Would someone please explain YUV, YUY2, UYVY ..etc

[rhuala2]

Would someone please explain YUV, YUY2, UYVY ..etc This keeps coming up and I can't seem to find a good answer in the search engine. Thanks.

rhuala

[snowmoon]

The Y's represent luminence ( b&w ) information an U and V represent color information. YUV would be 24 bit per pixel capturing at 4:4:4 ( ie color samples every pixel. UYVY, YUY2 and similar are 4:2:2 or 16bit since you have 8 bits of b&w + 8 bits of one color ( alternativg ) for every pixel.

YUY2 and UYUV are probably the best for capturing since they are the closest representation to the original signal that is availible.

DV is 4:1:1 so color is only sampled once for every 2x2 block of luminece, this is why you can often see color blocks when viewing DV materal on a monitor.

[rhuala2]

Well that's as clear as mud, I understood bits of what you said but I really don't see where the 4:4:4 numbers fits into all this this. I though YUY2 and UYVY have 16 bits/pixel and RGB24 has 24 bits/pixel, but is this just a standard or can u derive this relation ship from the actual letters?

i.e.
Y =8 bits of luminence
U and V=8 bits of color (8+8=16)
so YUV=8+8+8=24 bits of info describing a video... sorry I don't get it...

"DV is 4:1:1 so color is only sampled once for every 2x2 block of luminece" ... missed all of this statment could you please explain 4:1:1, 4:2:2, 4:4:4?

Is there a tutoral on this or a table that breaks down the comparison, I appreciate your attempt in trying to explain this, I really do, but I just started getting into this last weekend and don't have the fundamentals to understand your explanation... sorry.

Thanks,

rhuala

[BJ_M]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwmt/html/YUVFormats.asp

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q294880&

http://www.fourcc.org/

[rhuala2]

Thank you.