Cool, HUFFYUV is faster than uncompressed

[Robert Silvers]

I was testing codecs with DVD size video:

HUFFYUV did 34fps
Uncompressed did 24fps
Aware Wavelet did 48fps

Pretty interesting. They can be used as intermediates for editing.

[David Newman]

Uncompressed was likely bottlenecked by disk speed. Normally it would be the fastest given that it doesn't encode.

[Graham Hickling]

Hi Robert,

What software have you decided to do your huffyuv encoding in? ( I was hoping someone would have some interesting suggestions in response to your earlier post.)

[Robert Silvers]

I *wanted* to use DVD2AVI but it breaks up the files into 2Gb sections. This is dreadful and has not been a limit for 5 years now. It totally keeps me from swapping the files with the .m2t originals in Vegas.

So I am using VirtualDubMpeg now. I have one problem -- the Aware codec does not allow me to select interlace options from VirtualDub, but it does from DVD2AVI. I am not sure why but it 'sees' the video at startup as just 160x128 pixels so that is why it ghosts out the interlace button.

I did some more tests.

The Aware codec (and Cineform) SMOKES the Pic-wavelet in speed and allows for much larger file sizes, so I assume the Pic is meant for low (low) end video conferencing over a phone line or something.

Pic motion jpeg is not bad but their lossless jpeg generates much larger files than HUFFYUV and does so more slowly.

Anyway, Aware wavelets not only generates much smaller files than HUFFYUV, but also is faster and plays back more smoothly in Vegas. So I don't plan to use HUFFYUV for editing. The files are just too big, and you are talking to someone who has almost 4 TB of storage online.

ConnectHD seems like the best way to go because it combines steps and saves time over useing CapDVHS and VirtualDubMpeg, not to mention that it does all these steps without changing color space (people who think HUFFYUV is 100% 'lossless' are not factoring in the color conversion).

So give me a choice of ConnectHD or Aware's codec -- both of which seem to be fast and visually-lossless -- or HUFFYUV which is slower and makes files 6 times larger and is also (slightly) lossy (due to color conversion) -- well, I will go wavelet.

[Graham Hickling]

Interesting. What's the current version of the Aware codec - I couldn't see any details about it on their site?

[Robert Silvers]

Dunno, but they are not marketing it for this market.

[Ken Hodson]

What is the colour space of HuffYUV?

Anyway, anyone know anything about BitJazz SheerVideo™ Pro v2.0 codec? They promote it as being lossless with 1/2 the size as uncompressed and very high speed. Can do 4:4:2 or 4:4:4!
http://www.bitjazz.com/sheervideo/

[Filip Kovcin]

"<---- Interesting. What's the current version of the Aware codec - I couldn't see any details about it on their site?--->"

same impression...
maybe someone have an info about menitoned aware codec.
and link? i do not know nothing about it, and their site makes me confused... can someone clear it for me (us)?

thanks,

filip

[Kyle Edwards]

I've tried converting video from the FX1 to both the Sheer and Aware codec and neither holds up. They seem paler and there are some macro blocks in high motion scenes.

[Graham Hickling]

Slightly off-topic, but can anyone recommend a good way to check what color-space a particular avi file is in, and better still, what color-space conversions have taken place during a decode -> re-encode process.

For example, I'm interested in the best ways to convert PAL DV to NTSC DV, and 720p HDV to DV, using tools like VirtualDub and/or Avisynth2.0 and 2.5, and intermediate codecs like huffyuv or aware or simply uncompressed.

But when I start trying to figure out what these tools are actually doing to color-space my brain starts hurting....

[Kyle Edwards]

The doom9 forums are a good place to start. You can search over there for alot of information about colour space conversions.

http://forum.doom9.org/

[Graham Hickling]

Yeah - I watch Doom9 regularly.

I was kinda hoping there might be a tool that would actually report on the color-space, YUV etc of a particular avi file, or codec, that might in some cases be of unknown origin.

GSpot and Procoder both report the codec and 4cc code, which is half-way there ..... so I was wondering if there's another app that gives additional details?

[Kyle Edwards]

I know I've come across a site that lists just about every codec out there and has the x:x:x information for some, but I couldn't find it (of course) when I try.

[Ken Hodson]

Kyle
"I've tried converting video from the FX1 to both the Sheer and Aware codec and neither holds up. They seem paler and there are some macro blocks in high motion scenes."

The "paler" look is probably the result of some element going wrong in the conversion. Maybe YUV to RGB or some such. The sheervideo codec is completely lossless so the macro blocking you are seeing was probably already there. If you would apply a brightness filter to your origional footage that is probably what you would see (especially if you are talking about FX1 with high motion.)

[Kyle Edwards]

I know for a fact the Aware codec showed macro blocks that were not there, but for the Sheer, I was pretty sure too. I will try again with the Sheer codec and post some samples by tomorrow.