Help With DGMPGDec

[OrlandoEastwood]

Hello, my first posting here. I shot some videos in my film class last year and we shot one and it was 4:3 Fullscreen, but actually Widescreen with the bars on the top and bottom. Now, I found DGMPGDec and it has a cropping feature where you can crop the sides and it seemed like it was freaking blessing for me but everytime I save and demux its still in fullframe with the black bars on the top and bottom. Now to make sure I wasn't losing it I put in another video I did in Fullscreen and it's not cropping it at all. Anyone know what is wrong?

[manono]

Hi-

Now, I found DGMPGDec and it has a cropping feature where you can crop the sides and it seemed like it was freaking blessing for me but everytime I save and demux its still in fullframe with the black bars on the top and bottom.

Yeah, don't crop in DGIndex. Crop in the AviSynth script in which you use the D2V project file that DGIndex creates. From the DGMPGDec FAQ:

Q09: Should I use the Crop Filter (aka: Clipping)?
A: This is entirely up to you to decide. If you feel the need to crop the video (possibly to remove black bars) you can use this option to perform cropping.
NOTE: The values specified here are in fact performed using the AviSynth Crop filter. There is no advantage to performing this operation in DGIndex (DVD2AVI) except that you can use the GUI and visualize the output.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=87809

If you still want to crop in DGIndex, the cropping information is contained in the D2V project file which is usually used in an AviSynth script for frameserving the video into the encoder. It does not crop the saved M2V. You have to reencode for that to happen (using either the D2V with the cropping information or, better, using AviSynth's Crop filter and a D2V with no cropping done).

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Crop

[OrlandoEastwood]

Is there another program that can do this? I tried to DL AVISYNTH and there's no program. I'm getting sick of this, does anyone know of a program that will actually do this without going through whole process?

[Noahtuck]

What is your final destination for format ?

When i need to crop video i usually do it in TMPGEnc when converting to mpg2 for dvd.
It's a bit easier for a beginner than Vdub or Avisynth

But i am sure there are many ways to do it....

[OrlandoEastwood]

Mpeg2, I got TMPEG like 2 years ago and the mpeg2 expired. How do you crop the video in that program?

[OrlandoEastwood]

Sorry for the double post but I downloaded VirtualDub, the new one from October and I can't get my videos to load up on it, I get a message:



But I got some music video I downloaded a few years back load up and it was in .avi and my videos are in .mpeg. I got the music video to crop but there's a serious problem to it and I don't know if it is supposed to be like that but it took a 5 minute performance which was 25 MB and made it almost 2 GB. Is there a way to stop it from being that big of an output because I got about 15 GB of space left on my comp and a way for it to load my video files?

[Alex_ander]

Vdub can only import MPEG1, not MPEG2. Use VDubMPEG2 (better) or VDubMod (not updated now) instead.

[OrlandoEastwood]

I tried VDubMod and it wasn't cropping. Hopefully this MPEG2 one does. One question, does it make the final file as big as I said that music video came out to be. I planned on having my school vids on one disc and was just basically wanting to put the widescreen ones in the proper size.

[OrlandoEastwood]

I'm still having problem with the size of the file. It's too huge and I don't have much disc space. I got it to upload the file but it took too freakin' long to open it, a half hour. Then I get this message:



So I save a brief clip of it, a minute and a half and it comes out to 1 GB and the sound is garbage, what do I do?

[Alex_ander]

I tried VDubMod and it wasn't cropping. Hopefully this MPEG2 one does. One question, does it make the final file as big as I said that music video came out to be. I planned on having my school vids on one disc and was just basically wanting to put the widescreen ones in the proper size.

I didn't realize you were trying to crop MPEG file that way, sorry. VDubMod(MPEG2) can only import such a file by decompressing it to avi (that's why you get big files at saving) and after some editing (like cropping) serve as a GUI for encoding it to some avi format like Xvid.
In your case I'd still recommend using AviSynth for cropping/resizing with further MPEG encoding (you can't avoid it anyway).
Here are the first steps with AviSynth:
1. Install AviSynth and AVSP (free script editor making things easier).
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page
2.Put DGDecode.dll from DGMPGDec package to 'plugins' folder in AviSynth installation directory (c:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\)
3.Drag your d2v file made by DGIndex to AVSP and it will create a script (.avs text file) which opens your video.
4.Add lines for cropping/resizing (you'll have to resize back to 720x480, then encode with 16:9 setting). The problem is that to do resizing properly you should previously (at making d2v project) explore the type of your video (is it progressive, interlaced, telecined etc.). In simple case (progressive video) you could simply add lines like these:
Crop(0,60,-0,-60)
LanczosResize(720,480)
then save the script and open it in MPEG2 encoder.
I'd first test it 'as is' to understand how it works, then adjust settings for your particular video.

[OrlandoEastwood]

Whenever I dl AVISYNTH there's no file, is it supposed to be like that?

[manono]

After it's been installed, you create your own script, or use one of the many 3rd party apps to have it create one for you (Alex_ander recommends AVSP). These little text files containing the scripts have an extension of .avs. Your Movie.avs will have at least a couple of lines in it, and usually many more, and it's opened in an encoder or player just as you'd open an AVI or other video.

If you don't understand the concept, then read here:

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page#New_to_AviSynth_-_start_here

Also, since you have the DGMPGDec package, read the included documentation. It's very good.

[OrlandoEastwood]

I tried my video as mpeg and it wouldn't read it in AvsP, Then I used the .d2v file and it still wouldn't read.

Is there like a video instruction on how to do this? Reading it doesn't make any sense to me what so ever.

[Alex_ander]

I tried my video as mpeg and it wouldn't read it in AvsP, Then I used the .d2v file and it still wouldn't read.

Is there like a video instruction on how to do this? Reading it doesn't make any sense to me what so ever.

AVSP only works with AviSynth installed. To open your d2v project in AVSP you also have to prepare these things:
Make MPEG2 decoder (DGDecode.dll) loaded with AviSynth. There are 2 ways: to write an additional command in the beginning of the script, or to make it loaded automatically - putting it in 'plugins' folder of AviSynth ensures this. Then you are ready to drag your d2v file to AVSP.
An animated tutorial for AVSP is here (also linked from help button):
http://avisynth.org/qwerpoi/Demo.htm

[OrlandoEastwood]

Thank you for showing me that demo video. I'll get to it in an hour or so, I'm converting some videos to the iPod format.

[OrlandoEastwood]

Hmm...sorry for the long delay. I was lucky to get the video made in widescreen, despite the big ass size of 1.3 GB on VirtualDub but for some reason the audio seems shuttery when played back. I don't know what it is though.