Re: Novice: First steps with VirtualDub

• From: "Jukka Aho" <jukka.aho@xxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 03:21:01 +0300

Terry Pinnell wrote:

The originals were merely two 10 second MPGs recorded with my Sony
DSC-1 Cybershot digicam, hand-held view of an array of flashing LEDs.

OK, now we're making some progress here. :)

The problem with the MPEG format is that there aren't many editors that
would allow editing it natively. (Especially the big-name NLE apps are
still lacking in this regard.) There are specialized MPEG editors such
as "TMPGEnc MPEG Editor" or "VideoReDo", or "Womble MPEG Video Wizard"
for this purpose (Google for these three to get more information - they
all have downloadable demo versions), but they do not usually have as
much features and functionality as a generic-purpose all-around NLE.

This, of course, does not matter if you're going to convert your
original MPEG file into some other format (for web distirbution),
anyway. If that's the case, you only need to be using an editor
that allows opening the MPEG file, editing the video, and saving
the outcome to the target format of your choice. But therein lies
the problem: your target format of choice is the AVI format (with
yet-unspecified video and audio codecs), but Windows Movie Maker
2.0 only supports saving in WMV/ASF format - or, in DV AVI format,
as a sort of an exception to the main rule.

Unlike more comprehensive video editors on the market (such as
Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas and the like), Movie Maker 2 does
_not_ allow you to export your finished video in AVI format
using whatever hand-picked audio and video codecs you wish -
even though this kind of functionality is what you would be
need here.

Therefore, you have now improvised your way around the problem
by first saving your edited movie to WMV format and by then
converting it to the AVI format using an external tool. This
sounds more or less reasonable approach at circumventing
MovieMaker's restrictions, but on a closer look, there are
some obvious problems (as already outlined in my previous
message):

1) You used the WMV->AVI conversion tool without manually
specifying the AVI audio and video codecs. Hence, it just
gave you whatever defaults there were (and the default
codecs it chose were not particularly good for web
distribution and even VirtualDub didn't like them, for
one reason or the other)

2) Even if you now go back, install some AVI codecs that are
known-good for editing and/or web distribution, and proceed
by choosing a reasonable codec for the WMV->AVI conversion
process, your video has now gone through no less than three
(3) lossy, image-degrading compression cycles: the MPEG
compression in the camera was the first one, the WMV
compression (when you saved the video in Movie Maker) was the
second one, and whatever lossy codec you finally use for the
WMV->AVI conversion step and web publishing will be the third
one.

I see basically three different ways to avoid these problems.

Option 1: Just make your friend - the one that wasn't able to
see the WMV video - to install the latest Windows Media Player
and/or codec packs (for which I already gave you the download
link in my previous message). If this makes the WMV video to
work for him, the problem is solved.

Option 2: Download/purchase a specialized MPEG editor (such
as Womble MPEG Wizard) which will allow you to edit the video
from the camera natively in the MPEG format. This is even
better than Option 1, since MPEG-1 video will work quite
universally, and you get rid of the lossy WMV compression
step. (The only downside is that MPEG files are generally
bigger than WMV files of equal quality.)

Option 3: Use some other, more generic-purpose editor than
Movie Maker: one, which will allow you to save directly to
the format of your choice, instead of forcing you to use
the proprietary WMV format and intermediate lossy
conversion steps.

* * *

Of course, if you insist, there's the "option 4": install
better AVI codecs on your computer, make the conversion to
AVI again (using some other codec than "Microsoft Video 1"
- one, which you have manually picked with some informed
reasoning behind your choice), edit in VirtualDub and save
for web. That's a bit kludgish, though, and your final
video will lose some of its video quality in all these
extraneous, lossy, intermediate conversion steps. (What
is more, the person you're trying to help will need to
install the final AVI codec you choose for distribution
for himself, too, because Windows does not really _come_
with web distribution friendly AVI codecs.)

So you now see I was coming at this from a quite different
perspective to the one you were describing.

Not really. The important pieces that were missing were the
type of the camera and the native format it stores the video in.

Source content was relatively trivial, and easy to capture
at the low quality level I needed for this (with my limited
free web storage space a significant factor here too). Added
value would come from the *extras*
added by MovieMaker:
- I joined the two MPGs
- I deleted bits where I'd moved the camera
- I realised the first (slow) section was too short, so I
duplicated it
- I went off for an hour to find a suitable soundtrack and
re-learned how to edit a WMA file with Goldwave. In particular
I wanted its beat to sync with the LED frequency (about 1 Hz).
I also wanted the soundtrack to be quiet (not muted) while
the 5 Hz part was showing; obviously it was then out of sync,
but I wanted to bring the sound back up over the 'credits'.
- I added the finished soundtrack in MovieMaker
- I saved it, using the Wizard's default of 'Best for my
computer...'

My aim now is therefore to make an MPG and an AVI, as much for
learning as to possibly help my friend whose WMP cannot play
the WMV. Both need to be of a similar size to the WMV. (I have
managed a couple of twice the size, and several of about *60*
times the size!)

Getting back to VirtualDub, I have made progress. The breakthrough
as you and bxf suspected was to set both video and audio to 'Direct
Stream Copy'. However, I am still getting *very erratic* results. I'll
try to report these methodically in a separate post - this is already
getting brain numbingly long I suspect - but the two key problems are:
- 1.6 cannot read an AVI made in 1.3
- Both 1.3 and 1.6 give inconsistent results: sometimes, after opening
an AVI file that has behaved properly up till then, I cannot play the
Output file, only the Input. This seems because both video and audio
are in Direct Stream Copy mode. Then, running the identical operations
straight after, only the Output's *audio* will play! Then, repeating,
maybe *both* will play. Very disconcerting...

--
znark

.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Novice: First steps with VirtualDub
    • From: Terry Pinnell

• References:
  • Novice: First steps with VirtualDub
    • From: Terry Pinnell
  • Re: Novice: First steps with VirtualDub
    • From: Jukka Aho

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