What's the difference between AviSynth and ffdshow?

[Clever Sleazoid]

Are they both command line programs, right? I've read AviSynth is more powerful than ffdshow. But how do I use it? Ffdshow seems to be an independent program, but I've often seen people say they use AviSynth with VirtualDub, but VirtualDub just doesn't work well here, so it wouldn't be an option for me.

My main goal is converting files to i-frame intermediates to edit them on Vegas (using mjpeg, which is the only i-frame codec that works here). Preferentially, I'd like to convert just segments of the videos I need, so I don't get gigantic files.

Please help me and sorry for my newbieness.

[poisondeathray]

Neither are commandline programs

ffdshow is a primarily a decoder (it has directshow and VFW components), but it has some postprocessing options

avisynth is primarily a frameserver, but is really a framework that is useful for audio/video manipulation and processing

[Cornucopia]

Yes and you also should revisit how you have your codecs and Virtualdub...shouldn't be having the trouble you're having, especially AVISynth.

Scott

[Clever Sleazoid]

Hmm. I'm not sure about how AviSynth works yet. But ray said something about it being able to be used with Vegas in order to get frame accurate videos instead of large intermediate files. That sounds pretty useful, since I need to work with over 40 files this time, and you know I got limited space on HD.

I don't have much time to finish the work I'm trying to do, so if you can, could you please recommend some specific as-right-to-the-point-as-possible stuff to read in order to learn how to install and use avfs with Vegas to do what you said?

Thank you for all the help and sorry for being so annoying.

[poisondeathray]

I wouldn't use avfs if you have over 40 files - you might run into memory and overhead / crashing issues. It's more reliable to use I-frame intermediates

[SameSelf]

ugh, pdr, this makes me think my frame out-of-order problem is due to me using Avisynth.

[poisondeathray]

ugh, pdr, this makes me think my frame out-of-order problem is due to me using Avisynth.

Very unlikely with AVISource and I-frame intermediates.

[SameSelf]

Are you saying that my ProRes HQ files are I-frame intermediates? Just curious.

Recall that I load the ProRes HQ straight into AE then dynamically link to PP before frameserving to Avisynth using DMFS. Therefore, I assume that they sort of stay as I-frame intermediates throughout the chain?

[poisondeathray]

Are you saying that my ProRes HQ files are I-frame intermediates? Just curious.

Recall that I load the ProRes HQ straight into AE then dynamically link to PP before frameserving to Avisynth using DMFS. Therefore, I assume that they sort of stay as I-frame intermediates throughout the chain?

Yes, ProRes is I-frame

Yes, uncompressed frames are served from AE to PP and DMFS (no temporal compression, no long GOP) . Your problem is either Adobe or DMFS. Maybe both, since DMFS is unstable for most people. Very unlikely avisynth , very very unlikely x264

[pandy]

ffdshow is ffmpeg wrapped in windows API's - AviSynth is a scripting language interpreter designed to be used in video (mostly) processing tasks.