using AVS to fade in and out a bunch of AVIs

[zeiss]

ok, so i'm trying to learn here, but i'm about ready to cry.

i have about 50 avi clips from my sister's wedding. i want to fade each one in and out.

i decided to get tricky, rather than using a 1-2-3 program, i decided to learn avisynth for batch processing. i've used vdub a few times, years back, but never avisynth.

i am using the following AVS code, but no matter how i set up Vdub (ie video = direct stream copy), i am getting full decompression (100 MB turns to 2 GB). shouldn't trimming be direct stream copy? i split the clip into three parts so that i only have to full-process the small fades over 12 frames while the meat of the clip is untouched. i've spent 4 hours browsing the web tonight looking for answers. any help would be much appreciated. it seems like it should take about 10 seconds and the file size should be about the same.

Clip="000 - Toast - edit"+".avi"
n=AviSource(Clip).Framecount
FadeIn(AviSource(Clip).Trim(0, 11),12) \
 ++ AviSource(Clip).Trim(12,n-12) \
 ++ FadeOut(AviSource(Clip).Trim(n-11,0),12)

This tutorial AVS also blows up on me:

Clip="000 - Toast - edit"+".avi"          
AVISource(Clip)
Trim(0, 1000) ++ Trim(2000, 3200) ++ Trim(4000, 0)

[Pinstripes23]

avisynth frameserves your avi - it actually on-the-fly decompresses - so you can edit/filter,etc. When you direct-stream save the avs file through vdub, the direct-stream is a decompressed avi.

[zeiss]

that makes sense. thanks for the response. these are avis from my miniDV camcorder. should i "fast recompress" in some manner then? or do you have any suggestions for a better way to fade in and out a folder of avis?

[Pinstripes23]

Yes you can feed vdub the avs file and recompress, but if you are doing that kind of editing you are going to have re-encode in some manner anyway. What is your final output going to be?

[zeiss]

ultimately these will go on DVD. my goal was to fade them, rearrange them, combine them into one file, and then import that into Ulead DVD workshop (DWS2) for chapters and menus. i tried to do that all in DWS2, but it was too tedious. i thought by doing direct stream copy in VD, it would be nearly lossless and quick, and avisynth would enable me to do all 50 in one big batch.

presumably i could convert them all to mpeg-2 first, and use an app for that, but for some reason i picture mpeg transformations as being more lossy, and mpeg software as being more showy and less pure.

[Pinstripes23]

Definitely convert to mpeg2 first, don't let your authoring app do it. Yes converting to mpeg2 is lossy cuz it's a lossy codec. And since your final output is DVD it has to be mpeg anyway.

[bmf]

I'm struggling with the same problem: have lots of dv avi files, and want to apply fade in/fade out to all of them.

I haven't even managed to properly process one file at a time manually with VirtualDub, as it's SmartRender capability seems to be unoperational (or maybe I was doing something wrong).

I'm not familiar with avisynth...

So I'd also love to see a working solution for batch processing multiple DV files with fade in/out!

[zeiss]

tmpgenc xpress does this really well, it turns out. you can add a large number of clips and then apply a large number of filters to them all at once. you can even save your "total transformation" and load it later to apply to other files (fade in one second + convert to b/w, + normalize sound + fade out 5 seconds, or whatever)

of course if you want more than a demo, you have to pay.

and this works really well for DV>DVD conversion, because you can apply all these transformations and then convert just once to mpeg-2, without having to repeatedly transform mpeg files. i'm not sure if you can save back to avi codecs with tmpg products. it does say "Offering the most common file formats including HDV import/output along with DivX 6 AVI, MPEG-1/2/4, QuickTime (MOV), and Window Media (WMV/WMV-HD/WMA) input/output"

[bmf]

you're right, it's very easy to apply the same effects for lots of files at the same time when doing dv=>dvd conversion with tmpgenc xpress.

i'll rather quit using cce as an encoder, and instead of doing avi =(fade)=> avi =(encode w. cce)=> mpeg operations, i'll run avi =(fade+encode w. tmpgenc)=>mpeg conversion, because it's really easy to do so, and i don't see other option.

thanks!