Re: Novice: First steps with VirtualDub

"Jukka Aho" <jukka.aho@xxxxxx> wrote:

>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. :)

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to reply so thoroughly to all
my points. It's much appreciated.

>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.

I have TMPGEnc. It's a trial, and the MPEG2 facility has expired.

I've just installed trails of the other two you mentioned. I like the
look of Womble. It's a subjective issue, but must say VideoReDo looks
awfully garish to me!

Took me a visit to AcronymFinder, but now see that NLE means Non
Linear Editor (not Necrotizing Leukoencephalitis or Network-Layer
Encryption) <g>

>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.

Yes, just learned about that DV AVI option. But it turned my 4MB MPG
into about 150MB!

>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.

The conversion was a confused process of trial and error. I'll have to
repeat it fairly soon before I forget how I did it. Do you know of a
table or matrix somewhere showing what SW converts one format to
another please?

>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)

Indeed. This codec stuff is entirely new to me, and hence one more
black art!

Also, I gather it's important to know what audio and video codecs your
*source* file 'have' (if that's the right term). Since that first
tentative conversion, I've installed a couple of utilities for
analysing that: afreeCodecVT, and AVIcodec. But interpreting what they
tell me in examples like these

LED-Sequencer4MB.wmv
File : 3.82 MB (3.82 MB), duration: 0:00:49, type: ASF, 1
audio stream(s), quality: 38 %
Video : 11.18 MB, 1914 Kbps, 10.163 fps, 320*240 (4:3), WMV3 =
Windows Media Video 9, Supported
Audio : 405 KB, 67 Kbps, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, 0x161 = Windows
Media Audio 9, Supported

LED-Sequencer4MB-1b.avi
File : 8.53 MB (8.53 MB), duration: 0:00:44, type: AVI, 1 audio
stream(s), quality: 52 %
Video : 7.69 MB, 1463 Kbps, 25.0 fps, 320*240 (4:3), CRAM =
Unknown, Supported
Audio : 859 KB, 160 Kbps, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, 0x161 = Windows
Media Audio V2, Supported

is beyond me.

>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.

Agreed, but in this particular case, quality is of low priority. I'm
going to try it again anyway when I get time, to hopefully get some
idea of the effect of using different codecs. Is there a relatively
small subset you could recommend please? Otherwise the combinations
possible (audio/video) run into hundreds!

>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.

It turned out his WMP was version 6! Now updated to WMP9 (same as
mine). Have yet to hear from him, but assume he can now play the WMV.
So further work on AVI and MPG conversions can now proceed as a
learning exercise, unhampered by any immediate practical need <g>.

>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.)

As mentioned, trialing Womble. Pretty expensive though, for a user who
is only dabbling in this on a casual basis. On the other hand, that
hasn't always stopped me buying nice tools in the past...

>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.

That sounds like heavyweight (=expensive) SW?
>
>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...'
>
>OK, I can see where you're coming from: you have already done lots of
>work with this clip and don't want to recreate it again in some other
>editor.
>
>It's a shame that there is no way to export uncompressed video (or,
>gasp, frameserve) from Movie Maker, since this would allow utilizing the
>editor for tasks where WMV is not the preferred target format. As of
>now, the only way to get video out of Movie Maker is through lossy
>compression which degrades image quality.

Yes indeed. On my brief acquaintance with it, Movie Maker looks as if
it will do most of what I need, with the sort of 'end-user orientated'
interface that I need.

>> 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!)
>
>If I had to do it this way, I would do it using AviSynth (Google for
>that) and VirtualDub in combination, and XviD for the final target
>codec. See <http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/wmv2avi.htm>. (Frameserving
>the WMV from AviSynth to VirtualDub removes the need to use the WVM->AVI
>converter you used.)

You're beginning to lose me there! Maybe it will become clearer after
experiment. So far I found AviSynth v2.56 Beta 3 at
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/avisynth.cfm
but it looks heavy.

>If you want MPEG, instead, I would install a demo version of TMPGEnc and
>open the AviSynth script (that frameserves the WMV file) in there.

I have the TMPGEnc demo version.

>> 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...
>
>That's probably somehow related to the "Microsoft Video-1" codec with
>which your conversion tool saved the AVI file. If I had to use an
>external conversion tool, I would probably save the intermediate video
>file as uncompressed AVI, or using HuffYUV or Alparysoft Lossless Codec.

I'll look out for those. I did get a sort of 'codec package'
yesterday, called K-Lite Full, from
http://www.free-codecs.com/K_Lite_Codec_Pack_download.htm
but I stopped short of installing it. For a start, it says:
"It is highly recommended to first uninstall other codec related
packages before installing this package," yet I'm not sure whether or
not I *have* any. And then it offered a *very* long list, most checked
by default. In my state of ignorance, I felt it was too risky to
proceed.

Thanks again for your patience and extensive help.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

.

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