Why do we need to use a codec to capture a AVI file?

[fandecine]

Hi!
I know my question may look stupid but you will see my point later on.
I tried to capture from a HI-8 camcorder with a AIW Radeon 7500 with a XP1600 with OS XP. I used VirtualDub (the ATI codec gives a pretty bad result) with Huffyuv v2.1.1 or PicVideo MJPEG. For each codec, I got the same problem with the final AVI file (see picture below):

So I decided to capture with no recompression(YUY2). And guess what? I didn't get the problem I had before. After TMPGEnc, I got a 1mn VCD file for 10MB with a pretty good result. So my question is:
What was the problem? And why don't we just capture with no recompression? Is that a problem of space?
I would appreciate your comments.
Sincerely,
LD

[merkin]

Yep I'm pretty certain that the only reason we all use codecs is to keep the avi file size as small as possible without losing too much quality (I know that's why I do anyway!). Remember that many people here use the FAT32 file system which "only" allows for 4gig files maximum, so capturing say a 2 hour movie without compression would be impossible! Just approx 30mins of non-compressed capture would be near enough a 2gig file... it's just not practical for FAT32 users. I personally use the NTFS file system, but I unfortunately only have a 20gig hard drive and it's quite full, which is annoying. Until I get a new hard drive (40gig one on order as we speak for dedicated capturing, yay ), I'll need to use a codec to squeeze the avi onto my hard drive. At the end of the day, if you have enough space on your drive to capture non-compressed, then by all means go for it!! You will ultimately get the very best in quality.

[offline]

Why use a lossless or uncompressed codec when you
are throwing away a whole lot of information in the
transcoding process anyway? Color depth is a good
example. Why capture to RGB when you lose it
once encoded. Better to capture to yu2 or convert
on the fly.