Frameserve to Quicktime Pro?

[Lippy Lipstick]

Does anybody know if frameserving to Quicktime Pro (7.6) is possible?
I have an Avisynth script and need Quicktime Pro to output a specific compression.

[Safesurfer]

I don't have Quicktime Pro, but I'm assuming it can't directly open an Avisynth script. I can think of a couple of ways of doing this by creating a dummy AVI that you can load into Quicktime.

1. ffdshow has a utility makeAVIS that will create a dummy AVI from a .avs script file.

2. Debugmode's Wax can open .avs script files. If you also install the Debugmode Frameserver you can frameserve the script from Wax into Quicktime using the dummy AVI output by the frameserver.

[Lippy Lipstick]

Hi Safesurfer,

Thanks for the tips! Already tried Virual Dub's frameserver, but that didn't work. I'll try ffdshow and see if Quicktime likes that. Will keep you updated.

[Lippy Lipstick]

Well. tried ffdshow and debugmode, opened the signpost in Quicktime:
both times Quicktime told me I miss a certain component and I end up
with a white screen. It seems Quicktime only likes uncompressed AVI
or Cinepak...

[poisondeathray]

What specific compression do you require from QT Pro ? Maybe there are other options?

[Lippy Lipstick]

I made an Avisynth script with a blue screen and subtitles for import into NLE's like Canopus Edius. Uncompressed AVI is not an option, because then I'm stuck with a huge file and I want to avoid intermediate files. I know Quicktime Pro can 'smartrender' it to a MOV with some kind of flexible framerate and keeping the alpha channel.
Actualy my goal is to make an AVI or a MOV with a reasonable size plus alpha channel in one session (because I have to make a lot of them to provide my client, who wants to re-edit his stuff afterwards).

[Safesurfer]

I found this link where it appears someone got the Debugmode Frameserver to work with QT Pro.

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/874137

Here's the relevant posts in the threads, I wonder if the frameserve as YUY2 is the key to getting it working.

Re: Does Vegas 8 have Quicktime Sorenson codecs?
by rob mack on Oct 15, 2007 at 8:32:47 pm

Very true, not all the formats that QT Pro lists are there in Vegas. FLV isn't there for instance, and I assume it's a proprietary issue. I don't really know who's doing the "blocking" but I suspect that it's not some malicious act on Vegas' part.

Image Sequence is one of the QT options doesn't show up in Vegas, so you have to frame serve out of Vegas in YUY2 format and then use QT Pro to make the image sequence. Not ideal because it's a few more steps.

Vegas's own image sequence export is a script, not a built in function, so technically Vegas can't actually make image sequences AT ALL. But it can do it via a script and to configure the output you have to properly configure the preview window. If you don't do that things don't work.

But I see what you're saying about the PAR being screwed up on image sequences. The script saves files using the same "save snapshot to file" function found on the preview window. That feature doesn't give you an option to save as actual pixels - the only way to do that is to save snapshot to clipboard and then paste it, which is probably unusable in a script. The script saves a sequence of PAR corrected images, which is not really acceptable if you're outputting to AEFX. Still image output is very dumbed down in Vegas.

So thanks for inadvertantly pointing out the workaround using the debugmode frameserver, as that allows you to use quicktime Pro to create real image sequences.

Rob Mack

and

The biggest advanatge of the debugmode frameserver is that it outputs uncompressed data withou having to render a huge uncompressed file. And of course if you needed to render a file you could do that by other means.

QTPro doesn't show the output of the frameserver for some reason, but you can take a leap of faith and just start the export. It appears to work.

VirtualDub would give you the same results for some of those output formats, and of course it's free, and it would show you your progress.

It would very nice if Vegas could do this directly, but it can't, and it's not really a quicktime-based application so what you get fom quicktime is essentially extra sauce. (But then, sauce is the most important part of any meal...)

Rob

[poisondeathray]

If you want to preserve the alpha channel for editing farther down the line (not end format) , you need RGB+A, which will be huge in filesize because of all the channel information.

Apple's "animation" setting with "millions+" color setting refers to RGB32 with alpha channel preserved . The benefit of this is you can use lossless or lossy compression and adjust the filesize.

Another option (besides uncompressed RGB32), is huffyuv which has a RGBA mode, and is free, and lossless (better compression than RGB32, but still huge in filesize)

You could also export to an image sequence (e.g. TGA, PNG, PSD), preserving alpha channel, but there will be multiple files, and the total filesize will be larger than the Huffyuv option

Most NLE's should be able to directly export to QT with "animation" , "millions of colors+" setting , but not necessarily have control over all the settings (i.e. quality/compression) e.g. Premiere, and After Effects certainly can, but I don't use Edius, so I can't check for you

I wonder if the frameserve as YUY2 is the key to getting it working.

^If you are using Debugmode, YUY2 won't preserve the alpha, you need RGB32

[Safesurfer]

Oh right! I wonder if it is just a matter of rendering then in QT Pro, even if it does not show the input.

[poisondeathray]

Oh right! I wonder if it is just a matter of rendering then in QT Pro, even if it does not show the input.

I can test it out with vegas+debugmode, give me a sec and I'll report back

The thing is, it sounds like Lippy is importing .avs into Edius, then looking for an export format to use QT Pro. Maybe he can clarify the workflow? I don't think debugmode works with Edius for export ?

EDIT: QT Pro "doesn't like" the "dummy avi"; even if I ignore the errors and proceed to export/encode, it throws up some errors. It might work on a Mac system, since they can have extra plugins and AVI support, but I am on Windoze

Also 32-bit mode project settings in Vegas is incompatible with Debugmode Frameserver, so it won't work. I don't even think the image export option suggested in the referenced post above in Debugmode will work because of this

[Lippy Lipstick]

Hi guys,

My workflow is as follows:
-Using Avisynth to make a script with an RGB32 bluescreen plus subtitles
with the Textsub-filter.
-Frameserve this to an encoder producing an AVI or MOV (with Alpha channel)
-Send it over the internet to my client, who then imports it into his Edius-timeline.

The reason for doing it like this, is that Edius does not have a scripted subtitle-import. I think I will do some testing with my Procoder, thuis encoder accepts AVS-scripts... Keep you updates.

[Lippy Lipstick]

Just found out my Canopus Procoder contain the Quicktime-settings I want in its advanced settings. Procoder accepts my Bluescreen-subtitle AVS-scripts and spits out a MOV keeping the Alpha channel.

So no frameserving needed to Quicktime Pro!

[poisondeathray]

Just for completeness for others who search for this topic, another option is Premiere Pro which has an .avs import plugin and can output the QT settings as well to preserve alpha channel (tested with Premiere Pro 2 and CS4)

[Cornucopia]

Also, if all your trying to end up with is a movie in QT with a separate subtitle layer, why not use QT's built-in "Text" track? It supports timecode for subtitling, colors, alpha-channel support, realtime anti-aliasing, with IIRC rich-text support. It's just a change in the order of the workflow to have the marrying of the text w/ image LAST.

There may be other alpha/bluescreen requirements that would make this a moot point, but it's just a thought...

Scott

[Lippy Lipstick]

I already did some testings with the built-in Texttrack-functions and discovered two major disadvantages:
-No black outline.
-Single-lined subtitles appear on the upper row.

If you know how to fix this in the Textttrack-header, you're my hero, Cornucopia!

A question for Poisondeathray: Are you an Avisynth-guru? Can you advise me if my AVS-script is right?

[poisondeathray]

A question for Poisondeathray: Are you an Avisynth-guru? Can you advise me if my AVS-script is right?

Definitely not! Many of the gurus "live" at the Doom9 forums, and I often try to learn as much as I can

If you have a specific avisynth question, perhaps start a new topic here or at the Doom9 forums

[Lippy Lipstick]

That's what I was thinking of, otherwise this thread will go way off topic...