple question what Daniel wants to do with the reduced file and whether a vendor specific -codec is a good idea.

[Perry Paolantonio]

11 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

As for storage: Will Apple-codecs still be available in 10 years for your platform? Or will you encounter the same problems as e.g. with the abandoned „QuickTime for Windows“? Will the software support upscaling to the 8K-Displays that we all might have at home in 10 years? 

I was responding to this, which to my reading implies that there are concerns with the long term viability of "Apple Codecs" (the only one of which that anyone uses these days is ProRes). Sorry if I got that wrong. 

Edited December 26, 2025 by Perry Paolantonio

[Tyler Purcell]

13 hours ago, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Will Apple-codecs still be available in 10 years for your platform? Or will you encounter the same problems as e.g. with the abandoned „QuickTime for Windows“? Will the software support upscaling to the 8K-Displays that we all might have at home in 10 years? 

Windows has never actually had built-in native support for Pro Res, even with Quicktime installed, it's not native to the OS like it is on Mac OS. You can literally click on any Pro Res clip in the finder and hit the spacebar to preview it, you've never been able to do that on Windows OR linux. So the fact Quicktime is gone, is inconsequential. Resolve, Premiere, After Effects, FF MPEG and VLC can all work with Pro Res files on Windows. 

Apple likes making money and licensing Pro Res and Pro Res Raw, is something they will continue to do unless there is a new codec that's somehow better. Last time I checked, Pro Res was the only lossless iFrame compressed 4444 codec optimized for computer playback. Most of the other codec's are designed for specialized hardware to decode, like JPEG2000. Where it's great for theatrical distribution with DCP's, computers don't much care for it. 

Pro Res isn't impervious to issues, corruption can cause Pro Res files to be unplayable, where JPEG2000 will still work. However, if you want to edit JPEG2000 files, you are making proxy files and editing with them, which makes it more akin to a raw format. Most of the industry does keep DPX and JPEG2000 copies of finished films, just for this potential corruption issue. Having been using Pro Res since the late 90's, I've only stumbled upon a few corrupt files from bad drives that didn't playback, when DPX files from the same bad drives worked fine. So just keep multiple copies and you'll be fine. I have 3 backups of my final projects, two on-site with different drives and one cloud. If you do that, you won't have any issues no matter what. 

I was on the team that built the first all-8k post house in Los Angeles for MSG. My job was to get the 8k systems working, so I sat in front of those fancy Sony 8k displays for days on end. I brought in 12k BRAW media from my URSA 12k AND Red Raw from a Red V-Raptor into an 8k timeline and switched back and forth between outputting in DCI 4k and DCI 8k. There was no visible difference between them with video material captured with a camera. If you brought up an 8k chart, you also couldn't tell. You'd have to get your face right up to the monitor and measure the lines with a magnifying glass. 

Today with modern camera systems, you could shoot in 8k or 12k, edit in 1080p, do the final grade in 4k and then simply change the timeline res to 8k for output. The thing is, nobody does it. Even the 8k scanned Lawerence of Arabia, did all the finishing work in 4k. The reason why is quite simple; the benefits aren't there. So if the industry isn't doing it, then the consumer will never get it. Considering that 4k streaming blows, it's literally garbage even with the highest bandwidth internet possible (we have symmetrical 5G with Wifi 7 router), I doubt 8k streaming will even be a thing. 8k distribution is just a gimmick, a way to sell rich people "fancy" TV's and specialized services for some sort of premium experience. If a typical audience can't tell the difference between a 15P contact print and 4k laser projection, then 8k has no value anywhere on the planet outside of speciality venue's like the 16k Vegas Sphere OR storing the master DPX files from a high-res scan of a feature film pre-restoration. 

Edited December 26, 2025 by Tyler Purcell

[Joerg Polzfusz]

In any case:

https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#release_8.0
 

FFmpeg is available for free for many OS and supports encoding video and audio files in various different formats, including VVC, HEVC, Apple ProRes, JPEG2000, … . Hence, Daniel can test them all with different settings and see whether the file size is reduced without too obvious losses. 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 12/26/2025 at 3:57 AM, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Simply reduce the frame-dimensions to 640x480 pixels and save as a HEVC-file. 🤣

Okay, serious answer: „MOV“ is just a container-format. Please state the used codec - the file could already be in Pro Res HQ 4k.

You should also state whether the software should be for Linux or Android (or iPadOs or ChromeOS or maybe even Windows XP, MS-DOS 6.22 or whatever).

Another problem is: What do you want to do with the file on the long run? Just store it and play it back? Or edit and hence re-encode it? As for storage: Will Apple-codecs still be available in 10 years for your platform? Or will you encounter the same problems as e.g. with the abandoned „QuickTime for Windows“? Will the software support upscaling to the 8K-Displays that we all might have at home in 10 years? 

No idea the codec. I've checked properties and it says mov. How do I find out if it is ProRes? I think it was scanned on a Lasergraphics scanner, 5K.

I want to store an original copy of the scan that is a lot lower in size than the 137GB original and is still faithful to the original...more or less. 

Edited December 27, 2025 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 12/26/2025 at 4:14 AM, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Another thing to keep in mind: unless the MOV is using a lossless codec, any re-encoding might increase the amount of compression artifacts.

Everything has to be balanced out Joerg. An archive has to keep all this stuff, a commercial scanner does not have to. And if you are not a rich archive, some of this stuff is just too massive to deal with when it comes to storage. 

What I'm doing is taking out hi-res 1440p edits from the original scan and saving those online. If they are home movies, I'm generally not interested in the entire films I find. Usually, I'm interested in certain clips from the film. But I want a copy of the original scan in my archive in case it needs to be revisited someday. I just don't want an 8-minute film that is 137GB, unless it happened to be of the utmost importance to the historical record. For now, I'm saving the massive original scan in 4K mp4 until I find another method.

Here is a sample of one of the 1440 edits.

Home Movie Ice Skating Anchorage, Alaska 1950 D. D. Teoli Jr. A. C. : D. D. Teoli Jr. A. C. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The whole 137Gb scan converted to 4K mp4 was 2.82GB @ 50,275kbps. The original scan is 5K @ 246,741kbps.

Edited December 27, 2025 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Tyler Purcell]

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

No idea the codec. I've checked properties and it says mov. How do I find out if it is ProRes? I think it was scanned on a Lasergraphics scanner, 5K.

If it's an MOV, then it's most likely Pro Res. You will need a program like Resolve to check it out, but I don't think the free version of resolve on windows has Pro Res encoding, just the paid version. But you can for sure open it up in Resolve and check it out, see what it says. 

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I want to store an original copy of the scan that is a lot lower in size than the 137GB original and is still faithful to the original...more or less. 

It's probably encoded in Pro Res XQ or 4444, which are much higher bandwidth codecs. 
If you transcode to standard Pro Res HQ 422 and reduce the size to 4k, you should cut that file size in half. 
All of that can be done in Resolve with the paid version. 
Premiere can also do it, as they have Pro Res on windows native. 
If you don't have those two programs, you're looking at FF MPEG, which is possible for sure. 

[Dan Baxter]

On 12/26/2025 at 7:57 PM, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Okay, serious answer: „MOV“ is just a container-format. Please state the used codec - the file could already be in Pro Res HQ 4k.

You should also state whether the software should be for Linux or Android (or iPadOs or ChromeOS or maybe even Windows XP, MS-DOS 6.22 or whatever).

MS-DOS 6.22?

The original scan you can easily find here:

https://archive.org/details/201986_Home_Movie_004730/201986_Home_Movie_004730_001_master.intros.mov

It's Prores 4444.

On 12/28/2025 at 7:20 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Everything has to be balanced out Joerg. An archive has to keep all this stuff, a commercial scanner does not have to. And if you are not a rich archive, some of this stuff is just too massive to deal with when it comes to storage. 

Any commercial company that works with archives will have experience with storing huge amounts of data onto servers, hard drives, and LTO tapes. The data storage is one of the reasons LaserGraphics is popular - it can output 8 different formats all at once (assuming you have a RAID in the host computer to deal with the I/O). That means you can do DPX (16bit) + DNG (12bit) + Prores XQ (12bit) all at 4K + Prores HQ (10bit) @ 2K for proofing all at once if you want to. You can also do h264 and HVEC but as they're GPU encoded they're just basic quality which is fine if you just need samples to show your customer, but they're not in finishing quality. Even if you're not doing restoration work the 2K Prores proxy is what you'll probably be using to check the scan is fine before delivery (for example dust particles on the light).

Anyway if you want to transcode files like that I'd suggest you familiarise yourself with ffmpeg.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

On 1/2/2026 at 7:01 AM, Dan Baxter said:

MS-DOS 6.22?

Yes, older ports of FFmpeg are also available for DOS:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg-x264-dos/

There’s also the option to use more current 32bit-windows-versions of FFmpeg under MS-DOS with tools like HX: https://www.japheth.de/HX.html

And you’ll never know what an archivist uses these days when he is not telling…

Edited January 3 by Joerg Polzfusz

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/2/2026 at 1:01 AM, Dan Baxter said:

MS-DOS 6.22?

The original scan you can easily find here:

https://archive.org/details/201986_Home_Movie_004730/201986_Home_Movie_004730_001_master.intros.mov

It's Prores 4444.

Any commercial company that works with archives will have experience with storing huge amounts of data onto servers, hard drives, and LTO tapes. The data storage is one of the reasons LaserGraphics is popular - it can output 8 different formats all at once (assuming you have a RAID in the host computer to deal with the I/O). That means you can do DPX (16bit) + DNG (12bit) + Prores XQ (12bit) all at 4K + Prores HQ (10bit) @ 2K for proofing all at once if you want to. You can also do h264 and HVEC but as they're GPU encoded they're just basic quality which is fine if you just need samples to show your customer, but they're not in finishing quality. Even if you're not doing restoration work the 2K Prores proxy is what you'll probably be using to check the scan is fine before delivery (for example dust particles on the light).

Anyway if you want to transcode files like that I'd suggest you familiarise yourself with ffmpeg.

Thanks Dan!

How did you determine it is ProRes 4444?

Well sure Dan, professional archives of any worth have big budgets and can handle massive amounts of data. But I'm a single man archive on a slim budget. My archive is not a non-profit, it is a no-profit! So, storage is always a concern. I don't have LTO, I have an archival optical disc library. I don't propose my archive to be anywhere in capacity as a large, professional archive with the exception of a few areas where I beat them to death. 

1) Fasy acting. No bullshit to deal with. Decisions are in seconds sometimes.

2) Free hi-res source material. I have no customers in the traditional sense. I preserve historical material and put it out there in hi- res for free. I model my archive after the old Getty Open Content Archive. The new Getty has gone to hell. 

3) Stupendous diversity of scope. This is due to wide ranging interests and no prejudice when it comes to collecting.

I will have to study up FFmpeg. I never heard of it Dan. My background is as a still photographer. So, cine' / video is something I'm still learning about. And really, I don't need to be a brainiac on all levels. I just need faithful scans and package them decently. A lot of the material I have is way beyond dust worries, Dan. The only thing that could fix it is a complete redo by AI.

Who knows, maybe archives will adopt AI to fix all their problem children?

 

The Radio Man c.1931

DDTJRAC

About FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project established in 2000 by Fabrice Bellard, offering libraries and programs for multimedia handling. The core command-line tool, `ffmpeg`, facilitates format conversion, editing, filtering, and streaming of video and audio files. Widely utilized in digital media production, broadcasting, video editing, transcoding, and streaming, FFmpeg is published under LGPL or GPL licenses. Alongside `ffmpeg`, FFmpeg includes tools like `ffplay` and `ffprobe`, and libraries such as `libavcodec` and `libavformat`. It is available across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms.

 

Edited January 4 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Chris Burke]

I see refurbished M2 Mac Studios for around a thousand bucks these days. The entry model, but still very capable.  I totally get that money is tight, yet I still highly recommend that you get such a mac and install at least the free version of Resolve on it.  For an archive such as yours, I would consider this tool essential.