Is USB 2.0 fast enoughfor huffyuv? And about audio capture.

[Cyber Akuma]

I want to convert some family videos on VHS to MP4.

Problem is the internal drive on the system is both full and small (as well as a slow 5400RPM laptop drive).

If I plugged in a USB harddrive, would it be able to keep up with capturing to huffyuv in realtime without dropping any frames? The capture device is a Dazzle, so it will also be running off of the same USB ports.

I am only capturing from a VCR so its not going to be in HD resolution.

P.S. Is there any huffyuv-like alternative for sound or am I just going to have to capture in WAV? I know there are lossless compressed formats like ape, but are any of them made for capturing in realtime instead of playback?

[mariush]

Try to use Lagarith instead of Huffyuv. It's multithreaded, which means it can use modern processors better and it also compresses better than Huffyuv.

USB2 is 480 mbps so the max speed is about 40-50 MB/s - I'm not sure it would be enough for Huffyuv. With Lagarith, I tested right now and the 768x576 at 25fps video is compressed at about 11.5 MB/s - it should save smoothly through USB.
PCM audio is 1400 kbps for stereo, or about 180 KB/s - it's pointless to worry about the sound compression when the video part is about 50 times the audio bitrate.

You will probably be able to use Virtualdub to capture the video, which will give you access to some settings and help you save without losing frames... you probably don't need to use Dazzle's software.

The Dazzle ... I'm not sure if it sends the data uncompressed through USB... if it's uncompressed, it may need more than what's left of the bandwidth on a usb port.
But usually computers have at least 2 or 3 separate usb controllers, each having a few connectors attached to it - so you might be able to put the dazzle on a jack that's tied to one controller, and the drive to a jack connected to another controller in your computer, and then both will have reasonable bandwidth.

[Mounir]

I think that would do it just fine. If you had a desktop you could remove the hdd enclosure and plug it with the sata cable but apparently you have a laptop.... In any case don't record onto the system drive you'll have dropped frames 100% sure

Huffyuv (Predict left)+ wave is the right combo for me

[Cyber Akuma]

Isn't there a 64bit multi-core version of huffyuv? I could have sworn I saw something like that before.

And technically, its an older Mac Mini running Windows 7, though with all the un-upgradable embedded hardware its closer to a laptop than a desktop.

[StainlessS]

MediaFire in my sig has HuffYUV 2-1-1 with 32 bit, 64 bit version, multithreaded 32 bit+source
and CCESP Patch 0-25.
The multithreaded version originates Japan (I think), did not keep a link.

EDIT: Can coexist with HuffYUV standard, different FourCC
(but dont think plays in VLC, no built in codec and VLC does not seem to fall back to system codecs).

http://home.h01.itscom.net/para/intro/huffyuv-mt/

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/HuffYUV

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/300225-Multithreaded-Multiproc-Multicore-HuffyUV-Codec