Extract text from YUV4MPEG2 video files (Y4M)
To convert Y4M videos to another format, you need FFmpeg or other Video software.
To convert other file formats to the "Uncompressed Video Stream" file type, you need software like FFmpeg or a similar tool.
The .Y4M format (YUV4MPEG2) is an uncompressed video stream container designed to hold raw YCbCr (YUV) color space data alongside a simple plaintext header. It is predominantly used as an intermediate pipeline format to pass uncompressed, lossless video frames between command-line video processing tools like FFmpeg and mjpegtools.
You can process or play these files using VLC media player or FFmpeg.
Because .Y4M files contain entirely uncompressed video frames, their primary disadvantage is massive file size. A short 1080p clip can easily exceed 100MB for just one second of footage. Furthermore, this format is strictly a developer and encoding tool - it is completely unsupported by web browsers, smartphones, and standard consumer media players. Storing or sharing .Y4M files over the internet is highly impractical and bandwidth-heavy.
To make the video usable, you must convert .Y4M files to highly compressed standard formats like MP4 (using H.264 or HEVC codecs), MKV, or WEBM. Converting to these formats applies lossy compression and discards the raw pixel data, but it will reduce the final file size by over 99% and make the video playable on any device.
Standard online converters usually fail with .Y4M files because the massive uncompressed file sizes cause browser timeouts and instantly exceed standard upload limits.
Convert.Guru analyzes your Y4M file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted MP4, JPG, MOV, PNG and YUV files.
If you want to convert Y4M file to MP4, YUV, AVI, MOV, WMV, FLV, WEBM, MKV, M4V, 3GP, OGV or ASF, you can use FFmpeg or similar software from the "Raw Video Frame Pipeline" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MTS, MOV, RMVB, DIVX, RM, H264, TS, WMV, VOB, MP4, XVID or AVI files to Y4M, try FFmpeg or another comparable tool in the "Raw Video Frame Pipeline" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our Y4M converter.