much appreciated help with split-screens, please

[thexder]

Hello, I am trying to gather as much information on making SVCDs as possible and one of the things that I would like to do, but have yet to be able to figure out how to do, is create split-screens, i.e. two different clips playing side by side on the screen. I don't really want to purchase anymore software, however. I have Nero and VideoPak 4, if that will help, and, of course, I've downloaded VirtualDub and TMPG. If anyone has any tips or knows how to do this, please post. I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

[tacosalad]

I've used AviSynth for stuff like that, but you've got to be pretty creative. It's available from the Tools link at left.

For example, to show a "before and after" of a video that I'd cleaned up, I used a script like this:

################################################
b=AviSource("Before.avi&quot.crop(0,0,176,240)
a=AviSource("After.avi&quot.crop(176,0,176,240)
StackHorizontal(a,b)
################################################

The videos were assumed to be 352x240.

The first line loads "Before.avi" and cuts off the right half, making it 176x240.

The second line loads "After.avi" and cuts off the left half, cutting it to 176x240.

The third line puts the two chopped pictures side-by-side to form a 352x240 image.

[Riot_Inc]

you have smilies on the example.

[AntnyMD]

Why do you guys always want to do stuff that is so far out there? I swear, some of the things I ignore are just totally made up.

[Riot_Inc]

i was thinking about doing the same thing.. what's so far out there?

[thexder]

Thanks for the help. That sounds like it would work for my purposes but I'm extremely unfamiliar with AviSynth. Could you explain a little more how AviSynth works and exactly how I can do the split-screen? Or, do you have a link to a site that can? Thanks.

[tacosalad]

There's more information, though technical, at http://www.math.berkeley.edu/%7Ebenrg/avisynth.html

I use version 0.3 because the latest beta of 1.0 crashes on too many scripts. Version 0.3 isn't prone to crashing. There's also a tutorial.

If you get it installed, I'll be happy to suggest a script to do what you want--rather than make you learn the scripting language. For some reason it's effortless for me, so I've written complex scripts to display a screen full of animated thumbnails, to transition smoothly from full-screen to letterbox, and so on.

Can you tell me exactly what effect you're trying to achieve, and the desired size of your video? The sample I gave above, for example, assumes you want to cut the input videos in half. On the other hand, you might want to squeeze them into the space instead, or something like that.