[Lossless] Ut Video Codec

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[Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Snowcrash » Thu Sep 23, 2010 8:16 am

Just a thread about a lossless codec I discovered recently : Ut Video Codec Suite
It's developped by Takeshi UMEZAWA. He updates often his blog (in japanese).

I didn't try it but it seems to be a good one. Maybe an alternative to Huffyuv or Lagarith ? Try to do some tests...

Here is a thread about it on doom9.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby mirkosp » Thu Sep 23, 2010 8:20 am

Yeah, it's already set to be the next codec in the AMVApp. I've been recommending it here and there on the forum and IRC but forgot to actually make a topic about it, so thanks for that. :)

Just to add some data: it gets a compression ratio close to lagarith (compresses about 5-10% less at most, generally) but is way faster than both lagarith and huffyuv, especially when it comes to decoding and, thus, editing.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby ngsilver » Thu Sep 23, 2010 11:25 am

I've been using UtVideo since Mirko suggested it after I updated to Win7 and had some problems with Lags. So far I haven't gotten any odd compression artifacts like Lags often would give me and overall the speed is really nice. It my testing so far the video is a little larger in size then Lags normally but is still much smaller then a huffy encode. Also, it runs faster on my system then even huffy does.

Overall I find this to be a great codec for editing with. Though it doesn't fix the issue that CS3 seems to have with exporting to a compressed format. Though the debugmode frameserver i've been using to get around that does the trick still in Win7 so I guess I can't complain too much.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Fri Sep 24, 2010 12:41 am

I haven't used it on a full scale project yet, but I have done numerous tests using this codec (testing things OTHER than the codec as well), and it seems to work really well. Definitely faster encoding/decoding than lags. For some reason my system has trouble with using the 420 UTVideo decoding, but 422 works flawlessly. I don't know if anyone else around here has had the same trouble as I have. Slightly bigger filesize, but really for editing my main concern is speed and the codec being lossless.

Highly recommended. :up:
Also, thanks for telling me about it, Mirko.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Zarxrax » Fri Sep 24, 2010 9:54 am

What kind of trouble does your system have?
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby BasharOfTheAges » Fri Sep 24, 2010 1:55 pm

Probably munchies.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Fri Sep 24, 2010 2:21 pm

After I encode anything to UTVideo 420, it will open and play correctly in VDub, but it will not open correctly through anything else. This includes Avisynth, any media player I have installed (ok, I guess I didn;t try that many), and also x264.exe (which really just means Avisynth won't read it correctly). I haven't tried to fix it yet since 422 has been working and there isn't any difference from 420 when using it for YV12 stuff, just 422 is a bigger file.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Zarxrax » Fri Sep 24, 2010 3:11 pm

If you are on a 64bit system, did you install both the 32bit and 64bit versions?
If for example, you only installed 64bit version, then a 32bit app will not be able to open it.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Fri Sep 24, 2010 6:27 pm

Yes, I installed both versions. I was using 32-bit VirtualDub 1.9.9 as well. I should update that...
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Mister Hatt » Fri Sep 24, 2010 11:21 pm

I've been using UTVideo since a few months before mirko has even heard of it and all the settings were in Japanese, do I get a gold star? It's a decent codec as long as you're careful with colourspace conversions as not all of them are handled correctly.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Sat Sep 25, 2010 12:12 am

Mister Hatt wrote:I've been using UTVideo since a few months before mirko has even heard of it and all the settings were in Japanese, do I get a gold star? It's a decent codec as long as you're careful with colourspace conversions as not all of them are handled correctly.


Are you referring to conversions between YCbCr and RGB, or between PC and TV scale? If the former, I would assume you would handle them properly using Avisynth then select the matching UTVideo format.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Snowcrash » Sat Sep 25, 2010 4:53 am

Just a question about the colourspaces : what is the best profile to choose for editing ? RGB or YV ? I am not really sure about the difference.
The thing I know is that we need to be in YUV coulourspace to do an x264 encoding, so... ?
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Cannonaire » Sat Sep 25, 2010 6:24 am

DVDs are encoded in YUV colorspace (as far as I know there aren't any in RGB, but I could be totally wrong). Changing to RGB is not lossless, so it's best to keep it YUV if you can. If you must change colorspaces (such as if a filter requires it), it's best to keep conversions to a minimum. To be honest though, it's extremely unlikely you'll actually see a difference unless you do many conversions, which is possible if you don't pay attention to how you encode and which filters you use.

Just another note on this, I use Vegas for editing, and for some reason it hasn't worked well with YUV clips for me. What I do is make all my clips and keep them YV12 as the content was on the disc, then make scripts to make an RGB version of each one with the same name. I can edit with those ones pretty much lag-free, then when it comes time to do the final render I can bait-and-switch with the YV12 clips. The render goes slowly, but quality > speed when you're making a final render and not doing any actual editing.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby mirkosp » Sat Sep 25, 2010 7:07 am

If you have any version of premiere pro, working with YV12 clips (ULY0) is mighty fine. Be advised that some effects are YUV and other effects are RGB. CS5, afaik, will tell you which colorspace every effect works in. If you are using a version of premiere before pro, then it's safer to convert to RGB24 or RGB32 (you only really need to do 32 if you have alpha). Do keep in mind that YUV clips will be smaller than RGB clips, with YV12 being the smallest.
And yes, x264 requires YV12 input (well, it technically doesn't anymore, since it can internally convert the colourspace now, but still...), so if you keep everything in YV12 from start to end, it will be best.
PS: Since DVDs need to be MPEG-2, they are all YV12. Blu-ray discs can have more codecs, with them being H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2. If it's H.264 or MPEG-2, it's pretty sure to be YV12 (could technically be other YUV, but don't think I've ever seen it myself). I don't know much about VC-1, I would assume that one is just YV12 as well, but don't count on it.
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Re: [Lossless] Ut Video Codec

Postby Snowcrash » Sat Sep 25, 2010 8:39 am

Thanks for your replies =)
As I use Vegas, I will try both coulourspace to see if there is any difference about eventual lag (according Cannonaire, RGB seems to be more lag-free than YUV).
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