Huffyuv AVI to h.264 mp4

[satellite15]

I have some HuffYUV captures from 8mm sources which are for archival purposes with the following properties:
- AVI container
- Encoded with HuffYUV64 2.1.1 (default settings)
- 29.97fps
- 720x480 YUY2 (YUV 4:2:2 Interleaved)

Will programs (such as Handbrake for example) accept this and handle it properly if I was to encode to h.264 for lossy short term viewing files. My concern is mostly around huffyuv support in programs like these and color space conversion. I've read h.264 uses YV12 and my files are currently YUY2. As I don't know enough about the color stuff, do I need to do some processing on my own before handing them off to be re-encoded or will most programs handle the conversion without unnecessary loss/error (above and beyond compression from x264 for example). In other words: Can I count on intelligent identification of YUY2 and intelligent YUY2->YV12 from codecs such as x264 or am I out of luck and should I be archiving in a different format that is more fluid between codecs/formats?

[poisondeathray]

How are you watching it? x264 supports many colorspaces including YUV 4:2:2 , but most hardware players and devices only support YUV 4:2:0. But if you're using a computer for playback it's not a problem

http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings#output-csp
--output-csp i422

If your binary is compiled with lavf or ffms2 support it will correctly identify the input colorspace as well (most distributed binaries are compiled with both lavf and ffms2)

But I would argue for "lossy short term viewing" YV12 is probably fine

[hello_hello]

Try MeGUI. To be honest the usual method for opening AVIs with MeGUI can be a bit hit and miss (the file indexer will either do it's thing or give an error) so if that happens, remux the AVIs as MKVs using MKVMergeGUI first and use them for encoding instead.

Use the File/Open menu to open the video for converting. Let MeGUI add an indexing job to the job queue, switch to the Queue tab and run it. When it's done it'll open the script creator with a preview for setting up an encode. Adjust the cropping and resizing etc, then save the script. A new preview window will open but you can simply close it.

Back in MeGUI's main window you can use the two Queue buttons to add the video and audio encoding jobs to the job queue separately, or if you want to keep the original audio stream, use the "X" box in the audio section to delete any audio there, then use the AutoEncode button down the bottom. There you can add your existing audio (it should have been extracted while indexing) and MeGUI will encode the video and remux the audio into a new file when it's done.

For your files, when you add the video encoding job to the job queue (whether by itself or when using AutoEncode), MeGUI will pop up with a "successfully converted to YV12" message. It'll simply add ConvertToYV12() to the end of the script to do so. If it doesn't (it will) you can open the script MeGUI saves to your hard drive using notepad, and add it to the end manually then resave it. Once that's done, switch to the Queue tab and start the encoding job.

Of course you'll need to set up the video and or audio encoders to your liking but that's pretty self explanatory. Whatever the encoder settings, when you add the encoding job to the queue, they'll be the settings MeGUI uses. So you can add one encoding job, change encoder settings, then add a second encoding job, etc, etc.