Planar Format

When video is stored digitally in a YUV colorspace, Luma and Chroma information can be stored either interleaved to keep individual pixel components together or as planes, keeping individual Frame components together.

Planar Formats store all the luma information for a frame, followed by all the information for one chroma Channel (U or V), and then the information for the other chroma channel. Planar Formats are generally used for consumer video applications because they allow chroma to be co-located between luma Pixels, resulting in as much as 50% Compression with little loss of quality.