What format should I use to archive video issued from mini DV tapes? I want to convert and archive movies captured with mini DV tapes. Videos are family movies.

Native format in dvvideo is huge (about 220 MB/min).

So I am willing to accept video compression but I want to keep the possibility of video montage afterwards.

I am looking for a interoperable and durable video format.

So far my searches have me led to :


H264 (default crf:23 - typical values 18 to 28)
H265 (default crf:28 - typical values ...)


I am looking for recommandation for the video format and constant rate factor (crf) to use, and any return of experience.

Thanks for your advices.

Documentation:


A CRF Guide
WP: Comparison of video codecs
I think that your choose are good.

H264 will be a bit huge in compare with H265, but will be supportable for more devices at this moment.

CRF you can get experimentally. Less CRF is better quality but bigger size of the file. 

Also you can use bitrate settings instead of CRF.
You can Focus on data from video recommendations for YouTube - https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

I use approx 8Mbit/s for 1080p, 5Mbit/s for 720p and 1-2 Mbit/s for 480p.

If you need a good quality for video editing and all the videos were recorded on a good camera and you want to do color grading with your videos you can save them in Apple ProRes or Cinegy Daniel 2 or another losless or low compression codec.