[FFmpeg-user] Raw video format

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

2017-01-10 17:26 GMT+01:00 Mattias Andrée <maandree at kth.se>:
> On Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:05:24 +0100
> Carl Eugen Hoyos <ceffmpeg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2017-01-09 23:11 GMT+01:00 Mattias Andrée
>> <maandree at kth.se>:
>> > I have a stream of YUV colours (with alpha), stored
>> > with raw `double`s.
>>
>> FFmpeg does not support float pix_fmt and at least some
>> developers believe that this wouldn't help anyway for
>> expected input.
>>
>> > I want to use ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt ayuv64le
>> > to convert this into a normal video format.
>>
>> This is the point:
>> "Normal" video format is integer, so why would it help if
>> you input float?
>>
>> > How should I encode each pixel so that ffmpeg can
>> > decode them?
>>
>> RGBA64 comes to mind if your input is rgb.
>>
>> If you want to input float into FFmpeg, you have to write
>> exr frames but note that they are converted to int before
>> any further processing.

> I'm pretty sure I prefer YUV over RGB.

I realize that my comment above concerning RGBA64
may not make sense to you, please ignore.
(My first guess was that your input is exr or related.)

> Values in YUV are floats

I don't understand:
Do you mean that in your application (or the application
that you want to use) yuv are floats? This is of course
possible and it is a problem for you, because yuv float
is not only not supported by FFmpeg but not supported
by any related application.
Or do you mean that all "YUV" values are always float?
In the world of codecs (that's where FFmpeg is used)
yuv is always integer, there is no video codec that
outputs floats and I believe it makes little sense to
write an encoder that accepts floats.
(tiff and a few others do support floats but as said
FFmpeg does not support it.)

> that can be negative or large, it does not have
> the simple bounds of [0, 1], with the exception of the Y
> value, like you normally have with RGB.

(Suspecting now that you are thinking of analog video)
Please understand that this is simply not true for
FFmpeg: On this mailing list, when we talk about
"yuv", we mean 8bit or 16bit integer values (full
scale or mpeg scale).

> So my question is how should a YUV value be
> encoded as an integer?

You will have to find a linear representation for the
values that you call "YUV" as everybody else does.

> Floats are useful for rendering

Given that no hardware (?) and no real-world video
codec support floats, I wonder what you mean here.

> so I think it would be
> preferable for ffmpeg to support it as it would speed
> up rending as it would eliminate some conversion.

This sounds very unlikely.

My new guess is that you should simply convert to
yuv420p (as defined by FFmpeg) to get "normal video
format" as output (and no additional conversion needed).

Carl Eugen