Stick with DV + Vegas and you'll be happy. DV=@228 MB/minute.

@ theigloo
very interesting demonstration of the dv codec, but i have a very important question for you. Are you aware that if you simply drop a dv video file and render to dv ntsc, vegas will simply copy the data from the source to the new file. The only time Vegas will actually recompress the video is when something is done to it (like hsl adjustment, fades, opacity changes, ect). what are the conditions in this sample that you gave a link to? If there were no changes, then vegas simply copied the source over, resulting in no quality loss.

Thanks for the replies. Hope I didn't give the impression that I was searching to improve on the SF DV codec. I was only inquiring as to whether the Huffy would save space over "whatever" codec comes into play when my vidcam transfers to my HD during capture. Perhaps Huffy won't even come into play during capture, I don't know.

As for rendering, I'm quite pleased with SF's codec, and have no reason to go looking for something else.

For me, it's simply a matter of space, and, where I'd like to save space, if it's possible, is during capture, so that there is more space available if I choose to do multiple renders or to have more than one of these projects underway on my system at the same time.

The suggestion to move renders to DV tape works (and, you are right, it's time consuming) when the render's duration is within the time constraints imposed by my 8mm cassette (current max is 90 minutes using a Sony Sp-90/135). I know I could span cassettes and recombine in Vegas at a future date, but, each of these steps adds time to the process which, if possible, I'd like to avoid.

It's not a huge issue with me, I'm just curious if anyone who has experience with the Huffy cares to comment.

Thanks.

Caruso

The test image in the compression example was truly recompressed x times. It wasn't just a file copy-

wow, im impressed (not being sarcastic)

I tried the codec once. I guess its true name is Huffyuv.
Anyway, I was checking my best option to render a 1-hour avi (PAL).
I can't recall the details anymore, but I used a lot of codecs in my experience (SoFo, Cinemax, Huffyuv, DivX, Microsoft, MainConcept, Ligos, ...)
I remember that one of the conclusions with Huffyuv is that it gave me huge files (I guess that only Cinemax was bigger), but I got artifacts in the shades. Really, no much better that DivX (this one being 30 times smaller...).
In the end, I decided to stick with SoFo DV :-)
MainConcept was also a near match, but the SoFo image pleased me more. Matter of taste ...

Huffyuv is more useful for capturing video from non-dv sources. I used it with an ati tv-pci card for capturing and editing with VirtualDub and outputing to vcd formats. It did the job "way back when." It didn't put a lot of load on the cpu while capturing, so it didn't contribute to dropped frames and it did reduce the file size a bit. As mentioned in a previous post, it doesn't shrink a file much, but those were the days before really inexpensive hardware and fast cpu's.

Also, As codecs go, it doesn't cause problems like Divx can and also gets along with all the editing software that I know of. It was good to edit footage with but the final rendering was to MPEG or Divx to cram all the footage on the vcd.

Having said all that, I haven't used it since I installed a dv card. It's not needed anymore.

- Manny

I can guarantee you that if huffy is truly lossless, then the files will be bigger than DV files. DV compresses approximately 5:1 at the cost of losing an acceptable amount of information. There is no way a lossless codec will produce smaller files. Video data is simply too dense for any major amount of lossless compression to take place.

"Huffyuv is a very fast, lossless Win32 video codec. "Lossless" means that the output from the decompressor is bit-for-bit identical with the original input to the compressor." this is taken from its website. notice that it does say bit-for-bit. I believe the compression ratio is something like 2:1 which is still very high. I believe that you could compare huffyuv to a zip archive, except huffyuv does the compressing on the fly.

Huffy guys: Huffy at 2:1, D1, compresses to what- about 10Mb/sec?

DV= ~ 3.8 mb/sec

hey don't get me wrong, i love the quality of the sf dv codec. That example up there proved that perfectly. Im just saying that if your going to deal with uncompressed video, using huffyuv is the perfect companion.

I used Huffy codec with Vegas all the time. Capture AVI huffy codec with my Pinnacle PCTV pro (full frame 720x480 without any frame loss). Compression ratio is about 2.5:1. I got very good result with MC encoder encodes to mpeg2 at CBR 4000 bps (using DVD setting just change bit rates to CBR and field to upper field since my capture hardware captures upper field first) The result mpeg2 is better compare to the same footage capture in DV and encode to mpeg2 , no mosquito noise (I hope that the right term).
The only problem that I used have to deal with is audio and video sync. Analog capture with audio/video sync was not easy. But with the help of the latest virtualdub sync (vfw capture), VirtualVCR (wdm capture) and btwincap bt8*8 wdm driver (this driver is a must since it allows me to use both virtualdub and virtualvcr capture program). Here are the links to those programs

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net
http://www.digtv.ws
http://http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~dittrich/sync/

I am now capturing analog video with huffy codec perfect audio/video sync and perfect framerate with those program, and import it to vegas and encode to mpeg2, although I did very little edit in vegas just add a few transition and a few audio tracks.

Best regards, Hien.