Some Questions about Conversions and File Formats...

[dadada_999]

Hi all, first i just want to thank you guys for providing so much help and information. I'm a complete noob and this is my first post, so please bare with me.

I've been following threads both here and on other similar sites on how to remove language streams from VCDs which have 2 audio channels. I did it by using virtualdubmod followed by Audacity to separate and remove the unwanted language stream, and then using TMPGEnc to Demux the VCD MPEG file and Remuxing it with the wanted audio stream. I'm not sure if there's now an easier way (since the thread was about a year old), but the method worked quite well.

The reason i did it was that i needed a few short clips for youtube. Being completely new to video editing, i'm using the Windows Movie Maker which came with my computer. To extract one two minute scene with one audio stream, i had to perform all of the above on a large MPEG file before importing the whole thing to Windows Movie Maker and exporting one very small clip.

I wanted to know if i could extract the clip first before removing the unwanted audio stream. Well it turned out that Windows Movie Maker exports clips in the wmv format and neither virtualdubmod nor TMPGEnc supports the format. As somebody who casually watches avi, mpg, wmv, divx etc. interchangebly, i never realised there was any need to convert them into one another for editing. What's the easiest way to do this and why do certain programmes, particularly those for editing, fail to support wmv? Do you guys do conversions that regularly?

A bit long winded i know, but any advice on the some of this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thx,

Dave

[redwudz]

Actually, WMM has a 'secret' DV AVI output format that works very well for editing. It's not really secret, but when you come to the part of WMM to save your video, just click 'More settings' and DV AVI will show. WMM would rather have you use WMV for output, but DV is a better choice if your final output is AVI or MPEG.

VirtualDub works well with DV, but you may need to add a DV codec like the Panasonic DV Codec first. You can also 'frameserve' the DV directly to a MPEG encoder from VD if you want to add audio or do other editing or filtering in VD. This saves space on your hard drive as you don't have to create an intermediate edited file before encoding to MPEG.

Others can probably fill in your other questions.

And welcome to our forums.

[dadada_999]

Actually, WMM has a 'secret' DV AVI output format that works very well for editing. It's not really secret, but when you come to the part of WMM to save your video, just click 'More settings' and DV AVI will show. WMM would rather have you use WMV for output, but DV is a better choice if your final output is AVI or MPEG.

I came across that, but i didn't think it was a normal avi file because it's over ten tens bigger than the wmv file. The DV AVI for a 30MB WMV file was around 400Mb....I didn't think the two formats were that much different in size...also is DV AVI the same as the often encountered .avi format?

[Baldrick]

A DV-AVI is a normal avi file. An avi is a container for video and audio and it can contain different video codecs like dv, wmv, divx, xvid, etc.

[jagabo]

AVI is a container -- a box you put video and audio in. The video and audio can be compressed with any of a number of codecs, or uncompressed. DV AVI is simply shorthand for "an AVI file with video compressed by the DV codec".

DV is about 13 GB per hour. Uncompressed YUV 4:2:2 video is about 75 GB per hour. Uncompressed RGB24 is about 110 GB per hour.

If you need a VFW based DV codec for VirtualDub I recommend Cedocida. It's much better than Panasonic DV codec.

[redwudz]

Thanks for the reference to Cedocida, jagabo. I fall back on the Pansonic codec too often because it's familiar. I also appreciate the sizes of the different compressions. Stored away for future reference.

[jagabo]

I forgot to mention -- the file sizes I gave were for full D1 video, 720x480 29.97 fps NTSC, 720x576 25 fps PAL.