Bink SDK 1.5v

Pros and Cons of YUV Off-screen Buffers under Win32

Discussion

YUV off-screen buffers are good because: 1) They are fast (fast, that is, as long as the YUV conversion is done in hardware - some DirectDraw drivers do the conversion on the host CPU). 2) They can usually perform clipping for free. 3) They basically work like just like a normal blitter (so they aren't any different than plain old off-screen blitters that we all know how to use). 4) They can do shrinking and stretching for free, CPU-wise.
YUV converting-blitters are bad, because: 1) Again, they are in hardware, so you are at the mercy of the video hardware and drivers working correctly. 2) They can be doing the conversion in software and not telling you. 3) They can look different on different video cards (again, especially when stretching).

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Group: The Win32 Platform

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