Re: Novice: First steps with VirtualDub

Terry Pinnell wrote:

I've just started dabbling with Windows MovieMaker 2.0. I made a
4MB WMV with it

First things first: Where's the original video from? Did you shoot it by yourself? If so, what kind of camera did you use? How did you get the clip into Windows MovieMaker in the first place?

and have eventually converted it to an AVI (albeit 8MB, too long),
using 'WMV to AVI MPEG DVD WMV Converter' V1.2.2 from Allok Soft.

In a later message you imply that the AVI codec that was used as the target format for this conversion was "Microsoft Video 1". That's not necessarily a good choice, but it is hard to suggest anything specific without knowing your actual goal. Where's the video going to end up? Do you need to edit it in any other way than by just cutting extraneous parts off? (If all you want to do is simple trimming, why bring it out of Movie Maker at all?)

I'm now trying to work with that AVI in VirtualDub (1.3c).

You might want to download the latest version (1.6.10): <http://www.virtualdub.org/>.

But I'm confused by a few truly basic points, and would appreciate a
little help please. (BTW, the Help|Contents seems great, but the
Help|Find doesn't work at all here. Is that others' experience?)

The latest version does not have Help|Find at all. The help file seems to be a collection of locally stored web pages now, not a Windows *.hlp or *.chm help file. (I'm not exactly sure why this is so - I would have preferred a standard help file. Then again, even Adobe does it this way these days, for some unfathomable reason.)

OK, specifics. As a simple first toe-in-the-water step I want to
delete about 1 sec from the end of the AVI. So, I open it in
VirtualDub, and delete those few frames (neat tools for that). But on
then using File|Save AVI I get a file that doesn't play the audio ;-(

Under Audio|Conversion, I see that all 3 sections are set to No
Change. Is it something to do with those two options under Audio:
Direct Stream Copy, and Full Processing Mode perhaps? By choosing the
latter, I get audio back - but the file size is about 250MB, 60 times
the original!

In short, how can I just save the original AVI file with a few minor
edits please?

I'm not sure what causes the problems you have seen, but in principle, everything _should_ work if you select "Direct Stream Copy" for _both_ the video track and the audio track. This should allow cutting the video in a "smart render" fashion - with no changes to the actual picture or audio content.

I would suggest trying out the latest version - but I would _also_ suggest telling a bit more about what is it that you're wanting to _do_ with the video. What's the end goal? (Converting from WMV to "Microsoft Video 1" is not a usual thing to do.)

--
znark

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: No Audio
    ... Since I got the file resent it works fine. ... At first it played both the video and audio when I played the .wmv ... I always use WMV on my 'local' computer. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player)
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    (microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.video)
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    (microsoft.public.windowsmedia.sdk)
  • Re: DVD Audio disjointed from video
    ... video is best in dv-avi or wmv, audio in wmv/wav, stills in bitmap, having ... mpegs/mp3's adn jpegs present can cause future problems. ... I finally got my movie burned to a DVD using Sonic MyDVD in the wmv ...
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