VideoReDo owner passed away, product ceased, seeking alternatives ?

[Alwyn]

I don't want to sound churlish, but I think these posts should be in another topic. This topic is for 'seeking alternatives" to VRD. People visiting would be expecting to see posts related to alternatives, not how to set up VRD.

[Bridgy]

It appears unlikely, but in the event VRD got a second life as a viable product for sale (and support), I hope this would receive a prominent announcement here. As things stand, I think it would be a dubious proposition for people to attempt to buy into a moribund program -- assuming that it is still even being sold.

This has been flogged to death already in here, and other forums, i don't think anyone needs to say much more, unless there is something new to add as an update about the future of VRD and the activation service.

I don't want to sound churlish, but I think these posts should be in another topic. This topic is for 'seeking alternatives" to VRD. People visiting would be expecting to see posts related to alternatives, not how to set up VRD.

Interesting that you mention this, you also contributed some comments/posts that were Off Topic as well, so if you believed that a Post or Comment made by someone else was Off Topic, you should have refrained from responding, and called the member out for Off Topic banter instead.

As of now, i will not be taking part in this Thread any further unless it is only something relating to Alternative software suggestion, however, there really is nothing out there like VRD, and i think we already know that by now.

I will happily go back to all of my previous posts and remove any OFF TOPIC content (given that we can't delete actual posts) all i was trying to do was help with some info about VRD, because i know that many VRD users actually don't know how to use it properly, or know how to set things up to work the way that Dan Rosen intended it to work, and that is why the old VRD forum was so full of people asking about how to do stuff, or complaining all the time that certain things didn't work etc, and most of it was just a massive big joke to be honest.

If i can get a reply from Pegasys about how the TMPGEnc Smart Render feature really works so that i don't need to select my own Output Quality (which re-encodes the whole file) then it would be the closest thing to VRD, except that it cannot do outputs to other formats, only TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 7 does that, yet that software does not do Smart Rendering, which is dumb on the part of Pegasys.

TMPGEnc Smart Renderer 6 supports my 4k/60p HEVC files, it does Frame Accurate cuts, it can do Titles and Credits, it can do Fade in and outs, as well as a few other things that VRD can't do, and i can live with the fact that it does not let us render to other formats, so i would just use Handbrake for that instead, which is what it was always designed to do, it does not do Smart Rendering like some people seem to think it does, and even if you can select the same output resolution and format as the source file, you then need to manually set your Video Quality Bitrate, so in the end, regardless of your settings, the output file is always fully re-encoded, and the Video Bitrate will never be exactly the same as the source, just maybe close enough for anyone not to notice any difference, but this is not why anyone would use Handbrake for anyway.


[Attachment 83283 - Click to enlarge]

[Marayong]

As Bridgy has said, this has been done to death. Just a few last comments.

It appears unlikely, but in the event VRD got a second life as a viable product for sale (and support), I hope this would receive a prominent announcement here. As things stand, I think it would be a dubious proposition for people to attempt to buy into a moribund program -- assuming that it is still even being sold.

No one is suggesting that people try to buy into VRD. Development has ceased and licences are no longer available. Period. However, if you already have a valid licence, it is possible to install VRD onto a new computer thanks to a manual activation site set up by a former VRD employee. The main VRD page links to this thread for details on how to do this, just scroll back a few pages for details. Actually, the main VRD page links to this thread for pretty much everything including "more details" on the product, so whichever moderator added those links, they have made this a thread about general VRD discussion, not just about possible alternatives.

As for alternatives, the conclusion from several people who have looked is that there are none. Specifically, there is no one program out there (other than very expensive studio software) that also does all the core features of VRD, so the answer to the question "what alternatives are there?" is none, as such. Instead you would need to purchase at least two products to reproduce what VRD does, if not more, and that's just the main core features.

For anyone coming across this thread from a search, VRD is (was) payware. If you have a valid licence, you have two options. As mentioned above, there is a manual activation website. Another alternative is that if you are upgrading to a new machine, it is possible to clone/image the hard drive of your old pc which has VRD installed and put the clone/image into the new computer. The VRD licence will transfer over intact. You will of course also carry over everything else from the old pc, good and bad and you will end up with a lot of os legacy issues that need fixing, so it's not for the faint hearted or anyone who is not very computer literate. See several pages back for discussion on this.

If you do not have a VRD licence, thanks for dropping by, but unfortunately you'll need to keep looking for another product. Good luck. If you find anything, feel free to come back and post the details.

[Bridgy]

As Bridgy has said, this has been done to death. Just a few last comments.

Firstly, i don't really see any valid reason to continue with this Thread to be honest, there has been a few of us posting in the past 6 months or so and it seems like nobody else out there is that concerned anyway.

So in response to that, and in response to comments regarding "Off Topic" rants being posted in here, i have decided to go out on my own and look into my own VRD Alternatives going forward, and after testing many alternate software tools, i have selected the ones that i have found to be the most suitable options for me, and i have posted up my own Alternative for VRD Thread that includes all of the options that i have selected, along with my own extensive test results for others to see, however what i have posted in my thread may not be suitable for others, so if anyone else does find any alternative tools, then they are welcome to post them in my thread (see link below)

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/416487-My-Alternatives-for-VideoReDo-TV-Suite-with-Test-Results

Secondly, there is NO other tool out there that can mimmic what VRD can do, and that includes the wonderful Intelligent Recoding feature that Dan implemented into VRD, and possibly even Quick Stream Fix as well, so as far as i am concerned, if you want an alternative that can do everything that VRD does, then i wish you all the best in finding it.

Please go and visit my Thread if you want to find out the results of my own Alternative options and check out all of my test results.

[hydra3333]

Thank you, Marayong and Bridgy et al.

I note with interest Marayong's analysis which concurs with my own to date.

I also acknowledge and appreciate Bridgy's investigations and testing and the results to date (there is NO other tool out there that can mimic what VRD can do, and that includes the wonderful Intelligent Recoding feature that Dan implemented into VRD) and in particular around "Quick Stream Fix" which is my most pressing interest ... and my testing results so far around QSF alternatives agree with your conjecture. Some products say they do it, but do not or only superficially and/or do not permit full CLI-only usage.

I will watch with interest Bridgy's thread https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/416487-My-Alternatives-for-VideoReDo-TV-Suite-with-Test-Results

I suppose I should mention I did find that ffmpeg with appropriate switches can do some things like copying streams whilst ignoring errors without crashing however I currently have no test results around issues arising such as lip sync loss etc which I expect does happen. I did find QSF (v5 and v6) actually freezes on certain new mpeg4 streams, which is real bugbear, so out of desperation have resorted to ffmpeg followed by VRD's QSF to generate a "fixed" file albeit with possible lip sync loss; I could live with that at the moment since the issue in those streams appears to be only at the "end" of a visual segment and before eof rather than in the middle of a segment and is consistent across files so it must be a broadcaster related "thing".

I also found that VRD v6 QSF has gotten slower and slower over time to the extent it only runs at about real time or less rather than speedily which it used to be, no matter what the input source; I'd LOVE to know why that is happening and be able to fix it, I had to resort to reverting to VRD v5 QSF

[Marayong]

I've not noticed any run speed changes with VRD6, QSF or not, which suggests that either it is a VRD6 issue that only shows up with some users (presumably depending on their OS, background software, AV and so forth) or that it has nothing to do with VRD6 and it is instead something going quirky with your pc. Perhaps check your hardware acceleration settings? If it's your machine, it could be something like the video card (or chip if you use the mobo GPU) developing issues. I have seen that before .. GPU issues can affect some software but not others, even affect one version and not another. Short of replacing your graphics card (or putting in a graphics card if you are using the mobo GPU), there's no easy way of diagnosing this. Also check your graphics drivers, make sure they are reasonably up to date. If they are, maybe roll back to an older graphics driver. That can sometimes fix problems. The current graphics driver for my rig screws up multi monitor support and I can only get one monitor working (annoyingly, the tv), so I rolled back and all monitors immediately came back to life. I've also paused graphics drivers updates for the time being .. I'll give it a few months before updating again and hope they have fixed the bug. If it's been going on for a while, you may need to hunt online for a driver that's a few years old ... most decent GPU manufacturer websites have a page with old drivers for just this reason.

Also check what background software you have running. Any background software has the potential to cause issues with any other program, especially AV, firewalls and the like. My current rig was built on an image of an old Win7 boot drive, then upgraded to Win10. The residual of a non-microsoft firewall I'd installed years ago .. and then removed (back on the Win7 machine) came back to life and every time I tried to view a webpage, the Win10 machine would BSOD. I vacuumed cleaned the registry and all other traces and the BSODs stopped .. obviously since I am currently on a webpage writing this.

[hydra3333]

Thanks.
My Win11 Pro PC is nearly a cleanskin not much installed.
IIRC, v6 QSF is software decode based rather than video card based, it happens on all files even those without issues, the process normally runs overnight when nothing else is going on, if I run it manually for testing nothing else is going on ... also v5 runs "fast"
With cut points in place, IIRC the copy/smart-encode-at-cut-points is also very slow, nvidia 2060 Super hardware cut-point-encoding, same as specified in the faster v5, latest nvidia drivers of course.
I use ffmpeg separately for hardware h.264 and h.265 encoding and it really zips along using the nvidia hardware NVENC asic chip, so I know there's definitely no problems with it or it's driver ...

[Seeker47]

@Marayong,

I'd think very possibly a good catch on suspecting a graphics card related explanation, even if it did not pan out in this particular case. I had a situation trying to run Whisper AI jobs, for which process I'd put in a graphics card with GPU and 4GB of VRAM, but the video kept glitching -- blacking out momentarily and then recovering. That was all the time, not just when running a Whisper job. Turns out the graphics card was apparently demanding more current than my PSU could provide. Ditched that graphics card, problem gone. So I'm now just resigned to letting a Whisper translation job run overnight, instead of it getting done more quickly.

[Marayong]

With software increasingly using GPU processor power, either natively or via the os, bugs in graphics drivers and even minor physical defects in the card/chip can cause random issues and/or issues with just one specific application. Short of using a different GPU, it can be next to impossible to diagnose. You can 'easily' use a different GPU by either swapping the graphic cards, best with a different brand, or adding a card if you are currently using the mobo GPU. Video editing, such as with VRD, puts a lot of heavy demand on the GPU so is likely to show up any obscure bug or hidden hardware flaw. On my late WIn7 machine I had just such an issue which affected just two applications, the first was a boinc project that was running in a VM which would crash the VM after 5 minutes of running. The 2nd was VRD doing some operations. There was no solution to the first issue other than unsubscribe from that project, as for VRD, I disabled GPU hardware acceleration, which stopped VRD from crashing. Not quite the same symptoms hydra333 is getting, but different hardware, os & software configurations will react differently to hardware and/or driver flaws.

Seeker .. for your issue I'd recommend a different brand of graphics card. When there's a buggy driver it can often be for every card made by that manufacturer. NVIDIA are notorious for this.

[Bridgy]

I am glad i don't have the issues many others seem to have with video editing or when using VRD, i recall being the the VRD forum many times and i got a shock at how many people in there really had no idea about how to do editing, and more so, most of them also had no idea how to use VRD properly too, a lot of what i read was crazy.

I only use Software encoding, especially in VRD, which is what the late Dan Rosen told me to use many years ago, and i never looked back.

Years ago i use to use Intel QuickSync because my Intel CPU's obviously had HD Graphics chip on board, and it was fast, but i would never have used any encoding options offered by AMD or nVIDIA because they were never recommended back then.

I have Intel HD630 Graphics on my Laptop CPU, and i also have an nVIDIA GTX-1050 dedicated chip as well, but i have it disabled in my device manager, i only run my laptop using the HD630 for everything else except encoding.

I don't want or need any issues with drivers stuffing things up, but even though my GTX-1050 is disabled, i still get regular driver updates from nVIDIA, which i do install.

Now to my next Post coming up soon, this has to do with my VRD working on a different laptop.

[Bridgy]

Ok everyone, for those interested, i got back from my mums place with the results of my second attempt to boot my mums old Dell Studio laptop using the 2tb SSD that i Cloned using Hasleo Disk Clone connected via USB after i bought a license for it.

While doing the Clone of my Win 10 drive using Hasleo, it gave me the option to run the Clone using the MBR partition table rather than the GPT system that my laptop uses, and it was a wise choice to make as the old Dell laptop booted up perfectly without needing to enter the bios to change any settings.

The process took 40 minutes, with a lot of time spent on blank screens waiting for various things to happen, and finally it got to the Metabox Desktop, i connected to mums WIFI and windows did a bunch of updates (including drivers) and i have to admit i was a bit unsure if this would work given the age differences between the 2 laptops.

The main reason for doing this little project was to see if my copy of Video ReDo Professional Video Editing software from my Metabox laptop would run and automatically activate when used on the old Dell laptop, and as it turned out, the VRD Pro software did open, but it obviously dialed back to the Activation server in America which recognized the change of computer, and asked me to input my License Key, which i did not have with me at this time, all i know is that if i had activated it on the Dell laptop, it would have deactivate it on my own laptop, so it was good to see that at least it can be done.

The video was edited to cut the 50% of waiting time waiting for each stage to complete, and the VRD Pro part of this video can be seen in the last 2 minutes.

https://youtu.be/EI8UWvWSMXs

[hydra3333]

as for VRD, I disabled GPU hardware acceleration, which stopped VRD from crashing. Not quite the same symptoms hydra333 is getting, but different hardware, os & software configurations will react differently to hardware and/or driver flaws.

OK, I think I'll test it in my case my disabling hardware acceleration in VRD v6 and see if it improves (I'll have to undo the preparatory pre-QSF "ffmpeg" in the process too I guess

EDIT: Oh well. No go. Turns out VRD v6 is exceedingly slow in the QSF during "Frast Frame Copy", nothing to do with the encoder (presumably). Same during "Save As"

[Seeker47]

Seeker .. for your issue I'd recommend a different brand of graphics card. When there's a buggy driver it can often be for every card made by that manufacturer. NVIDIA are notorious for this.

Thanks for your reply. That video "glitching" problem just became intolerable. So I reluctantly pulled that Gigabyte video card with its GPU and VRAM (I'd have to investigate what chips it was based on), leaving things to the CPU, system memory, and whatever the native on-board video happens to be, and the problems ceased. I'm therefore resigned to Whisper processing jobs running all night, instead of having 1/3 to 1/2 of the required time being shaved off. Not that much of a sacrifice, all things considered.

[Marayong]

Seeker, a few things to try. I assume you've tried the old trick of removing the card and cleaning the contacts? Try putting the card in a different pci slot and see if that makes a difference. Or swap around cards in the pci slots if you don't have a spare one. It could be the card or it could be the pci slot itself. Since the inboard GPU works, it's either hardware or a driver issue.

Gigabyte do not make GPU chips, they just assemble their cards using AMD and NVIDIA chips. Find out which brand of GPU chip you have and buy a card built on the other manufacturer. Also, don't get a gigabyte card. Gigabyte have a quite a few buggy win10/11 drivers, which can cause anything from multiple crashes daily to a slew of non-fatal errors in Event Viewer (I get lots of those from my GB mobo, well documented in GB forums) to erratic behaviour with some software (I also get that thanks to buggy GB drivers).

VRD failing in some operations on your GB card and not the inbuilt one is diagnostic of a GPU failure, be it hardware or driver. But hardware also includes the pci slot.

[Seeker47]

Thanks again, Marayong. This (like all my other desktops) is a Shuttle SFF computer -- a proprietary design with but a single PCI slot for a video card. I don't think it was any seating of the card or to do with the contacts. While I can't prove it absolutely, I'm close to certain that the graphics card just required more power than the PSU (also proprietary to Shuttle) could supply, or supply reliably / consistently, with that being the cause. That particular computer came with an Asus graphics card installed, which never exhibited the problem. I could switch back to that, but due to the onboard system graphics it is not really needed for standard operations, and its puny half-GB of VRAM makes it of negligible value for the Whisper AI processing jobs, which only benefit from 4 - 8 GB of VRAM. So I'll just leave those jobs as CPU-only, and put up with all the extra time those jobs will then require. The impact on some use of VRD could be similar, but I don't know that as yet.

[Bridgy]

Hey guys, i need to have a bit of a chat regarding the VRD Pro and Non Pro Activation services, but i don't want to do this in any of the other online Forums that are out there relating to the future of VRD, so are you guys ok with me raising this matter again in here, given that there only seems to be 3 or 4 of us who have been actively involved in this Thread, albeit this Activation matter may well be deemed to be Off Topic by some, and probably should be discussed elsewhere, but as it is right now, i personally don't care.

Anyway, i am still not familiar with how the Pro and Non Pro Activation services (or servers) operate as it was never something that most of us really needed to know, i just know that they operate differently and that the Pro Activation service was a lot more complex, to the point where not even Dan Haddix really knew how it worked, and which is one of the reasons why he was not prepared to take over the Pro Activation server, along with the fact that it also costs too much money for him to pay for by himself, and nor should he have to anyway.

Obviously Dan moved the Non Pro Activation service over to his own server, which obviously may not be costing him any money to run, but the Pro Activation service is on another server and obviously still located in the home of the late Dan Rosen's family, and apparently the wife must still be paying the annual bill, but for how long, and what happens if that server stuffs up or dies, will it ever be replaced, i don't think so.

Anyway, i was thinking of contacting Dan Haddix to ask him if he has had any contact with Dan Rosen's wife recently to see what her intentions are going into the future, because we all know that VRD will never be sold, and if it was, Dan Haddix would probably need to be back on the development team for it to continue.

I also want to ask him what will happen to the Non Pro users if he decided to discontinue with his server, what will happen to the Non Pro users out there, will their Activation still be ok on their current computer, and if they had to re-install VRD on another computer for whatever reason, can they still get their VRD Activated without the his server.

I also wanted to ask him if he was able to get hold of the Pro Activation server from the family of Dan Rosen and keep it in his own home along with his own server, would he be prepared to let me, or a group of us contribute towards the annual cost of keeping it online.

If Dan's family decides to pull the Pro Activation server down, us Pro users are stuffed.

Food for thought.

[Marayong]

The VRD page on videohelp links directly to this thread for information on manual registration of VRD, so discussion of that is very much on topic.

The process for the non-pro version has been gone over in some detail previously on this thread, so I'm not sure if there's anything else new left to say on the topic. The non pro version has a rather complicated registration process. you buy (past tense) the software & get a licence key. you install the software and input the licence key. That generates a machine specific code. In the old days VRD would then contact the registration server, send the machine code and the licence key and the server would generate yet another code which would then activate the software. Apart from installing and inputting the purchased licence key, the rest was automatic and hidden from the user. With the original server gone that fails and you have to resort to the backup method, which was built into VRD. The backup method generates the machine specific key which you then take to the new registration server, input it (along with the licence key) and the server generates the final code which you then manually input into VRD to activate it. A rather complicated process given most software just requires one key to be activated, not three.

If Dan H ever discontinues the backup registration server then it will be impossible for anyone to get the final code which is needed to activate VRD (non pro). The only option then to keep VRD non-pro working is to image or clone a drive with it installed and copy that onto another computer. Whilst a fresh activation requires a machine-specific code, that code is only required to get the final activation code. An activated install of VRD non-pro can be transferred to another computer via cloning/imaging (as per my success doing just that).

Given comments you have made the PRO version appears to have an active and ongoing registration, that is, it is continually re-registered, possibly every time you open the software or periodically. I suspect the former from what happened when you cloned it onto your mother's laptop. There is plenty of software out there that does the same thing. DVDFab, which is promoted heavily on videohelp, does just that. Such software requires both the registration server to be online and the user's computer to have an internet connection in order to work. Given that the pro version periodically calls home to keep the software activated, IMO I would say it's a more complicated system than single-licence key software, but simpler than the on-pro version which requires 3 keys to be activated.

For the record, I have several softwares that have ongoing activations, a lot that require a one off activation with one key, but only one which requires multiple keys for a one off activation.

[Marayong]

BTW, if I'm right about the non-pro registration process, in theory you could install one licenced VRD non-pro onto multiple computers by imaging/cloning your original install onto other machines. Of course windows would pick up multiple copies of itself and spit the dummy, plus lots of other software would also spit the dummy if you tried to run multiple clones/images, unless you purchased site licences rather than machine licences. So in theory, yes, but in practice it would generate so many other issues as to be not worth it. On the other hand, this would definitely not work with the pro version.

[Bridgy]

I can't be stuffed reading back thru the rest of this Thread to be honest, but the whole thing just seems to be far too complicated to follow, but unless someone else comes along who also uses the Pro version, then my questions or comments regarding the on going Pro activation service seems a mute point.

In my post above about my cloning to my mums laptop i was asked to input my license details to re-activate my VRD on her laptop, but i didn't want to risk it just in case i got home and found the VRD on my own laptop was no longer activated, even though i removed my cloned SSD from her laptop before i went home.

If i had of went thru the process and activated the VRD on her laptop and then removed the SSD before going home, the VRD on my laptop would have required re-activation after i booted up the laptop, that is if everything worked the way it was supposed to, but i was not prepared to risk trying to activate it on her laptop, just in case.

Anyway, life goes on.

[Bencuri]

BTW, if I'm right about the non-pro registration process, in theory you could install one licenced VRD non-pro onto multiple computers by imaging/cloning your original install onto other machines. Of course windows would pick up multiple copies of itself and spit the dummy, plus lots of other software would also spit the dummy if you tried to run multiple clones/images, unless you purchased site licences rather than machine licences. So in theory, yes, but in practice it would generate so many other issues as to be not worth it. On the other hand, this would definitely not work with the pro version.

Do I understand correctly that you mean if you clone a Windows drive with activated Windows and Apps, the activations will be messed up?

[Marayong]

BTW, if I'm right about the non-pro registration process, in theory you could install one licenced VRD non-pro onto multiple computers by imaging/cloning your original install onto other machines. Of course windows would pick up multiple copies of itself and spit the dummy, plus lots of other software would also spit the dummy if you tried to run multiple clones/images, unless you purchased site licences rather than machine licences. So in theory, yes, but in practice it would generate so many other issues as to be not worth it. On the other hand, this would definitely not work with the pro version.

Do I understand correctly that you mean if you clone a Windows drive with activated Windows and Apps, the activations will be messed up?

If you clone a windows drive and you use it to replace the boot drive in the pc you cloned it from, then no, windows and everything will remain activated. If you clone a boot drive and put it into another pc, then you will lose your windows activation in the second pc since the windows licence is per computer.

[Bencuri]

BTW, if I'm right about the non-pro registration process, in theory you could install one licenced VRD non-pro onto multiple computers by imaging/cloning your original install onto other machines. Of course windows would pick up multiple copies of itself and spit the dummy, plus lots of other software would also spit the dummy if you tried to run multiple clones/images, unless you purchased site licences rather than machine licences. So in theory, yes, but in practice it would generate so many other issues as to be not worth it. On the other hand, this would definitely not work with the pro version.

Do I understand correctly that you mean if you clone a Windows drive with activated Windows and Apps, the activations will be messed up?

If you clone a windows drive and you use it to replace the boot drive in the pc you cloned it from, then no, windows and everything will remain activated. If you clone a boot drive and put it into another pc, then you will lose your windows activation in the second pc since the windows licence is per computer.

When I did this nothing happened with the activation. It just went on as it was. Maybe I remember wrongly but I can't recall any problem in this regard. It was 10 years ago so I am not sure... but I don't remember I needed to add the license code any other times then when installing.

[Marayong]

A windows licence is issued for a specific hardware configuration. you can make some changes .. change the RAM, change the boot drive, but change too much (such as a new computer) and the licence is void. You need to buy a new licence and activate that licence. Windows will continue to work, especially Win 10/11, but it will be crippled. One of the key changes windows will not accept is a change in the mother board, which goes without saying with a new computer.

VRD on the other hand, is not bothered in the slightest if you clone/image the drive into a new pc. However, if the software notices you are running the same VRD licence on multiple computers, don't be surprised if it stops working unless you have a multi-device licence. Whilst VRD is no longer in development, the licencing servers are still online and there is no indication ATM that the VRD licencing servers will be shut down.