UYVY

UYVY is a packed color encoding for digital video in the YUV color space, specifically a 4:2:2 format. In this scheme, chroma components U and V are sampled at half the horizontal resolution of luma (Y), so two U and two V samples accompany every four pixels. This makes it efficient for bandwidth while preserving reasonable color detail.

In UYVY ordering, eight consecutive bytes encode four pixels as follows: U0, Y0, V0, Y1, U2, Y2, V2, Y3. The first two pixels (Y0 and Y1) share the U0 and V0 samples, and the next two pixels (Y2 and Y3) share the U2 and V2 samples. This interleaved pattern is a characteristic of the packed 4:2:2 family, distinguishing it from other layouts such as YUYV.

UYVY is one of the common 4:2:2 packed formats alongside YUYV (also known as YUY2). The principal difference is the byte order of the chroma components. Both formats provide the same chroma subsampling and can be converted to other formats (such as RGB) using standard YUV to RGB color-matrix conversions, but they require correct interpretation of the byte sequence to avoid color swapping.

Typical usage includes video capture devices and certain video pipelines where a simple, single-buffer packing is advantageous. It is widely supported in platforms like Linux (V4L2) and in some professional video equipment, though many workflows also use alternative 4:2:2 or planar formats depending on hardware and software requirements.