[MPlayer-users] Anybody using huffyuv for archiving?

[Rich Felker]

On Mon, May 30, 2005 at 10:42:36AM +0100, VJ wrote:
> Hi,
>    I am trying to use huffyuv (-vcodec=huffyuv)  for archiving my DV
> recordings from Sony handycam. I issue following command to compress
> the movie into huffyuv avi but it stops with the error shown next to
> the command

If your video is interlaced, like it most likely is, you'd better make
sure you convert it from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 safely. Otherwise it will be
permenantly butchered. BTW why the hell are you convertint DV to
HUFFYUV anyway? It will just get 3-10x bigger and take more cpu time
to decode...

If you insist, the correct way to convert is:
-vf scale=-1:-1:1,format=422p
                ^\
                  \ this 1 enables interlaced scaling

> mencoder -mc 0 -noskip -skiplimit 0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts
> vcodec=huffyuv:vstrict=-1:context=1:format=422P:pred=2 -oac copy -of
> avi -o "$destdir/$ofn" "$ifn"
> 
> The error is
> 
> Error: per-frame huffman tables are not supported by huffyuv; use vcodec=ffvhuff
> 
> Now my question is if I use ffvhuff, will the windows based code be
> able to decode this file? I am away from my machine, so I cannot
> experiment.

Right, the windows huffyuv codec will not be able to decode it.
However, ffdshow could. BTW if you use ffvhuff, you can also use 4:2:0
mode instead of 4:2:2 which will prevent wasting a lot of space, but
it will still be a LOT bigger than the original DV.

Rich