Lossless AVI Codec with interframe compression?

Gimpy · Post by **Gimpy** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 2:23 pm

Does anyone know of a lossless video codec that also provides interframe compression? Please don't say HUFFYUV, because it doesn't have interframe compression. Thanks.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 3:53 pm

Nope, but I believe one is in the works.

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 4:07 pm

The problem is that a codec like that would be useless for editing because you couldn't cut on a keyframe unless you piped it thru AVISynth, and then it would eat huge amounts of CPU time. HuffYUV already takes huge amounts of CPU to decode, we don't need to make it any more difficult.

The only time I'd find that kind of codec useful is when I'm converting an entire file, I could run my filters on the file, dump it to this lossless interframe codec, and then run that whole thing thru xvid twice do save time on my multiple passes.

But as far as AMV editing goes this would be worthless.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 4:10 pm

I dont think so. You're talking about that thread on doom9 arent you zarx? What I got out of that is that interframe lossless compression would take up more space than would be useful. Although I always wondered how much space would be gained if the actual theory of interfame compression was used without all the bells and whistles (dct, quantization). I.E. if the only thing saved was the actual exact rgb pixel differences from one frame to another.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 4:11 pm

my post = being written while ermac went and posted :|

Gimpy · Post by **Gimpy** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 5:53 pm

First of all, I disagree with ErMac saying it would be useless, because I specifically asked about because I do have a use for it. That use is for a video stream with frames that consists of very few colors, and large solid blocks of color that don't change much over time. As an example of one of these streams, I compressed it with HUFFYUV and I believe it was 800+ MB. I then compressed it with DivX, CBR 6000 Kbps, and it was 9 MB, with no noticeable quality loss, however I wouldn't use DivX for editing A) because it crashes premiere all the time, and B) because I'm anal about quality and just knowing that DivX is lossy makes me uncomfortable, even though I couldn't see any quality loss in even the frames with the most motion. Basically this is a video stream of frames that would compress better gifs than as jpegs, if you know what I mean. The thing is that a whole lot of space is wasted because of the lack of interframe compression. In fact, right now, I'm using it as a sequence of numbered LZW compressed TIFFs. Believe it or not they take up about a third of the disk space that the HUFFYUV avi did.

Gimpy · Post by **Gimpy** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 5:55 pm

Oh and as far as HUFFYUV taking up huge amounts of CPU time, it's been my experience that it's pretty fast and that often the bottleneck is the hard drive.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 5:58 pm

Still, you dont want to EDIT with an interframe codec. Have you ever tried this before? Say you try to scroll backwards a few frames... if your current position happens to not be near a keyframe, it can take a LONG time to scroll back to the frame you wanted....

Gimpy · Post by **Gimpy** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 6:02 pm

Yeah I've done it before, it's a bit of a pain in the ass, but it's not too bad. I have dual CPUs which seems to help somewhat. For the parts I would be using it it would be worth it (to me anyway).