Avidemux supports mp4 and mov files now...

[Kurtnoise]

I don't know if this is has been mentioned before (if yes delete this thread) but now the last Avidemux builds support mp4 and mov files as input.

For those who don't know what Avidemux is : this is mainly a free editor for AVI, MPEG files + mp4 & mov files now. There are a bunch of video/Audio filters included to edit your files. So, check out the website : http://avidemux.berlios.de/index.html


There are certainly some bugs but this is a great stuff...;)

[bond]

doesnt seem to support .mp4 output?

[Kurtnoise]

nope but there is MPEG-1/MPEG-2. I think it's planned...

[Doom9]

give it mp4 output and there'll be a stampede of people coming their way ;)

[SadaraX]

The mp4 support is only in the SVN/CVS versions. When then 2.2.x branch of the SVN is finished and put out to release version, Avidemux will officially support mp4.

Right now Avidemux can read mp4/mov very well, though not perfectly yet. Output of mp4 is about half done, I think XviD+AAC work good, but h264 has not been finished yet.

If anyone would like to try Avidemux from the latest SVN, there are wiki docs (I maintain about half of them myself) about compiling it yourself, though its relatively straightforward.

http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Avidemux
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=AvidemuxInstall

[bond]

do you know how avidemux does the mp4 muxing? what tool, what lib?

edit: if someone sets up a win build i would be more than happy to test it

[SadaraX]

do you know how avidemux does the mp4 muxing? what tool, what lib?

edit: if someone sets up a win build i would be more than happy to test it

You can give this one a try, though I don't know to what level the support was finished at that time.
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/win32/r1726_win32.zip

[bond]

You can give this one a try, though I don't know to what level the support was finished at that time.
http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/win32/r1726_win32.zipthx but i already found that one, doesnt support mp4 output

any idea how to contact the avidemux guys best? is there an irc channel?

[Drachir]

Avidemux use FFmpeg for MP4 muxing with all his bugs, AFAIK.

Muxing based at libGPAC would be nice. But MEAN (developer from Avidemux) mentioned there isn't much documentation, how to use the lib.

Support for Timed Text could be interesting. Avidemux come with a tool to extract VOB sub and convert it to SRT.

I don't know any other tool beside MP4Box that convert SRT to Timed Text.

[bond]

hm maybe he knows ffmpeg and is able to add the ctts creation with b-frames to it?

[SadaraX]

thx but i already found that one, doesnt support mp4 output

any idea how to contact the avidemux guys best? is there an irc channel?

Best way to contact Mean and anyone else who can help is at the Avidemux forums. http://www.avidemux.org/pun/
There is not IRC channel that I know of.

[SadaraX]

Support for Timed Text could be interesting. Avidemux come with a tool to extract VOB sub and convert it to SRT.

I don't know any other tool beside MP4Box that convert SRT to Timed Text.

What is Timed Text? I do not know anything about it. Though I am helping to write more features for the SRT subtitles. In the long run, with diligence, I am hoping to write quite a few nice features for it. But right now I am about half-way done with an auto-correction option for OCR reading errors.

[bond]

What is Timed Text? I do not know anything about it. Though I am helping to write more features for the SRT subtitles. In the long run, with diligence, I am hoping to write quite a few nice features for it. But right now I am about half-way done with an auto-correction option for OCR reading errors.mpeg-4 timed text is the only official subtitle format ever defined by mpeg ;)

basically there is no spec for how ttxt should look like in "text form", so there are two forms of how to do this:
1) .ttxt developed by the gpac project (handled by mp4box)
2) texml developed by apple (handled by mp4box and quicktime)

imho .ttxt from gpac is much nicer for personal editing and authoring a ttxt stream than apples texml.
strictly speaking it also doesnt matter what you use, cause in the end the stream will be the same when being placed in .mp4

Best way to contact Mean and anyone else who can help is at the Avidemux forums. http://www.avidemux.org/pun/
There is not IRC channel that I know of.thx, i already posted there :D

[XmSurfer]

Any plans to output matroska? A search of the website yielded no info.

[SadaraX]

Any plans to output matroska? A search of the website yielded no info.

No one but myself and J.M. have discussed it. I am hoping to get the format added with multi-audio-tracks and soft subtitles. There was a push to get OGM more supported with these features, but the consensus seems to be that after mp4 is more or less finished that MKV is the next task.

Of course, I have not discussed any of this with Mean, so its only between myself and a little bit with J.M.

[XmSurfer]

No one but myself and J.M. have discussed it. I am hoping to get the format added with multi-audio-tracks and soft subtitles. There was a push to get OGM more supported with these features, but the consensus seems to be that after mp4 is more or less finished that MKV is the next task.

Of course, I have not discussed any of this with Mean, so its only between myself and a little bit with J.M.

I hope it comes to pass. I can't wait. Actually I can, I've been waiting for Gabest to update his matroska muxer for ~1.5years, so I can wait for MKV output from avidemux.

[bond]

SadaraX, can you maybe make a win32 compile for avidemux 2.2 latest svn? mean doesnt seem to be able to atm and i know nothing about compiling

or anyone else?

if latest avidemux svn really supports mp4 editing and mp4 output this tool would be the first freely available, virtualdub-like, mp4 editor :)

[bond]

moved,

btw celtic_druid you have pm ;)

[celtic_druid]

Yeah, I saw it earlier. Had a go, lots of errors, fixed a few, but I don't have time to work on it more. Might be a job more suited to those who have compiled previous win32 releases.

[bond]

split and merged

hm i will point the dev of avidemux here, maybe he can give you a hint on what needs to be taken care of?

sadarax also pointed to a doc:

If anyone would like to try Avidemux from the latest SVN, there are wiki docs (I maintain about half of them myself) about compiling it yourself, though its relatively straightforward.

http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Avidemux
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=AvidemuxInstall

[Doom9]

if latest avidemux svn really supports mp4 editing and mp4 output this tool would be the first freely available, virtualdub-like, mp4 editorAnd you'd get a bunch of marriage proposals from the MP4 fans here ;)

[bond]

ladies and gentlemen: the first freely available virtualdub-like mp4 editor:
http://4nykey.nm.ru/w32/avidemux-svn.exe

enjoy but beaware that this is not an official release and that there are potentially still bugs
i will test it extensively asap and report any issues

[Doom9]

alright.. 12 dlls later (what did I say about dependency hell.. this is the best proof anyone needs), I'm still getting crashes and I'm getting too tired for this.

[SadaraX]

SadaraX, can you maybe make a win32 compile for avidemux 2.2 latest svn? mean doesnt seem to be able to atm and i know nothing about compiling

or anyone else?

if latest avidemux svn really supports mp4 editing and mp4 output this tool would be the first freely available, virtualdub-like, mp4 editor :)

Sorry for not responding Bond. I would not know how to compile the windows binary, though I would be willing to try. :) Can anyone provide some steps to do it?

ladies and gentlemen: the first freely available virtualdub-like mp4 editor:
http://4nykey.nm.ru/w32/avidemux-svn.exe

enjoy but beaware that this is not an official release and that there are potentially still bugs
i will test it extensively asap and report any issues

Any bugs that are related to the program itself, please post on the http://www.avidemux.org/pun/ forums.

I should have mentioned, though hopefully the wiki-docs would explain it also, that guide to compiling from SVN is for linux only. Sorry, though if someone cares to write down the steps, I will add a windows section :)

[bond]

actually i made some quick tests with basically all streamtypes imagineable (b-ref, multislices aso...) and it seems to work pretty good already
there are minor issues but the big one is that it doesnt create the mandatory ctts with b-frame streams (actually a bug in ffmpeg). the author though told me that this should be working already
than it seems to have problems demuxing mp4 asp files with b-frames

my current issue list:
- doesnt create ctts on streams with b-frames when muxing and encoding (with both asp and avc)
- avidemux gives an "index is not up to date" error message on some mp4 and also avi files that should be correct. it seems to be with b-frame asp streams (not avc). this also leads to jerky playback in avidemux. it does not matter what created the mp4 (tested mp4box, mp4creator and 3ivx muxer) or the avi (tested xvid and divx - no error message tough when loading packed bitstream). i guess its because avi doesnt know/index b-frames and for mp4 (which signals b-frame timestamps in ctts) ctts isnt readout while opening?
- crashes when trying to passthrough quicktime7 files (both asp and avc)
- doesnt want to open 64bit mdat atom files
- passthrough doesnt seem to work on vfr streams (0kb mp4 created), tested both asp and avc (multiple entries in stts atom signal vfr)
- sets avgbitrate to 0 and maxbitrate to 9500kbps with asp
- unorthodox 25025 timescale (seems to be correct) for 25fps content

- vosh, vol, gov aso is not removed from the keyframes when passing through asp avi files to mp4 (tested both divx and xvid) or when encoding to mp4 (xvid and libav tested)
- when encoding with libav asp the vol aso isnt placed in the mp4v.esds.decConfigDescr.decSpecificInfo which is the place where to vol has to be stored in mp4 (only once as its not allowed to change) and very important. works fine with xvid encoding
- packed bitstream doesnt get automatically unpacked when using mp4 output (when unpacking while opening the input avi it works fine) in both cases: muxing from a packed avi to mp4 (maybe an error message saying that passin through packed bitstream to mp4 isnt possible would be good?) and encoding to mp4 with xvid while enabling packed bitstream in xvid (that option should maybe simply be disabled when mp4 output is chosen?)
- when passing through avc in avi (x264) to mp4 it seems the output mp4 is not correct at all. when i try to extract the raw video stream with mp4creator i get the "nal length past end of buffer - sample 1 size 91544645 frame offset 5 left 14741" error



things not related to mp4:
- it seems cutting is only able if the final stream has at least two keyframes, altough theoretically only one at the start should be enough
- cuts need to start with a keyframe. avidemux allows that a cutted stream starts anywhere (tough the frames before the first keyframe cant be decoded)

- appending is possible with streams using not the same settings (eg cabac + no cabac, gmc vs.no gmc aso) but thats not possible in mpeg-4 asp and avc (for avc its theoretically possible if you have 2 pps (eg 1 with cabac, the other without), and each stream refers to the corresponding pps, but i am not sure if existing players support this?)
- unpacking packed bitstream doesnt get rid of the "p" in the divx userdata "DivX503b1393p" signalling that the stream is still packed (in both xvid and divx) that will bork some decoders relying on that flag
- depending on the number of b-frames set the output video stream has less frames (eg 2 b-frames -> 2 less frames in the output than in the input...) i guess thats a ffmpeg bug (with both avi and mp4)


about how to install, i downloaded the last official version from here (http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1402) and simply overwrote this with the 2.2 svn compile
had to download two more dlls and than it worked fine
still keep in mind that this is not an official release but a svn compile not done by the avidemux devs but 4nykey (thx! :) )

about how to compile it, mean gave me some tips:
There are a few requirements :
- gtk+ 2.0 / gtk+ 2.0-dev from gtk.org/win32
- libxml2 from xmlsoft
- mingw
- pkg-config
- libmad (libmad.sf.net)
- recent autoconf & automake
- perl
- spidermonkey lib from mozilla.org
Once everything is there, make -f Makefile.dist should produce the configure script
Then ./configure --with-jsapi-include=path_to_jsapi.h
should work and autoprobe the libraries

The final trap is that the library order is reversed on win32 compared to unix-es
so the link line has to be altered manually (the simplest is to put it in a file and edit the file)
actually imho very good stuff :)

[Kurtnoise]

things not related to mp4:
- it seems cutting is only able if the final stream has at least two keyframes, altough theoretically only one at the start should be enough
- cuts need to start with a keyframe
Maybe a gpac restriction...?


btw, great stuff Mean...;)

[bond]

Maybe a gpac restriction...?what do you mean?

[Kurtnoise]

Oups, sorry. I thought that Avidemux used gpac routines but according to Drachir it uses ffmpeg.

mp4box cuts videos only on Key-Frames...

[bond]

yeah theoretically a stream always has to start with a keyframe cause otherwise you cant decode right from the beginning
avidemux atm allows to cut anywhere which means you will have some frames at the beginning of your streams that you cant decode. obviously thats not the case if you make sure you only cut in a way the resulting clips always start with a keyframe

actually mp4 is also able to allow you to not need to cut at keyframes. iirc that feature is called preroll but nothing supports it till now

[SadaraX]

There is a new windows 32-bit binary available for testing from the SVN 2.2.x branch. This contains a lot of the new mp4 features, though be warned this is the development testing branch. DO NOT CREATE FILE APART FROM TESTING PURPOSE WITH IT!

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/win32/2.2_svn_win32.zip

Mean just added some ctts support, though its not been tested by users heavily (it was just today that he added it). Users are free to try it if they want. Any errors or grips please post to the www.avidemux.org/pun/ forums

[SadaraX]

my current issue list:
[CODE]- doesnt create ctts on streams with b-frames when muxing and encoding (with both asp and avc)

No b-frames integration yet I believe, but he just finished the ctts code and added it today.

- avidemux gives an "index is not up to date" error message on some mp4 and also avi files that should be correct. it seems to be with b-frame asp streams (not avc). this also leads to jerky playback in avidemux. it does not matter what created the mp4 (tested mp4box, mp4creator and 3ivx muxer) or the avi (tested xvid and divx - no error message tough when loading packed bitstream). i guess its because avi doesnt know/index b-frames and for mp4 (which signals b-frame timestamps in ctts) ctts isnt readout while opening?

This error description is a little... more complicated that I can understand/visualize. If this error persists over time as the mp4 features become more fully integrated, please post to the avidemux forums about it. I know that just recently an error message about "out of date index's" was added, but I think that only referred to mpeg files.


- crashes when trying to passthrough quicktime7 files (both asp and avc)
- doesnt want to open 64bit mdat atom files
- passthrough doesnt seem to work on vfr streams (0kb mp4 created), tested both asp and avc (multiple entries in stts atom signal vfr)
- sets avgbitrate to 0 and maxbitrate to 9500kbps with asp
- unorthodox 25025 timescale (seems to be correct) for 25fps content

- vosh, vol, gov aso is not removed from the keyframes when passing through asp avi files to mp4 (tested both divx and xvid) or when encoding to mp4 (xvid and libav tested)
- when encoding with libav asp the vol aso isnt placed in the mp4v.esds.decConfigDescr.decSpecificInfo which is the place where to vol has to be stored in mp4 (only once as its not allowed to change) and very important. works fine with xvid encoding
- packed bitstream doesnt get automatically unpacked when using mp4 output (when unpacking while opening the input avi it works fine) in both cases: muxing from a packed avi to mp4 (maybe an error message saying that passin through packed bitstream to mp4 isnt possible would be good?) and encoding to mp4 with xvid while enabling packed bitstream in xvid (that option should maybe simply be disabled when mp4 output is chosen?)
- when passing through avc in avi (x264) to mp4 it seems the output mp4 is not correct at all. when i try to extract the raw video stream with mp4creator i get the "nal length past end of buffer - sample 1 size 91544645 frame offset 5 left 14741" error

For the rest of these, I am not sure how to answer except that hopefully these will all be dealt with in time. I am not certain how much coding has been done to integrate mp4, and how much is left.


things not related to mp4:
- it seems cutting is only able if the final stream has at least two keyframes, altough theoretically only one at the start should be enough
- cuts need to start with a keyframe. avidemux allows that a cutted stream starts anywhere (tough the frames before the first keyframe cant be decoded)

My understanding of the keyframes is that it does not always matter, depending on your format. The more "pure" mpeg format (such as MPEG 1/2 and VOB) more or less requires keyframe start and finishes, however such formats as XviD and x264/h264 do not, though it usually helps. There are places where a keyframe is necessary and where its not.


- appending is possible with streams using not the same settings (eg cabac + no cabac, gmc vs.no gmc aso) but thats not possible in mpeg-4 asp and avc (for avc its theoretically possible if you have 2 pps (eg 1 with cabac, the other without), and each stream refers to the corresponding pps, but i am not sure if existing players support this?)


This is a little too technical for me at the moment, but it would be good to ask either in this forum about whether its possible, or at the avidemux forums.


- unpacking packed bitstream doesnt get rid of the "p" in the divx userdata "DivX503b1393p" signalling that the stream is still packed (in both xvid and divx) that will bork some decoders relying on that flag


You should post in the forums about it, if its as simple a fix as it appears, that should not be a big patch (I hope). If you get the 'go ahead' on whether or not its do-able, please make an entry on the bugtracker or have someone (like myself) do it. Mean probably has tons of features related to his program plus bug reports and to-do lists, and its tough to keep them all straight.

[Hellworm]

things not related to mp4:
- it seems cutting is only able if the final stream has at least two keyframes, altough theoretically only one at the start should be enough
- cuts need to start with a keyframe. avidemux allows that a cutted stream starts anywhere (tough the frames before the first keyframe cant be decoded)

There's a nice feature called smart copy, wich lets you cut wherever you want and avidemux will add the necessary keyframe by reencoding a p-frame as I-frame with a fixed quant.
Unfortunately it seems that this feature only works with avi and asp.

[bond]

sounds like a funky feature

btw i now tested the new compile and the ctts seems to be pretty correct with asp (but not with avc, tough mean meant its also not meant to work till now)

[Elias]

ladies and gentlemen: the first freely available virtualdub-like mp4 editor:
http://4nykey.nm.ru/w32/avidemux-svn.exe

enjoy but beaware that this is not an official release and that there are potentially still bugs
i will test it extensively asap and report any issuesNow this was great! I will test it a lot myself later! Keep up the great job guys!

[SadaraX]

Originally Posted by bond
ladies and gentlemen: the first freely available virtualdub-like mp4 editor:
http://4nykey.nm.ru/w32/avidemux-svn.exe

enjoy but beaware that this is not an official release and that there are potentially still bugs
i will test it extensively asap and report any issues

Now this was great! I will test it a lot myself later! Keep up the great job guys!

Elias, I cannot speak for the reliability of the that particularly compiled executable file, but I do remember it having some problems. I would suggest you use the latest win32 compiled binary Mean made available recently, I posted a link to it earlier, but here it is again. Mean is quoted as saying, "DO NOT CREATE FILE APART FROM TESTING PURPOSE WITH IT!" So you at least know where he stands on it. :) Hope it works for you, and of course, feel free to post about it.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/win32/2.2_svn_win32.zip

[Elias]

Thanks, I'll let you know when I've checked it out!