Interlace and YUY2

I'm a bit confused about interlacing in the codecs.

Does YUY2 capture each field seperately or the whole frame?

Jukka Aho...

If we're talking about Windows "YUY2" FOURCC, and either VfW or WDM
captures, my educated guess is that it's always about the whole frames.
Windows has never been very "field-oriented" environment.

(I can't say for sure, though. If you want to dig deep into the
technical details, you'll have to consult the MSDN, or take a peek into
the source code of AviSynth or some other tool like that.)

Is that common?

Also, is YUV420 what is used in mpeg2?

Jukka Aho...

There are at least three different types of 4:2:0 chroma subsampling in
common use:

- the one employed by JPEG, MJPEG, and MPEG-1
- the one employed by MPEG-2
- the one employed by "PAL" DV

The difference lies in the location of the chroma samples. See this page
for more information:

You can rest assured that with not-so-widely-known things like these,
programmers are bound to make mistakes and take ignorant shortcuts.
Depending on the codec and tools you use, converting from one 4:2:0
format to another doesn't necessarily give you the correct result: you
may get chroma drift and other nasties. Some video tools have filters
for coping with these problems.

I see an option in my capture for YUY2 (YUV422) or 1420 which I
think is YUV420. Not sure what the last digit in the color space is for
(perhaps it's X and Y directions) and I would think for B&W it wouldn't

Jukka Aho...

You might want to take a look at these documents as well:

matter.

What are the bitrates?

Cheers,
Jeff