YUY2: is this 24-Bit color?

[coda304]

YUY2: is this 24-Bit color?

I am capping with a Pinnacle PCTV and am unable to cap with RGB-24, so instead I figured that RGB-16 would be the next best thing. Until someone here on the board pointed out that RGB-16 is of low quality I was convinced it was better than YUY2.

So what format should I cap in to achieve the highest quality compared to my original source? My source is mainly DSS and the occasional cap from laser disc. I highly doubt I will ever waste my time trying to cap from VHS.

Thanks for any help!

[ironwood321]

YUY2 (and YUNV and V422)
YUY2 is another in the family of YUV 4:2:2 formats and appears to be used by all the same codecs as UYVY.

Horizontal Vertical
Y Sample Period 1 1
V Sample Period 2 1
U Sample Period 2 1

Effective bits per pixel : 16

Positive biHeight implies top-down image (top line first)



There is a help page here which contains information on playing AVIs which include video stored in YUY2 format.

This is from http://www.fourcc.org/

[snowmoon]

Visually 16 but YUY2 is leaps and bounds better than 16bit RGB for capturing video.

[Poplar]

To quote some authority on this matter:

"Which capture format should I choose if I'm going to use video compression?

Ultimately, you will need to choose a format which is compatible with the codec, but if you have a choice, always choose YUY2, UYVY, or YVYU over RGB24. Here's why:

TV cards generally use one of two chips, either the Zoran ZR36120 (FlyVideo-derived devices), or the Brooktree/Conexant BT8x8 series (everyone else). If you look at the datasheets for these chips you will find that they either accept YUV 4:2:2 data from the decoder or produce it internally. Guess how they produce RGB24 data when you ask for it? You guessed it, the YUV 4:2:2 data is upsampled to RGB24. This means that the extra color resolution that RGB24 gives is entirely fabricated.

Choosing YUY2/UYVY/YVYU over RGB24 typically gives you a sizable speed increase, and gives you better compression with Huffyuv.

RGB16 introduces horrible banding and signal loss, while RGB32 just adds an extra 8-bits of junk to RGB24. There is no point in using either."

(Avery Lee, author of VirtualDub)

[coda304]

Thanks for the help guys...as you can see I was a little lost

Thank you!