AVANTI - FFmpeg/Avisynth GUI (support thread).

[Chris K]

So anyway, I just got one quick question and one brief observation. First, the question...

Looking in the drop-down "Container" menu, where the bleep is the wmv option?

You can easily add new options to the dropdown lists by typing them in the related field and press enter. They then will be added and stored in the ini file. There's also a template for WMV output available at the main menu (top left button "load template", UNI tab). You may need to adapt it a bit to your specific needs.

You can double-click on the dropdown lists for a options editor if you want to edit or re-arrange the lists.

Any chance of a future release that might provide nicer support for simple trimming of input? I think that if that was present, it would make a LOT of people happy.

I don't expect to release a new Avanti version any time soon because I'm not able to solve the incompatibillity issues on Windows 7/8.

Also, the preview options in Avanti (FFplay and internal DirectShow player) are limited. For accurate trimming you need to have total control like e.g. VirtualDub where you can step frame by frame through the timeline and get feedback on the current position. FFplay doesn't offer that and my programming skills are not at the level to implement that from scratch.

EDIT:

There are many other frontends available for FFmpeg that might offer better support for trimming.

https://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffmpeg

Chris

[ronbaby]

Chris,

Thanks much for the speedy reply. Yur responses will, I'm sure, be most helpful. I will be looking into other good "trimmer" GUIs for FFMpeg today. Anything specific you might recommend?

As regards to the Windows7/8 "incompatibilities" you mentioned, I have just one question: What incompatibilities?? I've been using the thing on Win7 and it seems perfectly OK to me. (Of course it isn't like I really exercised it much.)

Hummm... well... there was one really small and minor glitch that I should perhaps mention. On startup of Avanti (Under Win7) from a *non-admin* account, I got messages saying, at first, "Initializing FFMpeg engine" or some such thing. Then, after about 20 seconds or so another message appears in that same sub-window... obviously some sort of error message... saying something about a failure to write Avanti "system" files. I googled for that exact message but did not find anybody else talking about this.

Figuring that it might be some sort of permissions problem, I tried running Avanti again from my Win7 admin account and *then* it worked just perfectly.

Maybe this is some sort of... um... non-feature that you may want to look into (?)

[Chris K]

I will be looking into other good "trimmer" GUIs for FFMpeg today. Anything specific you might recommend?

To be honest... I did a small survey on this subject after I posted the link but most guis do not mention trimming support or are rather outdated including an old FFmpeg version (FFmpegYAG).

As regards to the Windows7/8 "incompatibilities" you mentioned, I have just one question: What incompatibilities?? I've been using the thing on Win7 and it seems perfectly OK to me. (Of course it isn't like I really exercised it much.)

It concerns very unpredictable behavior that seems to be mostly related to the install path. Some reported it didn't launch at all. Others that certain windows/dialogs didn't open or that (batch job) processing hangs. Changing the "length" of the of the install path often fixes the particular issue but often introduces another one that previously worked fine.

I tried for months to fix it and googled many hours for comparable Win7 issues but still can only suggest some install workarounds that may or may not work.

http://avanti.arrozcru.org/windows7.htm

Hummm... well... there was one really small and minor glitch that I should perhaps mention. On startup of Avanti (Under Win7) from a *non-admin* account, I got messages saying, at first, "Initializing FFMpeg engine" or some such thing. Then, after about 20 seconds or so another message appears in that same sub-window... obviously some sort of error message... saying something about a failure to write Avanti "system" files. I googled for that exact message but did not find anybody else talking about this.

Figuring that it might be some sort of permissions problem, I tried running Avanti again from my Win7 admin account and *then* it worked just perfectly.

My Windows 7 test machine has only a admin account. At launch, Avanti only copies and writes to the directory where you installed it. But I heard from messages like "This application tries to modify your HDD contents." or something like that? This seems to be already suspicious for windows 7.

[ronbaby]

Could you please fix Avanti so that it will properly initialize, even when it is being run from a non-admin account?

I have spent most of my life working in a UNIX environment (30+ years) and like most UNIX users I've developed the discipline of never using an all-powerful root account for anything unless absolutely necessary. I obey the same discipline on Windows also, so having to switch to an admin account just to run this application is worrying.

[ronbaby]

On a different topic now, where can I find documentation that would help me to use Avanti to perform color correction on a video? I have a couple of videos that have an overall greenish cast/tint and I would very much like to fix this. I started up Avaiti, loaded one of the videos in question, and then managed to navigate to the set of controls that support color modifications, but from there I am completely lost, and have no idea either (a) how to get ffmpeg to perform the desired color correction or even (b) how to use the helpful Avanti GUI to make ffmpeg do what I want in this regard. I tried googling for "ffmpeg" and "color correction" and also "avanti and color correction" and I didn't really find any documentation or any tutorial, so I'm really stuck at first base. Any guidance or pointers to relevant documentation would be appreciated.

[ronbaby]

Regarding my last posting.... NEVERMIND!

I played with it awhile and found out how to do what I wanted to do. In fact, for anyone who has spent any time doing color correction on stills, using any of the many find tools that are out there (such as gimp) to do this, the interface in Avanti was actually quite intuitive. That's not to say that I didn't experience some small problems. I did. And as a result, I have a couple of suggestions.

Firstly, as I've learned, despite some documentation/messages to the contrary, it is perfectly OK to use one of the 64-bit ffmpeg .exe files in conjunction with the 32-bit Avanti. I am speaking of ffplay.exe. I put the 64-bit executable for that into the ffmpeg directory that's under my Avanti install directory and found that it worked just fine for previews. So the documentation/message should perhaps be fixed to reflect the fact that this, at least, is perfectly OK to do.

Second, as I learned (via trial and error) when the destination video settings codec field is set to "copy" nothing relating to video (e.g. color correction) has any effect at all of the output. (I know.. duh!) But despite this, when I clicked on "Start Process" I got a message in the message window telling me that color correction was in effect. Well, ah, no, not really. So that message was misleading... entirely. Perhaps more importantly however, whenever either the audio or video codecs are set to "copy", essentially *all* of the option boxes really should be greyed-out, to indicate clearly that they are not available in copy mode. I think that would help make things a bit more intutive and obvious. In fact, probably all of the color correction stuff should be entirely greyed-out too while this video output mode is selected. That would have saved me some time and confusion, I think.

Just one more small problem. The first time (only) that I did an encode (to MPEG-4) of my input video using color correction, I got some message saying something about how each output codec can have its own specialized options, which can be used to improve quality. And that message also told me to click on *something* to get at those extra codec options. But since my first trial run, I have never seen that message again and unfortunately, I did not take note of what I was supposed to click on, so I have no idea how to get this alleged "better quality". And even if I found the place I was supposed to click on again, in order to get at those extra codec options, I doubt that I would know how to make proper use of them. So any tips would be most appreciated. (I *did* set my output video bit rate to be essentially equal to the input video bit rate, so that part, at least, I got right I think. still, if I can improve the output quality further then I would like to do so. But how?)

[Chris K]

As I already "tried" to announce a few times in earlier posts, I stopped active development of Avanti due to the many technical issues on Windows 7/8. I strongly advice to look at the other available FFmpeg front-ends that may be more future proof where it concerns the current Windows OS'.

If you still want to use Avanti for some of its features, I advice to read the included chm help file. The icon at the top right toolbar button (question mark) opens a help menu.

Chris

[smfabac]

This is a newbee question: It's simple: How do I load/executed a script created with fmpg script editor in Avanti GUI?

All I want to do is create a simple video of a series of 3000+ jpg files in a directory. The files are named 0001-capture.jpg
to 3005-capture.jpg.


There is the "ffmpg script editor button" and the "back to main page" button but I can't find any button to run the script.


Can you point me to a video "how to" that covers what I need to know to accomplish my task?

[Chris K]

This is a newbee question: It's simple: How do I load/executed a script created with fmpg script editor in Avanti GUI?

All I want to do is create a simple video of a series of 3000+ jpg files in a directory. The files are named 0001-capture.jpg
to 3005-capture.jpg.


There is the "ffmpg script editor button" and the "back to main page" button but I can't find any button to run the script.


Can you point me to a video "how to" that covers what I need to know to accomplish my task?

Scripts are automatically inserted when yo press the "Start Process" button.

In your case; set the desired output format (e.g. by loading a template) and enter the following at the "Source 1" file input field ...

C:/your image folder/%04d-capture.jpg

Then simply press the "Start Process" button.

You can find more details on how the script editor functions in the "Avanti-help.chm" file at your Avanti install directory
or open the script editor and press the <F1> function key.

[VitaliyAT]

Could you add rotation functions in GUI? Lot of video recodered by smart-phones. Very often it rotate by 90 or 180 degree. It will be useful feature.

[ronny1982]

Chris,

Thanks much for the speedy reply. Yur responses will, I'm sure, be most helpful. I will be looking into other good "trimmer" GUIs for FFMpeg today. Anything specific you might recommend?

FFmpegYAG was created especially to trim/cut/split/merge videos to remove OP & ED from anime series, or commercials from captured movies to decrease file size. Due to lack of interest there is not much active development since it works fine for personal usage. The last active Windows development was back in may 2013 with corrupted audio playback.

An extremely unstable and untested (mingw compiled) Windows version is now available for download, but the audio preview is still corrupted and an expected high crash rate could make it nearly impossible to use.

The Linux version is in an alpha state with some known bugs and crashes from time to time. You can give it a try with a live CD of linuxmint 15 (64 bit) or ubuntu 13.10 (64 bit), deb packags for both systems are available for download...

It is strongly recommend to read the full documentation to get an overview of all features (e.g. press and hold spacebar in preview panel to playback selected video/audio streams, ...)

[JonF]

FWIW Avanti works on my Win8.1x64 system following the instructions and setting it to run in Win7 compatibility mode. Without the last it complains of inadequate disk access privileges.

[Chris K]

Hi to all,

Decided to release a new Avanti version (0.7.6). Mainly for bug fixes and maintenance
to keep up with the latest FFmpeg versions. Also added some new features.

http://avanti.arrozcru.org/upgrade.htm

This version doesn't fix the Windows 7/8 issues but with some efforts (and luck) it can be
fully functional on these OS'. I changed the hints for those who want to give it a try...

http://avanti.arrozcru.org/windows7.htm

Those who still use Windows XP to do their video work will have no issues.

Chris

[SWBisbee]

Hi to all,

Decided to release a new Avanti version (0.7.6). Mainly for bug fixes and maintenance
to keep up with the latest FFmpeg versions. Also added some new features.

http://avanti.arrozcru.org/upgrade.htm

This version doesn't fix the Windows 7/8 issues but with some efforts (and luck) it can be
fully functional on these OS'. I changed the hints for those who want to give it a try...

http://avanti.arrozcru.org/windows7.htm

Those who still use Windows XP to do their video work will have no issues.

Chris

The help file seems to be blank Win 7, everything else works fine.

Regards,

[Chris K]

The help file seems to be blank Win 7, everything else works fine.

Can you give some more details. How does it show up?

[SWBisbee]

The help file seems to be blank Win 7, everything else works fine.

Can you give some more details. How does it show up?

it shows up blank

[Chris K]

Weird! I checked out everything on Win 7 except the chm help

The chm help is generated (from html source) in Win XP but that's done for all earlier versions too?

I'll swich over to my Win 7 machine and let you know later.

[SWBisbee]

Weird! I checked out everything on Win 7 except the chm help

The chm help is generated (from html source) in Win XP but that's done for all earlier versions too?

I'll swich over to my Win 7 machine and let you know later.

ok, Thanks

[Chris K]

On Win 7 Enterprise (32-bit) it does fine.

I use "HTML Help Workshop" which comes from MS to generate the chm help. AFAIK it uses components from "Internet Explorer" to display the file so perhaps there's a mismatch with the Win 7 version you use?

It's past midnight here but I'll try to generate the help on Win 7 tomorrow and post a link to try it out.

[Marchand]

Great Job

hevc (libx265) 2 pass

Thanks

20:54:07 - Process started using ffmpeg version N-61444-gf3d3e3f
================================================== ====================================

Input #0, mpegts, from 'C:/Users/Marchand/Videos/Videos/00200.m2ts':
Duration: 00:00:07.46, start: 11.650667, bitrate: 41412 kb/s
Program 1
Stream #0:0[0x1011]: Video: h264 (High) (HDMV / 0x564D4448), yuv420p,
1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 90k tbn, 47.95 tbc
Stream #0:1[0x1100]: Audio: dts (DTS-HD MA) ([134][0][0][0] / 0x0086),
48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 1536 kb/s
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Output #0, mp4, to 'C:/Users/Marchand/Videos/Videos/00200aa.mp4':
Stream #0:0: Video: hevc (libx265) ([35][0][0][0] / 0x0023), yuv420p,
1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, pass 2, 1900 kb/s, 24k tbn,
23.98 tbc
Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (libvo_aacenc) ([64][0][0][0] / 0x0040), 44100 Hz,
stereo, s16, 128 kb/s
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stream mapping:
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 -> libx265)
Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (dca -> libvo_aacenc)

================================================== ====================================
+--------------------+
| |
Source [1] --> | FFmpeg | --> Destination [1]
| |
+--------------------+
================================================== ====================================

20:54:07 - Free space on destination disk at start 236,437 Mb.
20:54:07 - Processing pass 2 (encoding destination).

FFmpeg messages/warnings (limited):

video:1496kB audio:118kB subtitle:0 data:0 global headers:0kB overhead 0.424663%

20:56:42 - bitrate: min 0, max 1779, avg 1523 kbit/s
20:56:42 - Q-scale: min 0.0, max 0, avg 0.0

20:56:42 - Process successfully finished after 00:05:16 hms.

[Chris K]

hevc (libx265) 2 pass

I don't think libx265 supports 2-pass encoding (yet?). FFmpeg writes an empty log at the first pass.

I have no experience in judging x265 quality but it looks nice anyway

[Chris K]

The help file seems to be blank Win 7, everything else works fine.

There seems to be more ppl with this problem on Win 7/8.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-files/chm-file-show-empty-p...2-5d42d9e78ded

https://feedback.techsmith.com/techsmith/topics/snagit_helpfile_problems

Do you run the chm file from a network drive?

I usually recompile the chm help with "KeyTools" to compress it a bit. I could send you the plain chm as compiled with "HTML Help Workshop".

[SWBisbee]

The help file seems to be blank Win 7, everything else works fine.

There seems to be more ppl with this problem on Win 7/8.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-files/chm-file-show-empty-p...2-5d42d9e78ded

https://feedback.techsmith.com/techsmith/topics/snagit_helpfile_problems

Do you run the chm file from a network drive?

I usually recompile the chm help with "KeyTools" to compress it a bit. I could send you the plain chm as compiled with "HTML Help Workshop".

No on the network drive

Please send chm compiled with HTML Help Workshop

Note: I copied the help file from 0.7.5 to 0.7.6 and that worked if that helps at all, I know it's for 0.7.5 just wanted to test it.

[SWBisbee]

The help file seems to be blank Win 7, everything else works fine.

There seems to be more ppl with this problem on Win 7/8.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-files/chm-file-show-empty-p...2-5d42d9e78ded

https://feedback.techsmith.com/techsmith/topics/snagit_helpfile_problems

Do you run the chm file from a network drive?

I usually recompile the chm help with "KeyTools" to compress it a bit. I could send you the plain chm as compiled with "HTML Help Workshop".

No on the network drive

Please send chm compiled with HTML Help Workshop

Note: I copied the help file from 0.7.5 to 0.7.6 and that worked if that helps at all, I know it's for 0.7.5 just wanted to test it.

I got it to work following these steps from the links above

Unblock the CHM files and check

a) Right-click the .CHM file that you are trying to view and choose “Properties”.
b) On the “General” tab, click the button labeled "Unblock"
c) Click on “Ok”

Thanks,

[Chris K]

I got it to work following these steps from the links above

Unblock the CHM files and check

a) Right-click the .CHM file that you are trying to view and choose “Properties”.
b) On the “General” tab, click the button labeled "Unblock"
c) Click on “Ok”

OK! Thanks for the explanation. It may help others that experience the same problem.

[Note: I copied the help file from 0.7.5 to 0.7.6 and that worked if that helps at all, I know it's for 0.7.5 just wanted to test it.

I'm surprised by this because the 0.7.5 help was made the same way. There are only a few additions in the 0.7.6 help.
Perhaps still better to compile it on Win 7 next time and not recompile it with "KeyTools". It's only about 14kB smaller that way.

Chris

[ConverterCrazy]

Hello @Chris

This question is from a technical moron.

I downloaded Avanti 0.7.6 and extracted the files.

Running Avanti displayed this message:

Please copy a 'generic' Win32 build to the "ffmpeg" folder at your Avanti install
directory or right-click on "Start Process" button to set path to another location.

You can download supported builds at "http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/".
And the bottom "System failed to start" warning.

So, I downloaded ffmpeg-latest-win32-static.7z from http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ and extracted the contents to ffmpeg subfolder.

I continue to get the above-cited message.
I am attaching the entire directory/folder structure for your ready reference.

Please let me know what wrong I am doing.

Thanks.

[Chris K]

I continue to get the above-cited message.
I am attaching the entire directory/folder structure for your ready reference.

Please let me know what wrong I am doing.

Very helpful to post the dirs. You copied the Zeranoe "bin" folder to the Avanti "ffmpeg" folder but you should have only copied the contents of the bin folder to the Avanti "ffmpeg" folder. Actually only "ffmpeg.exe" and "ffplay.exe". Avanti doesn't need "ffprobe.exe".

 Directory of C:\Avanti Video Tool\Avanti-GUI-076\ffmpeg

30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          .
30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          ..
30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          bin
30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          doc
28-Jun-13  01:21 AM               685 environment_vars.ini
30-Mar-14  07:34 AM               655 ff-prompt.bat
02-Jul-13  12:30 PM    <DIR>          ffpresets
02-Jul-13  12:30 PM    <DIR>          ffscripts
22-Feb-14  15:10 PM    <DIR>          fonts
02-Jul-13  12:30 PM    <DIR>          frei0r
30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          licenses
30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          presets
30-Mar-14  07:34 AM        25,183,744 ffmpeg.exe
30-Mar-14  07:34 AM        25,104,896 ffplay.exe
30-Mar-14  07:45 AM             3,541 README.txt
14-Mar-14  14:28 PM             1,391 README_FFmpeg.txt
               4 File(s)          6,272 bytes

 Directory of C:\Avanti Video Tool\Avanti-GUI-076\ffmpeg\bin

30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          .
30-Mar-14  08:59 AM    <DIR>          ..
30-Mar-14  07:34 AM        25,183,744 ffmpeg.exe
30-Mar-14  07:34 AM        25,104,896 ffplay.exe
30-Mar-14  07:34 AM        25,118,208 ffprobe.exe
               3 File(s)     75,406,848 bytes

You can remove the "bin" folder entirely. You can copy the presets from the Zeranoe "presets" folder to the Avanti "ffpresets" folder. You can also copy the html contents of the Zeranoe "doc" folder to the Avanti "doc" folder. You'll than have it available at the Avanti help menu.

It may be a bit confusing, "presets" to "ffpresets" but the folder names in the Zeranoe zip are an arbitrary choice and other FFmpeg providers may have named them different (just as Avanti does).

Chris

[ConverterCrazy]

Thanks, Chris.

It is working

[JonF]

I can't find any indication on the Web or in this thread or in the help how to use the Blur/Sharpen box. I can't figure out what ffmpeg option it maps to. It appears one might enter a number, probably positive to do one thing and negative to do another, but it seems more info is needed.

[Chris K]

I can't find any indication on the Web or in this thread or in the help how to use the Blur/Sharpen box. I can't figure out what ffmpeg option it maps to. It appears one might enter a number, probably positive to do one thing and negative to do another, but it seems more info is needed.

This is from the Avanti help...

---------------------------------------

Blur/Sharpen (uses "unsharp" filter). Basically it allows to set the blur/sharpen strength in a range from
-20 to 20. Negative values will blur, while positive values will sharpen. For sharpening, start of with low
values (5-10) because this filter works very "aggressive".

You can use the mouse wheel to "spindle" through the ranges. You can double-click on the fields to reset them
to zero (means disabled). Note that Avanti internally divides these values by 10 to obtain the values expected
by the FFmpeg filters.

For experienced users there's a option to enter the full parameter string at the input field like e.g.
7:7:2.5 for a strong luma sharpen effect. Visit http://ffmpeg.org/libavfilter.html for more details.

---------------------------------------

The link is outdated and should read http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#unsharp

I hope this helps,

Chris