Resolution loss by chromatic subsampling: is there a workaround? I was trying to make some recordings of a game (with OBS), but it wasn't really good even with &quot;lossless&quot; options. Some part of the interface was just pixelated... After a while I realized that the chromatic subsampling should cause the problem, as the pixelated interface is red. (In OBS the default color format is NV12, using RGB instead - without subsampling - it was all good.)
Is there a workaround to keep the resolution of the interface intact, but still do some kind of chromatic subsampling? (Maybe with some other color encoding than YUV?)
It's Ok if I need to make the recordings without subsampling, and than convert/transcode the videos. I would do it anyway, as OBS can't record with hevc_qsv. Also I don't have an intent to publish these videos on the internet. (Probably I'd like to store the videos using H265 or AV1, to obtain the best compression.)
No. Almost all video on the planet is limited YUV420 (all Blu-rays, even HEVC ones with Dolby Vision, all Youtube, only some satellite FEEDs not for consumers use 4:2:2). Sorry. Of course, there is RGB and even mathematically lossless mode in all common encoders, H.264/AV1/VP9/HEVC... For lossless AV1 see https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7600
But, alas. It is not used at all.
Only Dolby Vision in profile 5 that is not HDR10 compatible (it uses IPTPQc2 color instead of YCbCr and FULL RANGE) can be good enough for you. It still uses 4:x:x chroma but because of new encoding it is much better looking!