Virtual Dub converted files poor quality.

[stark88]

Hey,

I've recently started creating my own videos of various games I run and while they are acceptable in quality for mediocre effort I've been wanting to sharpen the image quality of the video and crop certain areas out. I was recommended to look into Virtual Dub so I obtained a copy and was initially impressed with what it can potentially do.

I say potentially because whilst editing the 'raw' files captured with my FRAPS system and adding filters, resizing aspect ratio and clearing the image it looked and worked beautiful. Once I was happy with the progress, I converted it to AVI. format and well the result was a lot less than expected. Audio and Video sync is terrible and it suffers stuttering fps despite VB's frame rate checker being more than capable of handling the original files and the converted files preview.

I don't claim to be savvy with this software, I was recommended it and I'd love to be able to use it how I want to. I've been searching the internet high and low on help but it's obscure at best. I found this place and figured here would be the best place to ask kindly for anyones assistance with my problem.

Thank you for your time.

[jagabo]

What video compression codec did you use? If you didn't use any compression you have an uncompressed RGB file which generally won't play smoothly unless the frame size is very small.

[stark88]

Ahhh, thank you for the swift response. This is all very trial and error for me right now, I indeed hadn't used a codec so I was getting RGB output. I'll have a look through the different codecs that are supported and see if that gets me anywhere.

Again, thank you for your response.

[jagabo]

Note that Windows has two different video subsystems: DirectShow and VFW. The two systems use different codecs. That is, DirectShow programs require DirectShow codecs, VFW programs require VFW codecs. VirtualDub uses VFW. The VFW codecs that come with Windows are outdated. You probably don't want to use any of those. If you haven't installed any VFW codecs you may want to look into HuffYUV or Lagarith (both lossless but don't compress much) or the Xvid codec, Divx, or x264vfw (lossy but compress a lot). Which you choose depends on what your purposes are.

[yoda313]

Which you choose depends on what your purposes are.

Just to clarify on this a bit make sure if this is for a dvd player or a video game console that it will actually play the file you create. If this is for a computer it will play pretty much anything you throw at it as long as you have the codecs installed (or use mpchc or vlc that have codecs in them).

Also note dvd players that support divx/xvid generally only support sd resolutions. You need a bluray player or ps3/360 to playback high def compressed files - and those have certain restrictions and criteria to meet as well.