Main Concept aspect ratio

[calx]

I have been experimenting with the Main Concept MPEG encoder.
I understand that you are unable to keep the aspect ratio with widecreen movies. I have heard that you can use FitCD/Avisynth/VirtualDub to frameserve.
Does anyone have a step-by-step guide to doing this?
Does this take away from the speed advantage of this encoder vs TMPGEnc by adding this step?

[DJRumpy]

Frameserving will generally cause a slight performance hit, but nothing too drastic. Your question is somewhat confusing though. What exactly are you trying to do? Encoders don't care about input aspect ratio. Just resize your video to the required resolution and encode.

[Baldrick]

I think calx means that mainconcept can't keep the aspect ratio or keep it letterboxed(adding black borders) when you convert to vcd,svcd or dvd.

Some frameserving guides:
https://www.videohelp.com/guides?tools=&madeby=&formatconversionselect=&osselect=&howtos...&search=Search

...but noone exactly describes how to add black borders though.

[jbcalg]

i've used virtual dub resize filter framserved into mainconcept - works ok

open the avi in vdub, video, filters, add, resize
then adjust the canvas (letterbox) size
(fitcd is good to have open too to see some of the parameters)
as the letterbox size increases, the pixel size (source size) will decrease
use the filter preview to get an idea of how it looks

then frameserve into mainconcept
- 2 good guides:
https://www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve.htm
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/87270.php

haven't tried it with avisynth yet though

distilled from these sources dvdrhelp and mainconcept forum posts:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=467830#467830
http://forum.mainconcept.com/viewtopic.php?t=324&sid=e414a8ab8916728c506a52f254d6a173
http://forum.mainconcept.com/viewtopic.php?t=292&sid=e414a8ab8916728c506a52f254d6a173

[DJRumpy]

That makes a bit more sense. I haven't used the MC encoder. I didn't know it wouldn't resize/letterbox. Calx, depending on how GUI dependant you are, you can resize/letterbox with VirtualDub, or AVISynth. VirtualDub is a GUI driven editor. AVISynth is script based. You can find them both in the TOOLS section, and a few guides for them here (check the GUIDES section), and at the doom9 site ( www.doom9.org )

[calx]

Just to clarify on my problem.

I have used VirtualDub to resize, but I can only save the avi. I also have to recompress. This adds both time and I think reduces quality. I am able to run MC on the new avi. If I try to use the frameserver, MC crashes.

I have also tried AviSynth. I have generated scripts like the examples that others have posted. But again when I try to run MC, it crashes.

I am wondering if I am missing some codec or filter or if some settings that I am using are wrong.

Of note, I have also started trying MC's MainActor. It's encoder seems to automatically retain the original aspect ratio. I suppose in their later versions of their standalone encoder this feature will be included and this whole problem will be moot.

[Baldrick]

It doesn't work welll with avisynth only...it crashes randomly. But I tried avisynth->videotools link2->mainconcept and it worked bettter.

[fossil]

what i do is to use virtualdub and resize the video then save it as avi using huffyuv codec. then encode it with mainconcept, that's granted if you have large drives.

[DJRumpy]

calx, once you get it into VirtualDub, you aren't loosing any quality, as long as you do not use a lossy codec (Huffy is lossless). You only lose quality when re-encoding, and only when re-encoding in a lossy format (like MPEG, or Divx/XviD).

Instead of saving a new AVI though, you should simply frameserve it directly to your encoder. I'm guessing from Baldric's comments that AVISynth doesn't work well unless you use the Link2 addon. Since your familiar with VirtualDub, use that. This saves you both the space of the temporary AVI, and the time it takes to create it. Baldric, does MC accept frame served input from VDub?

[Baldrick]

djrumpy: it is Baldrick.......I haven't tested with virtualdub yet.

[Baldrick]

Trying now...seems to work fine....no crashes yet...

[DJRumpy]

Sorry about that. I usually pay more attention, especially when typing a handle...

I can't say much for VirtualDub either. I've never used the frameserver, as I went straight to AVISynth as my first frameserver.

[calx]

I figured it out.
It seems that if I use VirtualDub or AviSynth as a frameserver, it will work if I only frameserve the video portion of the file. If I then load MC, load the frameserved file as video, and load the original avi for the audio portion, the program works fine.

[DJRumpy]

One thing you might try, is to put a ResampleAudio statement in your AVISynth Script. Even if the audio is at the correct sample rate. It looks like this:

ResampleAudio(44100) # this one is for 44.1Khz
ResampleAudio(48000) # this one is for 48Khz

I've heard this sometimes helps with audio bugs/crashes when frameserving with AVISynth.