Capture codec MJPEG

[kitsaros2000]

At doom9 guides is reccomended the PicVideo MJPEG codec for capturing. As far as i know the new ffdshow (http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm)
offers MJPEG codification.Has anyone use that insted of PicVideo MJPEG codec?
What are the recomended options of that codec ? is it reccomended ? i made some tests and works good but i want your opinion too ! Thanks !

[Boulder]

I think that there was a test at the German Doom9 forums and the ffdshow MJPEG came out as the winner. I'd set it to quality mode at Q100 and use YUY2 colorspace.

[kitsaros2000]

thanks Boulder ! I will try as you said ! the only negative thing is that is a little more heavy than PicVideo MJPEG but we cannot have it all ! :) :) :)

[pete]

use YUY2 colorspace.
Why not YV12?

[scharfis_brain]

cause YV12 is far too destructive and most MPEG2 encoders will only accept YUY2 as input.

[pete]

By "destructive" do you mean that you lose too much information? If you care about that you wouldn't use lossy MJPEG at the first place. And who talks about MPEG-2? Maybe one wants to use xvid or x264? Also libavcodec supports YV12 and that's the only MPEG-2 encoder I personally care about.

[scharfis_brain]

but if you are capturing video, that means you need to capture interlaced, that means you have to use interlaced YV12 chroma sampling.
that means you'll get much worse chroma definition than just capturing in YUY2 and converting it in an appropriate way during conversion.
Also deinterlacing from interlaced YV12 to progressive YV12 is much more destructive than deinterlacing YUY2 and than converting to progressive YV12.

Besides this, many MJPEG codecs don't handle YV12 (especially interlaced YV12) quiete good.

It is always better to use YUY2 during capturing, if you can.
You'll avoid trouble and chroma blurring.

[BlackSharkfr]

I use it almost all the time when i need a very good quality source which doesn't eats my whole HDD when i edit HD.
It does some excellent stuff and since i'm not that much of a "lossless at all costs" guy, i'm happy with it.

The only problem is that FFDS' encoder doesn't work well in all vfw based software. Sometimes it simply refuses to run, or crashes after a dozen frames, it all depends on which software you're using. If it works once, it will work all the time though.

Also a friend of mine always tells me that FFDshow and Adobe Premiere hate each other. I have never really tested it since i ony have one old and unstable version of premiere but i can tell it works quite well in Vegas (decoding and encoding).

[ChibiBoi]

when i use mjpeg, it kinda washes out the coloring of the video a little bit:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y68/ChibiBoi/huffyuv2vsmjpeg.jpg

the image on the right is the mjpeg codec. is there a way to fix it?

[BlackSharkfr]

It's not the codec it's virtualdub.
Use fast recompres mode instead of normal (you can't use filters)

[ChibiBoi]

how do i go into fast recompress mode in capture mode?

[BlackSharkfr]

I think that VD only allows direct stream or full processing in capture mode. You may have to find an other software or do the color correction manually by adding filters. Unfortunately, i don't know why VD does this or what settings you should use to correct the effect.

[Boulder]

Would you mind uploading a few frames (the same frames) of the original and MJPEG encoded clip so we can take a better look.

[ChibiBoi]

ok. it's harder to tell the difference when you don't compare them side by side though.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nba0o5 - captured with huffyuv2 (no color loss)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bmx21a - captured with mjpeg

[Inc]

Let FFdshow force to decode the mjpeg stream and youll see that the problem is gone.

No shure now, but I do clearly remember when doing the comparison on the german doom9 I could see that one codec is flawed ... PicVideo IIRC.

Hmmm lets see ...
http://forum.gleitz.info/showthread.php?t=27240&highlight=picvideo

[ChibiBoi]

i don't understand what you mean by "let ffdshow force to decode the mjpeg stream". how would i do that? and i'm using the mjpeg codec included in the ffdshow filter, by the way

[six13]

@Charfis_brain and anyone else.

sorry, I think I just hijacked this post. If a moderator would move it to a new post I would thank your rather than posting again

the source is standard deff. not HD.

capture device is Conexant Falcon 2 NTSC

can you sugest some capture software. I am using the Sonic software that came with my Media Center PC. I capture from my Sat. rec with L/R audio and SVIDEO. I use the Sonic software to make the .mpeg then I demux with ProjectX, author with DVDAuthorGUI and encode if there is compression with DVD-RB/HCenc. If no cmpression I use Shrink.

I am not impressed with Sonic even though I select the best quality mpeg setting for the capture and mpeg creation.

I am looking for some new free software so I don't use Sonic anymore for the creation of the mpeg file I need to start the entire process. My goal is to have a high quality DVD when I am finished.

[FishTank]

use vdub or virtualvcr and capture with huffyuv or mjpeg (ffdshow tryouts).

huffyuv will give a rather large file (40+gb for 90mins), but best
quality as its almost lossless. then convert to mpeg2 for dvd
purpose or go the mpeg4-asp route (xvid/divx).

[Boulder]

First: don't capture in MPEG2. Use MJPEG or HuffYUV in YUY2 colorspace.

You might want to post your capture card so we might help you better.

@FishTank: HuffYUV's not almost lossless, it's completely lossless :)

[wonkey_monkey]

when i use mjpeg, it kinda washes out the coloring of the video a little bit:

the image on the right is the mjpeg codec. is there a way to fix it?

Is this not the old incorrect levels thing that some of the MJPEG codecs do? The latest version of the PicVideo MJPEG codec acknowledges it and has some settings to tweak it. For AviSynth purposes, I always force load into RGB.

David

[FishTank]

@FishTank: HuffYUV's not almost lossless, it's completely lossless :)

errm, afaik there is a loss. else why is uncompressed video so much bigger? :P
sorry if im wrong heh

[Jay Bee]

It does compress but the full video information is restored on decode. Like winzip.

[FishTank]

aha, that makes sense :)
thx for the info!