Convert analogue to avi - 1 GB a minute, look too big

[ManUtdFans]

I recently tried to capture my Sony analogue V-8 camcorder tape to .avi file to my pc, however, I noticed the size of the .avi file is so big such that in average 1 GB for a minute.
eg. 30 minutes has 30 GB .avi file when I capture in the resolution: 720x576

Any idea how come so big?

[guns1inger]

because you are compressing with either no compression (i.e. Uncompressed), or using a lossless compression such as Lagarith or Huffyuv.

What did you capture it with ? - what sort of card ?
What do you intend to do with the video ?

Some cards can capture to mpeg-2 directly. If you are going to DVD then this might be an option. if you want to edit then either capture at a high bitrate (15 MB/s) or capture using the DV codec.

[jagabo]

~60 GB/hr is probably uncompressed YUY2 or other YUV 4:2:2 subsampling. A lossless encoder like HuffYUV will get down to about 1/2 to 1/3 of that without losing anything. MJPEG can get you lower (you can choose how much you want to compress) but image quality will suffer if you get too low. A DV codec will be a fair compromise of quality vs file size. About 13 GB/hr.

[ManUtdFans]

I looked at HuffYUV website:

Huffyuv is intended to replace uncompressed YUV as a video capture format. It is fast enough to compress full-resolution CCIR 601 video (720 x 480 x 30fps) in real time as it's captured on my machine.

It handles the 720x480.

How about if I set to 720x576?

Do you think any significant loss if I capture in 720x480?
The reason I capture from my analogue to my pc was I want to make a back up of my family video. You know no one knows when my analogue camcorder will die very soon.

[ManUtdFans]

~60 GB/hr is probably uncompressed YUY2 or other YUV 4:2:2 subsampling. A lossless encoder like HuffYUV will get down to about 1/2 to 1/3 of that without losing anything. MJPEG can get you lower (you can choose how much you want to compress) but image quality will suffer if you get too low. A DV codec will be a fair compromise of quality vs file size. About 13 GB/hr.

Hi, the capture device I am using is called "EasyCAP". This is a external analogue-to-USB device.

[jagabo]

I looked at HuffYUV website:

Huffyuv is intended to replace uncompressed YUV as a video capture format. It is fast enough to compress full-resolution CCIR 601 video (720 x 480 x 30fps) in real time as it's captured on my machine.

It handles the 720x480.

How about if I set to 720x576?

HuffYUV can compress frames of any even (as in even vs odd numbers) resolution. The capture card should tell HuffYUV what the frame size is (720x576 in your case) and HuffYUV shouldn't change it.

[ManUtdFans]

Hi, do you think there is really a significant different in the video quality between
720x480 and
720 x 576 ?

[jagabo]

It's not a matter of quality. NTSC video is broadcast as 480 scan lines. PAL video is broadcast as 576 scan lines. If you somehow manage to capture 480 scan lines of a PAL broadcast (most capture programs wouldn't even allow this) you will be missing 96 scan lines, about 17 percent of the frame.