I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

[Ivor]

Apologies if this question has been asked before on the forum, but before I can search the forums, I need to know the correct terminology for what I'm looking for.
What I want do is create a MPEG file which has two movie streams on the screen at the same time in a split screen format. Effectively I want to display a movie from 5 years ago at the same time as one made now to show how things have changed.

The first and biggest problem I have is I don't know the technical terms associated with technique, and secondly which products to look at.

Please can someone advise on where to look.

Thanks

[mats.hogberg]

Could be done with Avisynth and the StackVertical/StackHorizontal filter

/Mats

[ZippyP.]

Could be done with Avisynth and the StackVertical/StackHorizontal filter

This worked for me:

LoadPlugin("C:\Video Programs\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MPEGDecoder.dll")
vid1 = mpegsource("g:\j1.mpg")
vid2 = mpegsource("g:\j2.mpg")
StackHorizontal(vid1,vid2)

[Ivor]

Thanks for this, I started looking at the AVISynth and there appears to be a suite of applications to go with it. So far I found

AVSeditor
Virtualdub
AVSfilmcutter

Is there anything else I should investigate?

Secondly, the adaptec system I'm using to capture my old hi8 tapes only saves in Mpeg, which tool would you recommend to convert these files to avi ?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

Virtualdub can read your avs script and output avis in whatever codec you have.

I recommend avsedit until you get used to scripting. Easy to use, with a great help file (basically the avisynth manual in a box)

[Ivor]

It was only quick play last night so maybe I did something wrong but I got the impression this suite of programmes only told avis as input hence my problem.

Is that correct?

[guns1inger]

avisynth will load pretty much any type of video. It is a scripted frameserver with no GUI interface at all

avsedit is an editing environment for avisynth scripts. It does no read videos or play them, except as a preview through the scripts you write

virtualdub comes in a number of flavours. The most versatile would be virtualdubmpeg2, which can read pretty much any avi you have vfw codecs for.

All that said, I'm not exactly sure what your problem is

[Ivor]

Thanks. I will have a proper play over the next couple of days and probably sort out my initial problems, which are probably just user error.

[mats.hogberg]

To load mpeg 2, you have to:
Create a dgindex project for your mpg file.
Use the mpeg2dec plugin in AViSynth to open the .d2v file (dgindex project).

/Mats