AviSynth: Numerous Errors While Trying to Get Started

[TPP]

I have the fast-approaching deadline of April 22 to finalize my video.

My goals before that deadline are to use AviSynth and its various plugins to sharpen 1 second of footage, and if that works then to deblock multiple parts of my video. The sharpening is more important at the moment. Either way, I haven't even been able to play around with either plugins because my video won't play.

There are multiple ways in which this happens:

The first path I took: Using AviSource

• I make a .avs file for my AVI video file with the code ‘AVISource(“c:\ogvideoname.avi”)’.

• The file opens with WMP just fine on its own.
• In order to use LSFMod to sharpen the video, I need a YV12 colorspace, so I add the code ‘converttoyv12()’
• I try to open the file again, now with YV12 colorspace, and only the audio plays. It’s not even a black screen for the video, just the WMP background while the audio plays. I have no idea why.
• Note: ‘converttoyuy2()’ will play the video with altered colorspace (and resulting altered video quality), but LSFMod will only accept YV12.

I am using Premiere Pro CS6 to export my footage. I also recently downloaded Adobe Media Encoder but have no idea how to use it. I haven't found a way yet to export an AVI file in YV12 colorspace. So I decided to try exporting it to another format in YV12 colorspace. I started with MPEG2-DVD (because I read that that was a proper YV12 format but I could be wrong)

The second path I took: Using FFmpegSource2

• I make a .avs file for my M2V video file with the code ‘FFmpegSource2(“c:\videoname.m2v”)’.

• I try to open it in WMP, and get the popup message: “Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or a required codec might not be installed on your computer.”
• I try to open other kinds of video file types(.mpg, .mp4, even .avi) with FFmpegSource2 code just to check, and get the same popup message each time.
• Note: Each of these video files play fine when opened directly in WMP, it’s just when I try to use FFmpegSource2 that it doesn’t open.

The third path I took: Using DirectShowSource

• I make a .avs file for my M2V video file with the code ‘DirectShowSource(“c:\videoname.m2v”)’.

• I try to open it in WMP, and get this:

[Attachment 45241 - Click to enlarge]

• I try to instead open the AVI file I know opens with AviSource, changing the code to ‘DirectShowSource(“c:\ogvideoname.avi”)’, and the video opens in WMP just like it would with AviSource. Doesn’t solve my YV12 issue, but glad to know something works.
• I try to open an MP4 file, once again for testing. WMP plays the first frame for the duration of the video. Adding to the code so it’s ‘(“c:\videoname.mp4”, fps=23.976)’ doesn’t fix this. Same thing happens with MPG.

I’ve also tried to open files with VirtualDub instead of WMP but end up encountering more playing issues.

I have done more searches than I can count to try and figure any of these problems out on my own (and countless more to even get to this point) and I’m stuck. It seems like the quickest and best solution would be to figure out how to export the source video as an AVI with YV12 colorspace, but maybe the problem runs deeper than that, I don’t know. Ultimately i just. want. to play. the video. so that I can even START to use these AviSynth filters. So if anyone could please, please help me figure out the ideal (preferably quickest but no point in being quick if it’ll cause problems later on) way to do this before the 22nd is over, I would be eternally grateful.

I’m using a Windows 7 64bit laptop, with AviSynth 2.6 and Windows Media Player 12. I only started using/learning about AviSynth 2 days ago, so if any of these steps I took look ridiculous or unnecessary, that’s why.

[poisondeathray]

Why not use premiere filters e.g. sharpen, unsharp mask etc...? Probably the fastest/easiest way

Lagarith is stable and many people use it export from Adobe premiere for many years . If you are using RGB in premiere I would export RGB. You have the option to export YV12 in the export options, but the conversion will be done with Rec601 , that's wrong for HD (should be using Rec709) . It's better to control the conversion in avisynth ; you have more control over matrices, interlaced, progressive etc...

You probably have avisynth x86 installed, so WMP x64 will not work . You would need to use avisynth x64 to work with wmp x64 .

Don't use mpeg2 or dvd. Avoidable quality loss


SO to summarize
1) install lagarith
2) export lagarith AVI
3) AVISource("video.avi")

Use vdub x86 or vdub2 x86 if you have avisynth x86 installed to preview the script

If you are using avisynth x64, then use x64 versions. Basically they have to be the same x86 or x64, unless some other "bridge" is used to bridge the gap between x86 <=> x64 software


Post the error messages verbatim. Don't summarize the messages because there are clues there that tell you exactly what the problems are

[TPP]

Hmm, I haven't used the Premiere sharpen filters before, so I'll try those. Are there Premiere filters that will deblock footage as well, though? The footage I'm working with is 2D animation so the blocking and color banding is pretty noticeable in certain parts.

Ah, I am using AviSynth x86, so that could very well be the issue.

I'm pretty sure all the error messages I described are word for word, other than the vdub issue I briefly mentioned, and that was mainly because once I got one error message I just went back to trying to fix the original issues and didn't try using vdub further. Are you saying I should post a screenshot instead of directly quoting it?

It's late where I am, so I will download Lagarith and try to post my results tomorrow. Thank you for responding so promptly.

[pandy]

Install filter with support of YV12 - for example LAVfilter - strangely Windows may not support YV12 natively, generally it was issue with "YUV" - side to installation filter must be also associated correctly.

slight OT
(this is one of reason why i not use Avisynth so frequently as before and prefer ffmpeg as complete multiplatform working environment for video and audio - Avisynth is not ready to be used in many practical situations)

[poisondeathray]

Hmm, I haven't used the Premiere sharpen filters before, so I'll try those. Are there Premiere filters that will deblock footage as well, though? The footage I'm working with is 2D animation so the blocking and color banding is pretty noticeable in certain parts.

No native deblock filter in PP (There are 3rd party ones) . I just suggested that quick alternative so you can get it completed by your deadline. (Although it seems a bit weird to "need" to sharpen 1second by xx date ... just curious)

I'm pretty sure all the error messages I described are word for word, other than the vdub issue I briefly mentioned, and that was mainly because once I got one error message I just went back to trying to fix the original issues and didn't try using vdub further. Are you saying I should post a screenshot instead of directly quoting it?

vdub was the one I was referring to. A description of the problem and error message would have been helpful. vdub and avspmod are the most reliable, consistent ways to check and diagnose scripts. Whereas media players like WMP have other issues that can confuse the problem - there are other configurations and filters that can make identifying underlying issues more difficult

[Ant_G]

The file opens with WMP just fine on its own.
In order to use LSFMod to sharpen the video, I need a YV12 colorspace, so I add the code ‘converttoyv12()’
I try to open the file again, now with YV12 colorspace, and only the audio plays. It’s not even a black screen for the video, just the WMP background while the audio plays. I have no idea why.

i dont know if related or not but i have this problem before,

i install Avisynth+ instead
and with k-lite codec pack"Codec Tweak Tool" click "Prefered splitter" and use "lav splitter" for Avisynth, the avs script play fine to any media player after that

[TPP]

No native deblock filter in PP (There are 3rd party ones) . I just suggested that quick alternative so you can get it completed by your deadline. (Although it seems a bit weird to "need" to sharpen 1second by xx date ... just curious)

The reason I need it is because I'm submitting the vid to a contest where it'll be played on a big projector screen, and that 1 second of footage is in 576p while everything else is in 1080 (I'm gonna export the whole thing to 720p though). It's a necessary piece of footage, unfortunately. I'm having some success with using a combination of the built in Premiere sharpen filter and the ‘dust and scratches’ effect. I won’t know if it’s doing a better job than LSFMod would until I can play something using LSFMod, but it might just have to do for now.

Does anyone know where I can find 3rd party filters/plugins that will fix blocking and color banding?

vdub was the one I was referring to. A description of the problem and error message would have been helpful. vdub and avspmod are the most reliable, consistent ways to check and diagnose scripts. Whereas media players like WMP have other issues that can confuse the problem - there are other configurations and filters that can make identifying underlying issues more difficult

Ah, ok. I'm pretty sure the issue was that vdub couldn't read V210 codec(Avisynth had this issue too), so today I simply exported the same clip using UYVY instead and it played fine. I'm mainly just wary of using VirtualDub because it's a whole other thing I'll have to research on how to use. The Lagarith codec video also played, so now I'll be looking up how to preview/run a script with vdub...

Update: was able to get the script to run in vdub, and so far that seems about the same level of sharpening as I would get in Premiere. A little hard to tell, so I'll play around with it more later.

Now to see if vdub will run the deblocking script!

Update 2: It does, but I'm not sure if the deblocking function actually did anything (I used quant=51). Either way, I can now run scripts using vdub, so I can play around with these filters. Thanks, poisondeathray!

Still would be nice to find some plugins in Premiere to fix blocking and banding as a fallback (especially since I might encounter problems when trying to export from vdub later), so if anyone knows where I can download some, please let me know.

[poisondeathray]

Does anyone know where I can find 3rd party filters/plugins that will fix blocking and color banding?

Still would be nice to find some plugins in Premiere to fix blocking and banding as a fallback (especially since I might encounter problems when trying to export from vdub later), so if anyone knows where I can download some, please let me know.

It depends on what type of "blocking" or what type of "banding" you're referring to specifically . There are different types and you might treat them slightly differently. There are more alternatives and ways to address those types of problems in avisynth, not to mention - free

But 3rd party tools include plugins such as neat video, sapphire deband (boris fx bought them), borisfx denoise, magic bullet denoiser for Adobe

Almost always, especially for clean types of animation with limited color palettes - you would need to combine with some dithering or add grain/noise

And then you would need use proper encoding settings , or you will get those sorts of problems coming right back in terms of quantization artifacts which pretty much look like blocking and banding. 10bit encoding helps here significantly, but it's unclear if it would be "allowed" for your contest. I don't know if there are "rules" or some sort of restrictions in terms of playback hardware/software devices

[TPP]

It depends on what type of "blocking" or what type of "banding" you're referring to specifically . There are different types and you might treat them slightly differently. There are more alternatives and ways to address those types of problems in avisynth, not to mention - free

Ok, I'm following a couple avisynth guides for this sort of thing so it'll probably have the information I need to figure that out. And yes, free is ideal, lol.

But 3rd party tools include plugins such as neat video, sapphire deband (boris fx bought them), borisfx denoise, magic bullet denoiser for Adobe

Almost always, especially for clean types of animation with limited color palettes - you would need to combine with some dithering or add grain/noise

I'll check those out, thanks. I've heard that dithering is very useful.

And then you would need use proper encoding settings , or you will get those sorts of problems coming right back in terms of quantization artifacts which pretty much look like blocking and banding. 10bit encoding helps here significantly, but it's unclear if it would be "allowed" for your contest. I don't know if there are "rules" or some sort of restrictions in terms of playback hardware/software devices

10bit is strongly discouraged, yeah. It would also probably take longer than I have for me to figure out how to make it work properly. The main parameters are minimum 640x480 23.97fps, maximum 1280x720 29.97fps, recommended H.264/AVC MP4 but not mandatory, and 300MB or lower (the videos are short). I think I'll be fine, it's not specified how much banding/blocking is "too much" to be disqualified, but it's a pretty common issue in this field and I've seen imperfections like that in entries before, so I'm gonna try to get it as good as I can and hope for the best. Thank you once again. : )