Which is better? PicVideo Mjpeg 18-19 or Huffy

[jezheads]

Which you guys think gives better quality? I've heard good and bad for each, just wanted to see which you guys prefer and why. thanks

[Dave B]

Huffy gives better quality because it is lossless. MJPEG will give you smaller files but will compromise quality slightly.

I usually capture MJPEG Q18 at 352x576. I don't have acres of hard drive space and any artifacts produced by the codec can be eliminated with clever use of filters.

[easydvd]

I just recently bought a cap card and started encoding vid from the TV. I haven't had enough time to really form an opinion. However.......

Huffy is a good codec if you have 100gb of HDD space although I don't agree that it's lossless. Picvideo mjpeg isn't too bad. I think at 18 or 19 you get the same quality as huffy for the initial capture. Still the same problems with HDD space though. 50 to 100 mb a minute of capture. I have been getting EXCELLENT results doing captures with the M$ mpeg4v2 codec. It's smoother than DivX 5 and doesn't make a huge file. I've been seeing about 20mb per minute on a capture with that.

With the use of a couple of filters while frameserving from VirtualDub I have been encoding 45 mins of video to a 225mb file. This leaves me with a file about the same quality as a VHS tape. No big, blocky compression artifacts and pretty smooth action sequences. I'd be glad to send a sample and list of filters used.

cap card-->
mpeg4v2@ 6mbs video and crispness set to 100-->
v-dub-->
edit out the commercials or whatever-->
framserved to
tmpg for mpeg1 encoding

[vcd4ever]

Dave B,

In your post you wrote "any artifacts produced by the codec can be eliminated with clever use of filters".

This is exactly the method i'm using and the quality is at least equal to
huffy.

Vcd4ever.

[fmctm1sw]

Sometimes you may not have a choice. I use Vdub and VirtualVCR. VirtualVCR will NOT ALLOW me to use huffyuv on hi-res caps. Not sure why, but the only thing that will work is Picvideo "compressor." Picvideo "codec" won't work either.

[TaranScorp]

That's odd, I'm using VirtualVCR and cap at 640 or 720x480 with no problem. What capture card are you using and what drivers? When I switched to this driver http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ I can cap at any res with VirtualVCR.

[TODD]

I spent a lot of time comparing the two, and settled on MJPEG at level 19. I used this setting to capture many hours of VHS at 480 x 240. I then converted to SVCD. The MPEG-2 encoding was where I noticed quality loss, but overall they look pretty good.

[fmctm1sw]

That's odd, I'm using VirtualVCR and cap at 640 or 720x480 with no problem. What capture card are you using and what drivers? When I switched to this driver http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/ I can cap at any res with VirtualVCR.

I can capture at any resolution but I can't use huffyuv at all. Comes up with an error message.

Sorry, I have a wintv fm radio card and the same driver you have....

[TaranScorp]

Sounds to me like Huff isn't installed correctly. I'm using Huff with VirtualVCR. Does VirtualVCR show that Huff is one of the compression codecs you can choose from? If so I think it did it's job, but if you choose it and get an error message then maybe Huff isn't installed correctly.
Also VirtualVCR came out with a new version yesterday.
I'm no expert, but both work together for me.

[snowmoon]

Huffy is a good codec if you have 100gb of HDD space although I don't agree that it's lossless.

Huffyuv is lossless. If you are loosing frames it's because your HD cannot keep up and that's not really huffyuv's fault.


Persoanlly I have 170 GB of capture/edit temp space and another 30 for finished work. I use PIC MJPEG at 18 since hy hardware just cannor kep up with the datarate for huffyuv. I'm planning on raiding two DMA66 drives together to create 80GB of capture space that's fast enough to keep up with Huffyuv, but first I have to get caught up on my conversions.

[vitualis]

HuffyUV is lossless.

PicVideo MJPEG at 18 and 19 is definitely lossy. Look at areas where there are sharp lines and you will see JPEG compression artifacts, even after MPEG compression at VCD bitrates.

PicVideo MJPEG at 20 I feel (but don't know for sure) may be lossless. I certainly don't see any artifacts and the compression is about 3:1 (which is about what you get for lossless compression).

Regards.

[gll99]

Picvideo mjpeg is not lossless at any setting. They have a separate lossless image codec. Huffy, as was already stated is lossless but can be set to lossy with some of its options. Picvideo does compress more than Huffy even at 20.

Sometimes Huffy can be too good. Don't forget that your video capture source is not lossless. There is some degree of degradation in your coax or cables. When my cable signal was weak before they upgraded my area, the lighly grainy signal actually looked worse with huffy whereas Picvideo seemed to smooth the speckles. So for me Picvideo looked better. I know that Huffy was a truer capture but I could get away without extra filter passes with picvideo so I used it most of the time for my avi's. When I needed HD space I switched to DIVx 4.01 since it was the fastest codec for my old K6 233 and I could capture without losing frames with limited empty hd space. When I was going to create a vcd with the file then I used all the virtualdub filters I could find to smooth and clean the image.

Those were the good old days where every trick was needed to get a decent cap.

[offline]

I prefer to use Mjpeg at 18 when cap @ 768x576 for CVD/SVCD/DVD
and divix (4000bps) when cap @ 352x288 for VCD.

ps: I know 768x576 is overkill BUT at this res it cleans up noise better
than the best noise filter available without any blending/smearing.

[lnetzel]

I always capture with Huff... captured 50 min of an old VHS at 352x288 that ended up in about 10 Gb but I never lost any frames.

[SatStorm]

huffyuv is better, also works with TMPGenc plus much better PicVideo.
The only way to see what huffyuv can give you, is to grabb with a good card a good source. For a typical VHS capture, well... I see no difference using composite cables. Only if I use SVHS and s-video cables, I see a slighty difference between picvideo 19 and huffyuv.
Some probs may occur with quality, can really bypassed with the use of virtualdub....
So, the best solution is Huffyuv but only if you have the right (good) source. For VHS it is overkill.
I grabb with PicVideo (19) @ 352 X 576 and then encode to CVD with TMPGenc, 2 pass VBR average 2300 and it looks identical with the source.