videobackup

A set of Python scripts that can turn any file into a video file and vice versa.

About this tool

The set consists out of two Python scripts: vb_encode.py that encodes any file into a video and vb_decode.py, that can decode a video file back into its original form. If you plan on uploading such a video file to a video hosting service, please make sure that the service's compression isn't too harsh on the video since this can quickly make the file unrecoverable. When in doubt, go for a 2 color palette, a pixel size of 2 and 2160p resolution. While this will give you an extremely low efficiency, it makes the file more resilient against compression.

Features

• Pixel-level error correction
• Byte-level error correction
• Quite configurable
• Dodgy multithreading
• Output files have enormous sizes (a good feature if you don't like disk space)

Requirements

• Python >= 3.8.6
• pillow >= 7.2.0
• reedsolo >= 1.5.4
• natsort >= 7.1.1
• ffmpeg
• Beefy hardware*

Earlier versions of the requirements probably work too but this is what I tested it with.

*Especially CPU horsepower and RAM is important. This tool can make use of all of your threads, but keep in mind that every thread needs a lot of RAM (e. g. ~700 MiB per thread when decoding a 2160p video). Also be aware that depending on the encoding options, the result video can be 5 to 9 times as large as the original file.

Todo (somewhat ordered from high to low priority)

• Write and read BMPs ourselves to speed up decoding (and hopefully encoding too)
• Improve multithreaded encoding
• Improve multithreaded decoding
• Automatic detection of color palette and pixel size when decoding
• Less spaghetti code (e. g. decoding algorithm)