Which is best for storage: raw avi's or image sequences

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1

I always render to frames but when it comes to storing those I don’t feel like keeping around those 100.000 frames.
Do I lose any real quality in a raw avi? Is it worth the trouble? Does it have any advantages?

Thanks in advance

2

If you are using AVIs and you are on Windows you may want to consider using the Lagarith or HUFF codecs for archiving. This way you get at least 20-30% lossless compression. 100,000 of any files has a big impact on my systems when I am browsing. You may have experienced the Homer DOH as you browse to a folder and the OS just sits there for a while trying to thumbnail the beast.

Recently I have been using JPEG2000 with a 90-100% compression ratio for my final renders as the codec for my container and I have been happy with the results.

I guess image sequences are probably the best solution for archiving to static media. If your DVD has a bad sector years down the road you might be able to fetch some of the sequence. If you place them all in a single file and any one sector goes bad, the entire sequence may be unrecoverable.

3

Would you recommend Digital Storage over a DVD, like say a 10$ thumb drive?