Editing Various Video Formats

[pete7769]

Hi There.

Was not sure which section to post this in so i chose the safe option , i just wondered if someone can point me in the right direction for a program that will allow me to edit colour/brightness and other factors for various video formats, i know that virtualdub can do some but not all formats, i have also tried Avidemux but it seems quite tricky.

Does anyone have any ideas please


Thanks

Pete

[aedipuss]

between virtualdub and virtualdubmod there shouldn't be too many you can't import. you can buy vegas pro9 or adobe premiere pro cs4 if you want, but they have formats they won't import either, most likely the same formats vdub won't.

[pete7769]

Thanks, but i get a lot of mp4 files that wont open in either virtualdub/mod, can you suggest anything for these???

Cheers

Pete

[guns1inger]

AVI Demux for MP4 files. What are you finding tricky about AVI Demux ?

[pete7769]

AVI Demux for MP4 files. What are you finding tricky about AVI Demux ?

it just seems that you need to know a lot about the movie file before you can select from the drop down boxes on the right hand side, you know the ones that say video and audio, it seems that if you don't get this right then it can cause all sorts of problems, i also imported an mp4 file the other day and got this message..

H.264 DETECTED

IF THE FILE IS USING B-FRAMES AS A REFERENCE POINT IT CAN LEAD TO A CRASH OR STUTTERING , AVIDEMUX CAN USE ANOTHER MODE WHICH IS SAFE BUT YOU WILL LOOSE FRAME ACCURACY, Do you want to use this mode??

i take it that by frame accuracy they mean lip sync??, so then i have to try and get the lip sync back?, just seems not to be very user friendly...

Pete

[redwudz]

Highly compressed formats like H.264 are very poor for editing as you would need to cut on a 'I' frame (Keyframe) to make a smooth cut and preserve sync, or re-encode at least at the cut point. That's not a fault of the editor, but the format. Other highly compressed formats like Xvid/Divx have 'I' frames spaced about 300 frames apart by default. That makes them very difficult for frame accurate editing. H.264 is probably similar.
'
''I' frames are a complete frame of video. 'B' and 'P' frames are just partial frames. That's how the videos are so highly compressed. Look in our 'Glossary' for more info. One option is to convert temporarily to a lossless video format like Lagarith or HuffyUV, edit, then convert back to your preferred format. Lossless formats have every frame as a 'I' frame, but they use a lot of hard drive space.

The newest versions of VirtualDub have a 'Smart Rendering' feature that allows you to cut anywhere and the program will just re-encode around the cut point, saving time and HDD space. I don't know if you can do that with H.264 or with AVIDemux.

[pete7769]

Thanks for the info redwudz, but how do i convert to Lagarith or HuffyUV once i have the codecs?, i cant use virtualdub as that wont open the mp4 file so please explain how i can do it.


Thanks

Pete

[redwudz]

With VD, you need to have a H.264 VFW codec installed. Try installing ffdshow. As it installs, be sure to check the 'VirtualDub' box. Restart VD and your H.264 should show up. You can install Lagarith at the same time. It creates a slightly more compact file than HuffyUV. There is also a multithreaded version of ffdshow on the ffdshow tool page if you have a multi-core CPU, which should speed up the conversion.

A video I ran a while back was a H.264 65MB file that ended up as a 3.3GB Lagarith file with no visible quality loss. I finished my editing and re-encoded it back to a 72MB H.264 file using ffdshow's encoder settings. Probably not the best method, but it worked for me for a quick fix.

[creamyhorror]

A video I ran a while back was a H.264 65MB file that ended up as a 3.3GB Lagarith file with no visible quality loss.

That's expected, since Lagarith (and Huffyuv) are true lossless.

I finished my editing and re-encoded it back to a 72MB H.264 file using ffdshow's encoder settings. Probably not the best method, but it worked for me for a quick fix.

I think PDR mentioned that ffdshow encoder includes a very old and inefficient build of x264. It's probably better to use another program like Handbrake, MeGUI, Xvid4PSP, etc. to do the final encoding with x264.

[jagabo]

You need an MP4 source plugin for VirtualDub to open MP4 files. http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?act=ST&f=7&t=12664

A DirectShow source plugin will also work if you have a Directshow MP4 file reader/splitter and an h.264 decoder installed.

[pete7769]

Thanks for all your help, this should help a great deal

[pete7769]

With VD, you need to have a H.264 VFW codec installed. Try installing ffdshow. As it installs, be sure to check the 'VirtualDub' box. Restart VD and your H.264 should show up.

Tried this and im afraid VD would still not open up the H.264

i have also installed the QT plugin in for virtualdub, it now opens the mp4 file but all i get is a green screen instead of the actual movie, and when i hit the play button i just get sound???

Pete

[jagabo]

When opening the MP4 file, enable "Ask for extended options after this dialog" Then try the different "Video Decoder Mode" options.

[pete7769]

When opening the MP4 file, enable "Ask for extended options after this dialog" Then try the different "Video Decoder Mode" options.

Sorry do you mean when i open it up in VD as i dont get any options like that. I start vd and then click file then open on the mp4 file. Where is the option shown?

Thanks pete

[jagabo]

At the bottom of the Open Video File dialog:

[pete7769]

thanks very much. Will have a look at that over the weekend

[pete7769]

Hi Everyone

well i followed the advice given by jagabo and the good news is that the mp4 file will now open up, the problem now is that it plays really jerky and it totally unwatchable to be able to do any editing etc,

anyone have any ideas as to what to try next???

Thanks for your patience

Pete

[jagabo]

the mp4 file will now open up, the problem now is that it plays really jerky and it totally unwatchable to be able to do any editing

It doesn't really matter if it's jerky in VirtualDub. What matters is how the result looks after editing and saving.

[pete7769]

ok i will give it a try