What Codec To Use After Editing With VirtualDub?

[boofer]

Hello. I am one of the thousands of people trying to svae dozens of home movies to DVD. My computer is fairly top of the line that I built myself. I have one major question and a few minor ones.

I am using a Canopus ADVC-100 hooked to a VCR and the "Firewire" port on my motherboard. I have run into a program called Scenalyzer for capturing. It does a nice job and does not drop any frames. I use the Canopus DV codec for the capture. (I would entertain any recommendations on other capture codecs) I then use VirtualDub to edit the video. I cannot capture with VirtualDub because it does not support "DV" capture. I am still in the learning process as to the different editing options. This is my question. What type of codec should I use after I am done editing? I have tried a few and it really seems to vary as far as time and space. As I type I am using the huffyuv codec and it seems to be working fairly quickly after applying one filter to a 1hr 45min video. It is going to take approximately 1 hour. I am not so much concerned with the time element as I am the quality. I will happily sacrifice time for quality.

After VirtualDub is finished I am going to use the TMPGE to encode the video in to the MPEG2(DVD) format. Is it advisable to add aditional filters?

Also, I have read so much on the issue of interlacing. Those who support deinterlacing are quite adamant about it and the same goes for those who do not support it. I am just curious as to what most people do when they are doing what I am trying to do (VHS to DVD).

I would appreciate any help anyone has to offer!

[FulciLives]

You should get the latest version of AviSynth and VirtualDubMod ... notice I said VirtualDubMod not normal VirtualDub.

Here is what you do.

You edit your capture in VirtualDubMod then you go to TOOLS and SCRIPT EDITOR or you can just hit Ctrl-E

Now the VirtualDubMod SCRIP EDITOR is on-screen. Go to EDIT and then SCRIPT HANDLING and choose AVISYNTH

Now go to EDIT and select IMPORT FRAME SET AS TRIMS

This will give you your edits (or trims) in AviSynth form.

AviSynth is a "frameserver" that allows you to import your DV AVI video into your encoder of choice such as TMPGEnc or Cinema Craft Encoder etc.

The most basic script would look like this:

avisource("D:\CAPTURE\capture.avi")
Trim(5125,32485)

Line one loads your capture file. Just put in your own DIR PATH info and FILENAME and line two is your edits done in VirtualDubMod. This is a simple Trim where you simply cut some from the start and end. If you are doing something with many edits it might look something like this:

avisource("D:\CAPTURE\capture.avi")
Trim(5125,32485) ++ Trim(39712,53434) ++ Trim(60677,73245)

What is the benefit of using AviSynth and VirtualDubMod?

Well you don't have to re-save your file or frameserve from VirtualDub to TMPGEnc. You do your edits ... load them into your Avisynth script (created with NOTEPAD) and then you import the script into your encoder. No need to save your captured file with the edits which takes up a lot of disk space.

You can also use filters with AviSynth. You can crop the image or resize the image. In fact there is A LOT you can do with it or you can just use it for simple things like editing ala my example.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Do not Deinterlace EVER unless it is intended for COMPUTER playback only. If you are creating a DVD for television playback then DO NOT deinterlace.

As for filters the one in TMPGEnc is nice but VERY slow. If you end up going with AviSynth then there is a filter that works with it and it works VERY well and is VERY fast (at least compared to the one in TMPGEnc). This filter is called Convolution3D

[boofer]

Thanks. I also tried AviSynth with VirtualDub. Not exactly sure what I did with it at that time, but I am somewhat familiar with it. If I read you correctly, this procedure will keep me from rerendering the AVI and then rendering it as a MPEG2, and go straight to rendering it as a MPEG2? And what happens to the file? How does it get rendered by TMPGE if all of this is done in VirtualDubMod?

Thanks!

[FulciLives]

If I read you correctly, this procedure will keep me from rerendering the AVI and then rendering it as a MPEG2, and go straight to rendering it as a MPEG2?

Correct.

And what happens to the file? How does it get rendered by TMPGE if all of this is done in VirtualDubMod?

AviSynth is what is known as a frameserver. You create a "script" using a simple TEXT EDITOR such as NOTEPAD. This scrip POINTS towards your capture file and tells the encoder to load that file and apply whatever processing you have in the script such as editing or noise filters etc.

http://www.avisynth.org/

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[boofer]

Okay. Managed to get the Avisynth script written to trim the video and apply one VirtualBub filter. But when I try to open the script file in TMPGE I get an error message. Script Error; Invalid arguments to function "Trim" (F:\scene0001.avs, line2). Here is my exact script:

"F:\scene0001.avi"
Trim(1405,166260)
LoadVirtualDubPlugin("C:\Documents and Settings\James\My Documents\VirtualDubMod_1_5_10_1_All_inclusive\plu gins\dnr.vdf","dnf","31")

What am I doing wrong?

[deckard8]

Avisynth is a very powerful tool but can be a bit complicated if you are a newbie. Seeing as you are editing in Virtualdub, why don't you just use it's built-in frameserver after your editing and frameserve directly into TMPGenc. Saves messing about with scripts and stuff and having to re-encode with avi codec again. Install handler from the auxilliary setup and don't save as a <filename>.vdr - save as a <filename>.avi and load that into TMPGenc to convert.

[teegee420]

Okay. Managed to get the Avisynth script written to trim the video and apply one VirtualBub filter. But when I try to open the script file in TMPGE I get an error message. Script Error; Invalid arguments to function "Trim" (F:\scene0001.avs, line2). Here is my exact script:

"F:\scene0001.avi"
Trim(1405,166260)
LoadVirtualDubPlugin("C:\Documents and Settings\James\My Documents\VirtualDubMod_1_5_10_1_All_inclusive\plu gins\dnr.vdf","dnf","31")

What am I doing wrong?

I'm no Avisynth expert but I believe it needs to be like this:

avisource("F:\scene0001.avi")
Trim(1405,166260)
LoadVirtualDubPlugin("C:\Documents and Settings\James\My Documents\VirtualDubMod_1_5_10_1_All_inclusive\plu gins\dnr.vdf","dnf","31")

Not to worry. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

[FulciLives]

Well I've been using AviSynth for a long while now but to the best of my knowledge you can't use a VirtualDub filter in AviSynth. If you can that is news to me!

But there are MANY filters for AviSynth.

Check out this page:

http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/

Those are the EXTERNAL filters for AviSynth. There are also a few noise flters built-in to AviSynth that you can find on the AviSynth website.

I use the Convolution3D filter which you can find on that page (see link above).

Basically you download the Convolution3D files and put them in your WINDOES/SYSTEM32 folder.

A sample script would look like this:

LoadPlugin("Convolution3d.dll")
avisource("F:\scene0001.avi") 
Trim(1405,166260)
SeparateFields() 
Convolution3D (0, 3, 4, 3, 4, 2.8, 0) 
weave()

Line 1 loads your filter. Line 2 loads your source file. Line 3 is your imported trims from VirtualDubMod.

As for lines 4, 5 and 6 ...

Line 4 separates your frame into two fields. DV video is interlaced with each frame being made up of two fields. So you need to process each field rather than the entire frame at once or you can cause errors. Line 5 is the filter which does each field (not frames) and then line 6 puts your fields back into frames.

As for the fancy numbers in () after Convolution3D ... well that comes from the documentation that comes with Convolution3D. There are only so many pre-set options and that is the same as the movieHQ (high quality) setting. That is what you will mostly be using.

One last thing ...

I forgot to mention this before because I mostly use CCE now instead of TMPGEnc but if you will be using TMPGEnc then you should add this to the end of your scripts:

ConvertToRGB()

That would make our sample script look like this:

LoadPlugin("Convolution3d.dll")
avisource("F:\scene0001.avi") 
Trim(1405,166260)
SeparateFields() 
Convolution3D (0, 3, 4, 3, 4, 2.8, 0) 
weave()
ConvertToRGB()

The reason for this is that TMPGEnc works in the RGB colorspace and you are better off letting AviSynth do the RGB conversion than TMPGEnc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
There is an excellent AviSynth forum on the doom9 website

[billcoffin]

This seems related, but my apologies if it's a non-sequiter:

I've been using VirtualDubMod (and VirtualDub-mpeg2) to extract avi from a VOB file. The quality of the avi has been very poor when I use the default settings. I've tried using DivX and huffyuv codecs, but both produce avi files that crash my computer! (OK, I use Win ME; I just hate to upgrade things...)

I'd like to avoid anything as "advanced" as avisynth, and I care more about quality than about speed of conversion. It's obvious that I'm doing something wrong (and probably fundamentally not understanding the concepts) but I'd appreciate any suggestions re. choice and/or configuration of a codec for decompressing the VOB's mpeg.

[FulciLives]

@billcoffin

Look into GORDIAN KNOT

There are guides on the DOOM9 website along with all the GORDIAN KNOT files.

GORDIAN KNOT is probably the best way to create a DivX or Xvid file.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman