According to you, what is the best video & audio codec?

[marievvv]

There are so many video codecs today.

According to you what is the best lossless compression, lossy compression in audio & video?

[Deleted User 11865]

No idea what the best lossless codec would be.

Given that HEVC/H.265 is not exactly mainstream yet, the codec offering the best lossy compression would be AVC/H.264 (assuming you use a good encoder such as libx264).

For audio, the quality of the encoder implementation is often as important as the codec used (except maybe at very low bitrates).

[GregiBoy]

The best audio is achieved by pasthrough as the audio is then unchanged but this will depend on what your target device(s) can actually play.

[Deleted User 11865]

The best audio is achieved by pasthrough as the audio is then unchanged but this will depend on what your target device(s) can actually play.

Though technically, passthrough does not involve encoding the audio.

If you look at what's available in HandBrake, of course, it's a different story.

Best lossless video compression: H.264 via x264 (Constant Quality, RF 0)

Best lossy video compression: H.264 via x264

Best audio settings: Passthru, when available

Best lossless audio compression: FLAC (24-bit, or 16-bit if you're sure your source has 16-bit depth to begin with)

Best lossy audio compression: depends on the bitrate and the audio track's contents, with candidates being Core Audio AAC, FDK AAC (maybe), Vorbis and Lame MP3

[ericolon]

best lossless video: Microsoft Video 1 (it's lossless, and makes people angry)
best audio: 24bit flac all the way. Can't really hear the difference with my crap audio equipment, but still- feels premium

best lossy video: divx on fastest mode - super speedy, near lossless if required, helps me record let'splays on my ulv cabbage patch union worker without maxing out the fat32 file size limit every two seconds like fraps does
best audio: audio bitrate is a non-issue. never re-encode anything with a bitrate of 400kbps or less.

i'll tell you what's not the best video- youtube. if they supported the streaming of custom encoded files I'd be sooo happy.

[Deleted User 13735]

Best visually lossless YUV codecs:
(Lossless RGB codecs are all very similar)

Tier I (less compression):
Sony YUV
UT YUV (faster)

Tier II (smaller files):
ProRes (Mac)
DNxHD (Windows and Mac)
Cineform (not for Handbrake)

BTW, MS Video 1 is not lossless. It uses vector quantization, an early form of lossy compression.
Surprisingly, even RLE compression (QT Animation) is not mathematically lossless.