Interactive visualization tool for NV12 YUV color space conversion and chroma subsampling analysis
The NV12 YUV Visualizer is an educational tool for understanding YUV color space and chroma subsampling. It converts uploaded RGB images to YUV color space and demonstrates the NV12 4:2:0 format widely used in video processing, mobile cameras, and hardware accelerators.
YUV separates brightness (luma Y) from color (chroma U and V). NV12 stores full-resolution luma but subsamples chroma by 2×2, reducing bandwidth by 50% while maintaining perceptual quality. The UV plane is stored in interleaved format (UVUVUV...), which is more cache-friendly for hardware processing.
Understanding NV12 is crucial for video engineers, graphics programmers, and anyone working with video pipelines. This tool shows how each plane is stored, how four neighboring pixels share one UV pair, and the exact memory layout used in video codecs like H.264, H.265, and VP9. All processing happens on your device - your files never leave your computer.
Understand how video codecs handle chroma subsampling for compression efficiency
Learn YUV color space for GPU texture formats and shader-based image processing
Visualize how mobile camera ISPs process and store YUV image data
Teach color space theory and subsampling concepts through interactive visualization