Best movie encoder codec

I'm looking for a good codec to use when re-encoding movies to save on hard disk space.

DIVX is filled with adware and I'm sure there are better ones out there to be used.

I've heard both good and bad things about h.264 and was wondering what is the best one to use and where should I get it from to keep the bloatware off my computer.

Thanks

>>3
Do you even know what 'uncompressed' means?
Yay for 1 minute = 7 Gig