Trans-coding VfW proprietary video using FFMpeg/AVISynth (if ness.)

[mmatta]

Thanks for the contributions to this forum, I've spent the past few days reading-up and learning in here. A great collaborative source of knowledge.

My issue: I have CCTV footage that is extracted to an avi file that is encoded using a proprietary VfW codec. My goal is to take make this footage readable in ffmpeg - to put it in H.264 or other web format. The VfW codec obviously isn't built into ffmpeg so I read that an easier solution to adding a new codec to ffmpeg's avcodec library is to use a frame-server like AVISynth to play the files frame by frame and pass them to ffmpeg. My AVIsynth command plays the file properly in WMP but when I try to pass that file in ffmpeg I get the following error:

c:\FFMPEG\bin>ffmpeg -i "input.avs" -r 1 -t 4 image-%d.jpeg
ffmpeg version N-39267-g4082198 Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Mar 25 2012 20:28:42 with gcc 4.6.2
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-w32threads --enable-ru
ntime-cpudetect --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-frei0r --enable-libope
ncore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --en
able-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger -
-enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwben
c --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxavs --enable-
libxvid --enable-zlib
  libavutil      51. 44.100 / 51. 44.100
  libavcodec     54. 12.100 / 54. 12.100
  libavformat    54.  3.100 / 54.  3.100
  libavdevice    53.  4.100 / 53.  4.100
  libavfilter     2. 65.102 /  2. 65.102
  libswscale      2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100
  libswresample   0. 10.100 /  0. 10.100
  libpostproc    52.  0.100 / 52.  0.100
[avs @ 0000000001DBEB10] AVIFileOpen failed with error -2147221164input.avs: Ope
ration not permitted

c:\FFMPEG\bin>

My AVISynth code for input.avs, which plays the video successfully in WMP is:

DirectShowSource("examples\MN_Sample1.avi", audio=false, pixel_type="RGB", convertfps=true)

1) is this the best way to get this proprietary data into ffmpeg
2) if so what am I doing wrong? Why doesn't ffmpeg read it?

I am using AVISynth

Thanks in advance

[jagabo]

Try using the full path to the video file, not just a relative path. Or put the AVS script in the same folder as the video file and use just the file name.

[mmatta]

Hey jagabo,
thanks for the response. Turns out the issue was my silly mistake - I was using a 64bit version of FFMPEG and a 32 bit version of AVISync.

I downloaded Zerano's 32-bit static build and retried. It worked - I DID have to use the full-path or keep the files in the same directory though - so you WERE right about that.

Thanks
Mike

[jagabo]

Yes, the 32 bit and 64 bit video systems in Windows are completely separate.