Some advice on frameserving please?

[MarkGrigsby]

I'm trying to convert an AVI to DVD, and am a little unsure what's the best procedure. I need to resize the image, and I was thinking of using VirtualDub, setting the resize filter, starting a frameserver, and then importing that to CCE.

However, on reading what seemed like a very comprehensive guide on this forum, it seems the suggestion is to use an AVS script to do the resize, and feed that to CCE.

I'm a little confused if these 2 methods would produce different results? Is there a 'better' option?

THANK YOU for any help. Boy, is this video conversion stuff confusing!

[Stormin Norman]

Use an Avisynth script. Just make the script then open that in your encoder of choice.

OpenDMLSource(".avi")
LanczosResize(720,480)
ConvertToRGB24 -Note: may be needed in some encoders

If you have subtitles, you want to do this because of overscan on your tv.

OpenDMLSource(".avi")
LanczosResize(672,448)
addborders(24,16,24,16)

There are a ton of options with avisynth, just visit http://www.avisynth.org/ and expand your mind.

[Abond]

Well, it is not so difficult as it seems. The ultimate thing is to know what you have and what you want to do with this . As first I can recommend you DivXtoDVD or gui4ffmpeg. They will do automatically (IMO) what you need. But pay attention (for divxtoDVD) if your source is 23.976 it will HARDCODE it to 29.97 what is not good at all.
1. Analyse what you have with GSpot.
2. Look what you want at "What is"
3. Click on "tools" and for searching type "What you have"to"What you want" - it is simple as that.
About avisynth - well this is the best IMO. Hmm, well http://www.avisynth.org/YourFirstScript start here. Than read here http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=c4c39ff9b4de81980ac861ae7c94f63a&threadid=25002
Good luck!
Ah, you can find FitCD usefull for proper resizing. It will create even a script for you

[MarkGrigsby]

Wow! Thanks guys for the quick replies!

Just one more question though - is using an Avisynth script different to opening in Virtualdub and using a filter + frameserver, or is it just a more elegant way to do it?

Thanks again!

[Stormin Norman]

Pretty much the same thing but more "elegant" as you put it. Good luck!

[Abond]

It is both so to say. Hmm, it is difficult for me to explain it (I am not native english speaker) but I think avisynth is better for several reasons:
1. Less color space conversions (DivX, XviD, mpeg 4, 1, 2 native color space is YV12, DV is YUY2 and uncompressed video is RGB).
2. More filters operating in the same color space, more powerful and more in count (heh, the last can be also conserned as minus).
3. Very reliable handling of intelaced sources - as deinterlacing and as interlacing output.
4. (You name it )

[guns1inger]

avisynth is not interactive, so load you scripts into virtualdub to check the output before you go off on a long encode. That is probably the greater strength of virtualdub over avisynth - you can preview as you go. Once you start playing, you will soon begin to edit avisynth scripts from with virtualdub so you can see your changes more readily.

Avisynth is also several times faster than virtualdub, depending on the filters used.