Which codec for uncompressed AVI capture?

[Gameshow Host]

When I select avi on my capture card, I am presented with a list of codecs/options. But I just want uncompressed avi. Whcih setting should I choose?

[RoopeT]

For uncompressed avi select "none" from the codec list.

You don't want to capture uncompressed avi ... takes about 1 Gb / minute!

[Triffid]

Gameshow Host,

I agree with RoopeT, but if you do want uncompressed avi, make sure you use RGB format capture, as the microsoft YUV codec makes a real mess of raw YUV.

If, you meant that you don't want lossless compression, then use Huffyuv (and this time DO use YUV for capture). The compression is about 2:1, but it really is lossless, so there is no reason not to use it, and plenty of reasons to:

e.g.

- less data, due to compression (not so big a disk/partition required)
- lower data rate, due to compression (less dropped frames, CPU usage etc...)
- can use YUV format (reduces data rate further)

[Borg99]

You can use that huffyuv codec (check out the capturing section)
It takes less space than uncompressed RGB but still very much

[Gameshow Host]

Thanks. But I don't understand exactly what huffyuv and yuv are. Are they both codecs? If so, how can they both be used together.

I didn't actually realise you could get losless avi compression. Even if it's practically lossless, I don't mind.

I just want to capture video at very high quality so that I can edit it first and then compress it to mpeg-2 afterwards. I don't want to have two lots of compression on my final video!

Another reason touse avi is because I can't open mpeg2 files in Premiere (my capture card saves them as .mp2, and Premiere just won't accept them.

However, my capturing drive is only 40Gb, so using uncompressed avi I canonly capture about 17 minutes at a time, which is a pain. It would be nice if this huffyuv codec compressesit to make it smaller, but doesn't lose quality! Is this what it does?

[cuervo]

you'll never successfully view uncompressed video on a PC. Not enough thru-put on the PCI bus and no where nearly enough thru-put from an IDE hard drive. Even SCSI can't keep up with uncompressed on playback.

[spidey]

see here http://www.vcdhelp.com/mjpeg.htm

[Spicuzza]

Gameshow Host,

Looks like you've opened up quit a debate here, alot of exchange of ideas, imformation and techniques are being shared so everyone learns a little bit more.

I can't and won't comment on software that I don't use. I use VideoStudio 6.0 and I do not have problems. If I'm wanting a top quality XVCD I'll capture 352 x 480 uncompressed AVI, do whatever editing I want then encode that to 352 x 240, 2300 kbps, and the end result is very near the quality of the source Hi8 tape I use to film my son's high school wrestling matches.

I can't comment on someone elses machine but I've never had a problem playing back uncompressed AVI on my computer, I do it all the time and even my old 550 MHz Athlon never had a problem with playing back uncompressed AVI.

The problem with uncompressed AVI is the huge amount of disk space that it takes up. For me I don't do long projects just short fun stuff so this is not an issue. The longest project I've done was a 27 minute long highlight film for the wrestling team of which I captured about 13 gig of material that had a final size of about 500 MB. So you can see that uncompressed AVI is impractical for long captures.

A lot depends on what you doing and the target playback device of your movie.

Hope this helps.

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com

[cuervo]

Spicuza...

I sure don't claim to be the authority on uncompressed video. If you've got a method, I'd sure be interested in learning how to do it. As I said in my post, copying data into and out of NLE's doesn't pose a problem. The problem for me is in playing uncompressed video. In this case the data rate is on the order of 50-60 Mb/sec....much more than the ~30 Mb/sec data rate of the best EIDE drives on the market. Are you sure you're playing uncompressed video? DV is compressed 5:1, Good MJPEG runs about 3:1. I am trying to play uncompressed video at 720 x 480. Playing uncompressed always results in jerky motion and audio skips. Is this my problem with exceeding my available bandwidth on my IDE drive? Any help about what codecs you're using, and the settings you use would be of great interest to me.

P.S. I just ran a test at a different frame size. Indeed, 352 x 240 will play smoothly, albeit at a considerably degraded video quality. So, I guess it depends on frame size.

[Gameshow Host]

Help! I've just looked at the options and on my capture card I can only capture avi at 704x576 - not 720x576! I can capture mpeg2 at 720x576, why not avi?

[zanos]

I don't know about everyone else but when I use the huffyuv codec I get about 500 mb for every minute. Even mjpeg produces too big an avi file. How is it possible to record tv programs in high quality if this is the case???

[Spicuzza]

cuervo,

If I use ATI to capture AVI it is "UYVY video format (native)",
uncompressed AVI?

If I use Ulead VideoStudio 6.0 it is "Microsoft AVI files-OpenDML, file format, Microsoft Video Compression YUV" Please don't ask me to explain the difference because that is well beyond my level of technical knowledge.

Also you mentioned that AVI plays jerky on your machine and that you captured at 720 x 480. Before posting I captured a small 10 second clip from the TV tuner in VideoStudio at 720 x 480 and it played just fine.

To answer your question "Are you sure you're playing uncompressed video? My answer is No. It is my understanding that the "UYVY video format (native)", is uncompressed AVI.

I can't take credit for having a "method." I've used VideoStudio since version 4.0 and have learned a wealth of information from this site.
I would highly recommend VideoStudio 6.0 to anyone as I feel it has most everything and anything an amature videographer/moviemaker could want or need without an extreme learning curve. For the money I think it's the best solution on the market.

Also, my video capture drive is a RAID-0, that consists of two Western Digital, 7200 rpm, DMA 100 disks, and it makes a big difference in performance.

Back to "method" I capture my son's high school wrestling matches in VideoStudio 6.0 at 352 x 480 uncompressed AVI from the S-Video jack of my Canon Hi8 camcorder directly with the ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro.
Then I do whatever editing, sound effects, add music...whatever I want.
Then encode to 352 x 240 XVCD 2300 kbps, burned with either Ulead and or Nero and played on my Pioneer DV-343 player. The video quality is very near the source Hi8 tape.

Additionally my machine specifications:
Athlon 1.33 GHz cpu
Biostar M7MIA-R motherboard
512 MB ddr memory
Four Western Digital HDD's, 40 gig primary/20 gig slave
RAID-0 = two 20 gig HDD's total 40 gig. 100 gig total HDD space.
ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro 4X AGP video card
Creative Labs 5.1 sound blaster
Creative 52x CD-ROM
Creative 8x4x32 CD-RW
Linksys Ethernet
Cable Modem

I hope this will help.

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com

[cuervo]

Gary...

Thanx for giving me some info. I'll work on what you've told me. I'm not familiar with this format, but, I see it on my ATi selection list. It seems to have a low frame size, 80 x 80. I dunno.

[Gameshow Host]

Can anyone actually answer my questions?

[Triffid]

Help! I've just looked at the options and on my capture card I can only capture avi at 704x576 - not 720x576! I can capture mpeg2 at 720x576, why not avi?

I guess it's the driver. I find the same thing with my ASUS card. But 704 is fine, so don't worry about it!

However, my capturing drive is only 40Gb, so using uncompressed avi I canonly capture about 17 minutes at a time, which is a pain. It would be nice if this huffyuv codec compressesit to make it smaller, but doesn't lose quality! Is this what it does?

Yep, that's what it does. But maybe only 2-3 times smaller, which will still leave you with some limitations if you try to capture full frame, full length movies onto your 40Gb drive! When I capture something like a 2 hour movie, I use 1/2 resolution, so I can fit it into a bit over 20 GB.

(BTW Huffyuv is a codec. YUV is a format (ie separated luminance and chrominance information). I mentioned a microsoft YUV codec. That is a codec supplied with windows (at least in Win98SE) which is used by default when you capture YUV without specifying a different codec eg huffyuv.)

So IMO the settings to use are:

Capture format: Full or Half frame YUV
Compression: Huffyuv (set to best ie highest compression - assuming your CPU can deal with it, otherwise set to fastest (predict left))

You may also be able to save some space by using audio compression (but I've never done it, and I guess it depends or which capture app you use, so I can't give details on HOW)

I hope that answers your questions!

Good luck!
Laurie

[cuervo]

Here's the skinny on max allowable playback data rate for uncompressed video: Multiply the frame size by frame rate by 3(for RGB)= data rate. For example, If you're creating 740X480 @ 30 FPS, the data rate is 740X480X30X3=32Mb/sec. A HD storage system would then have to have this as a minimum read data rate for the video to play smoothly. Clearly, smaller frame sizes and frame rates will produce lower data rates. A typical IDE drive can achieve about 25 Mb/sec. At 30 FPS, uncompressed RGB can't exceed 578x480 frame size. I know this is an odd number, but, it's only what the calculation predicts. In reality, a little extra also has to be added for overhead and audio.

[Gameshow Host]

Thanks for the infor again guys. I'm a little worried about my capture card only allowing 704x576 for AVI capture. I intend to put this stuff onto DVD! Now, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 720 pixels the ONLY resolution for DVD? Meaning if I capture at anything less than 720 then the image will have to be scaled up to 720. I don't want my image to be scaled or I'll lose quality. I'm a real quality freak!

As for storage space, thankfully I don't intend to capture 2 hour movies. Any movie I like I can just buy it, (or rent it from the library and copy it!) Personally I only want to capture three types of things: 1) My home videos, to preserve them forever (these can easily be broken into half-hour chunks). 2) Old TV shows I have on tape but they don't show any more (no longer than 50 minutes), and 3) TV shows I record on a day-to day basis (none longer than 50 minutes). Okay, this wasn't a question. Just thought I'd share this with everyone, might be of interest!

[Triffid]

I agree it would be nice to cap at 720, (I tried, and tried and tried..) but, at least for me (and maybe you) this is not possible with the drivers I have - so I live with it.

But, looking at the sources you mention (BTW my MAIN capturing is for home videos, the movie stuff just happens occasionally!) you don't have that sort of res to start off with, so there really isn't anything to loose. I let TMPGE resize up to 720 (for DVD) (ie I just put that as the output frame width) and it seems to work well to me. Mostly, I've viewed files at this res on my PC, coz I don't have a DVD burner yet, but I guess the monitor is probably less forgiving than the TV will be anyway.

You never said what capture card you had (maybe there is a suitable driver out there for you!), but I have a question now:

Does anyone know of a capture driver that will work with ASUS (V7700 Deluxe) that will allow 720 width capture into AVI?

(The NVIDIA wdm driver only seems to do MPEG capture in most apps I've tried, and won't work with VDub at all, and the ASUS vfw capture driver only allows 704)

[cuervo]

720X480 is the only available frame size when capturing with DV and firewire. If you transcoded to a DV codec like the windoze DV codec or the MainConcept codec, it would resize it.

[TheInformer]

Thanks for the infor again guys. I'm a little worried about my capture card only allowing 704x576 for AVI capture. I intend to put this stuff onto DVD! Now, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 720 pixels the ONLY resolution for DVD? Meaning if I capture at anything less than 720 then the image will have to be scaled up to 720. I don't want my image to be scaled or I'll lose quality. I'm a real quality freak!

You can capture at 704x576, then use VirtualDub's Resize filter to resize the video to 720x576. Instead of stretching the video out, it can place black bars in the extra 16 pixels so the video does not get distorted.

If you plan to use a DV codec as a target codec, you'll need to specify 720x480 as the output size, or the DV codec will give you an error.

[Spicuzza]

To All:

Please correct me if I've misunderstood but it seems to me that the terms "frame size" and "resolution" are consistantly used interchangeably throughout this site and it is my understanding that these terms are not one and the same thing.

"Frame size".... as far as I know is just that...... the size of the frame. i.e. 352 x 240, 720 x 480, 160 x 120 and so on. The resolution is determined by the data rate in kbps, i.e. 1500 kbps, 2500 kbps, 6000 kbps and or dots per inch.

If I have computer photo that is 4 inches wide and 3 inches tall, that photo has a "frame size" of 4"x 3" which by itself has nothing to do with the "resolution" of the photo. If the photo is made up of 1/4" square pixels it would have a resolution of 16 pixels wide x 12 pixels high.

However, if the same photo with the exact same "frame size" of 4"x 3" now has pixels that are 1/16" square it would now have a "resolution" of 64 pixels x 48 pixels and would be a much sharper photo.

Where have I gone wrong?

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com

[cuervo]

In computer terminology, generally the "frame size" also refers to the pixel count. As such, the terms "frame size" and "rez" are interchangeable.

[Gameshow Host]

Spicuzza, resolution means dimensions in pixels and has nothing to do with proportions or physical sizes such as the size of a screen or a photograph, or the aspect ratio of a video. Don't confuse REAL things (ie screens, print-outs and dpi) with INFORMATION and DATA terms (resolution and bitrates) .Resolution refers only to the number of pixels that makes up an image (in my experience) - it can also include colour depth information too.

[Gameshow Host]

Sorry, I just read that back and it sounded like I was correcting you. What you said was correct, I was just trying to further clarify what resolution means.