Good lossy codecs for 1080i/HD?

[ENunn]

So I've been recording 1080i video with Amarec for a long time now but since I'm using UTVideo as my codec it's lossless which means huge file sizes. I know I can compress later but personally I'd rather have a good lossy codec than lossless for HD. I know lossless is the best but the hard drive space is crazy (250gb+ for a 2 hour recording). My capture card's an Elgato HD60s. I would use the Elgato Game Capture software but unfortunately it doesn't record to an interlaced file (at least for the HD60S) + there's color trailing issues (mainly due to recording in YV12. Recording in YUY2 with Amarec doesn't have any issues even though the capture card is actually interally YV12). Does anyone know any good lossy codecs or software that can record to an interlaced file? I remember trying ffmpeg a long time ago but I have to crank up the bitrate to 200mbps to get a file that isn't blurry.

[fsquared]

My rule of thumb for 1080i is MPEG-2, secondarily H.264.

[ENunn]

My rule of thumb for 1080i is MPEG-2, secondarily H.264.

I experimented with MPEG2 a while back with ffmpeg, I'm not sure if I'm doing it right but that's where I had to crank the bitrate to 200mbps to get a good result. Either that or I'm going crazy

Here's my batch file at the moment

ffmpeg -f dshow -rtbufsize 2048M -r 29.97 -i video="Game Capture HD60 S (Video) (#01)":audio="Game Capture HD60 S (Audio) (#01)" -c:v mpeg2video -q:v 0 -b:v 60000k -minrate 60000k -maxrate 60000k -flags +ilme+ildct -top 1 -f segment -segment_time 362439 -strftime 1 "output\%%Y-%%m-%%d_%%H-%%M-%%S.ts"

*still experimenting hence why i changed it to 60000

Is there really anything I need to change? Or is there a way to record MPEG2 in Amarec? I would go with the firewire route for the best results but I can't be bothered to swap my firewire card out from my main PC to my XP machine (since there's no 64-bit cable box firewire drivers), and Spectrum copy protects every channel that isn't local channels.

[jagabo]

MJPEG used to be popular for interlaced YUY2 video capture.

[ENunn]

MJPEG used to be popular for interlaced YUY2 video capture.

Which codecs do you suggest that are free? I've been looking at the Blackmagic codec but I can't seem to find a download anywhere.

I also tried it with ffmpeg but it says "unsupported pixel format" even though I have -pix_fmt yuvj422p in my batch file.

[KarMa]

x264 with the --tff command can be used to record 1080i content. It supports YUY2 too. I use it regularly for VHS recording on the fly. As I normally record 480p, the CPU demands are going to be much lower than your use case of 1080i so start off with the fastest preset and go from there.

You need x264vfw installed for it to work in Amarec. Put the --tff command into the extra command line box, along with the zero latency box checked. Maybe use a CRF of 18-20.

[jagabo]

MJPEG used to be popular for interlaced YUY2 video capture.

Which codecs do you suggest that are free?

I haven't used it in many years but PicVideo MJPEG might work. I definitely supports 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. Also 4:2:0 but they call it 4:1:1.

[ENunn]

Well it looks like I'm probably gonna stick with ffdshow and mpeg2. Seems to be working well but I'm having some audio sync issues. Sometimes it's fine and at other times it's messed up. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix that?

ffmpeg -f dshow -rtbufsize 1000M -r 29.97 -i video="Game Capture HD60 S (Video) (#01)":audio="Game Capture HD60 S (Audio) (#01)" -c:v mpeg2video -q:v 0 -b:v 200M -minrate 60M -maxrate 200M -c:a pcm_s16le -flags +ilme+ildct -top 1 -f segment -segment_time 362439 -strftime 1 "output\%%Y-%%m-%%d_%%H-%%M-%%S.mkv"