Rgb24? Yuy2?

[Mpegger]

I'm curious to find out the technical differences between the video methods RGB24 and YUY2.

So far, what I've noticed by eye, is that RGB24 seems more "pixelated", while YUY2 appears somewhat "blurry". But I'd like to know whats the real difference between the formats.

TIA

[benderman]

Which format you should choose depends on the format of the input and the output. RGB24 uses 24 bit per pixel, while YUY2 uses 16 bit per pixel (DivX normaly uses 0.1 to 0.4 bit per pixel). There are also other codecs that work similar to YUY2 and use more or less bits per pixel. YUY2 is a kind of compression, but there should not be a very big differnce to RGB24.
As TV-capture-cards or DVDs nativly use a kind of YUY2-based-compression so it makes sense to stay with that codec.

[Mpegger]

I wonder why RGB24 looks so pixelated if its 24bit instead of 16bit. I would think that with more colors available, the image wouldn't look so pixelated.

I've done some vid caps from a regular antenna input using both formats, mainly of cartoons. With RGB24, the image looks sharper, and more vivid, but heavily pixelated. Thin solid black lines such as the characters outline, do not look like a line, but as steps if you know what I mean. But at the same time YUY2 doesn't have that pixelation. All the colors seem to flow into one another, although this does cause the image to look somewhat fuzzy and blurry.

BTW, I use a software based BT848 capture card. Would that cause the difference that I see between the formats?

[benderman]

As long as the originial BT-capture-drivers are working with YUV or YUY it seems that the vard internaly uses that format. If you convert to RGB24 it is converted by the internal hardware, the driver or the capture-program. That's why RGB and YUY look different.