Uncompressed capturing?

[6079]

Is there a PC card that can capture video from the TV without compressing it at all?

If so, what card or what connection is necessary?

Thanks in advance.

[guns1inger]

Any card that allows you to choose the codec to use will capture uncompressed. Be aware that uncompressed video requires large amounts of hard drive space (100+ gb/hour, I believe) and high data throughput.

[vhelp]

Hi 6079,

Is there a PC card that can capture video from the TV without compressing it at all?

Yes. Most (if not all) analog capture cards feature the capability to capture
in uncompressed format. In this case, the uncompressed you might be refering to
is YUV.YUY2 or YUV.UYVY color space. These are most capture cards minimum internal
format.

( YUV is an color space, used in TV video, etc. and YUY2, YV12, etc. are subsets
of that format. )

As to your inquiry.. To get uncompressed video from your TV (ie, cable box) you
would set your capture card's software application setting and choose either a
YUY2 or UYVY color space codec.

Note, there are codecs that "wrap" this format inside a container and without ever
compressing it. For example, on the ATI cards, they offer the YUV.UYVY codec.
This is a raw (or, uncompressed) codec, where the video image is captured in this
raw format. And, a one minute capture using 720 x 480 pixel resolution would take
up aprox 1.2gig of HDD space, or aprox 72gig HDD space per hour.

The next closest option to uncompressed, is the Huffy codec. This codec claims
the capability to capture video images in a lossless manor, though with much less
HDD space requirements, through a Huffman compression scheme. This compression
scheme is supposevly lossless in termas of video quality. Only this time around,
a one hour capture session might result in aprox 25gig of HDD space.

There is another lossless codec.. the Lagareth codec. This codec is similar to the
Huffy codec, but uses even less HDD space than huffy. But these codecs capture in
a form of compression, but the decoding methods are lossless.

So, if you have HDD space limitations, you could use either the Huffy or Lagareth
codes, and capture lossless video -- smaller HDD space.

Or, if you want the ultimate for-sure thing without doubt, then go raw, and capture
using the UYVY or YUY2 codecs -- larger HDD space.

Note, there are other things to talk about, such as pros/cons of these (and other)
codecs, but for the time being, this should get you started

-vhelp 4087

[ronnylov]

Arithyuv is another lossless codec that compresses somewhere between Huffyuv and Lagarith which can be worth a try if Lagarith is too demanding for your CPU.