x264 output for PowerDirector or VideoStudio or Pinnacle or Vegas or Premiere or Roxi

[hurry]

Is there a way to hack or add x264 mp4 video output support to any one of the above Video editors? Or does any one of them have it already? Thanks.

[kemuri-_9]

komisar's x264vfw builds or any x264vfw build should do what you're looking for.

[Ranguvar]

Most of them only do VfW and their own codecs. You could use x264 VfW, but I advise against that. Your other option is to A.) Look for a way to frameserve from the video editor to AviSynth, or B.) Export to lossless (or near-lossless if you don't have the space) and convert.

[hurry]

B.) Export to lossless (or near-lossless if you don't have the space) and convert.

Thanks. What would be examples of lossless and near-lossless formats to export?

[poisondeathray]

e.g. lossless compression: huffyuv, lagarith

Beware huffyuv in Premiere often gives corrupted output

[hurry]

Thanks. I mean should it be avi or mpg1 or mpg2 or mp4 or wmv? Which one is most lossless and which one will be fastest to render while exporting and fastest to encode to x264 after rendering?

[hurry]

komisar's x264vfw builds or any x264vfw build should do what you're looking for.

(1) How can I integrate x264vfw output option in these video editing programs like PowerDirector, Vegas or VideoStudio? I searched in Google but could not find much. And why does x264vfw work and not the normal x264?

(2) Also what is exactly the difference between the normal x264 and x264vfw in short?

(3) Why is it not so much advised to use x264vfw instead of x264?

I am sorry if these questions are repeated but I tried to search.

[kemuri-_9]

you mostly specified containers, not codecs.
the codec used is what determines if its lossless or not; not the container.

install lagarith (fourCC: LAGS) from http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html
and use that from your video editor.
it will save to avi and then you can use that in x264, avs, or w/e.
- this is the preferred way of doing it to prevent vfw x264.

x264vfw is the vfw (video for windows) compatible version of x264 - which was never really meant to be.
with it you can have vfw dependent programs save x264 in avi - which again was never really meant to be.

[Ranguvar]

(1) How can I integrate x264vfw output option in these video editing programs like PowerDirector, Vegas or VideoStudio? I searched in Google but could not find much. And why does x264vfw work and not the normal x264?

(2) Also what is exactly the difference between the normal x264 and x264vfw in short?

(3) Why is it not so much advised to use x264vfw instead of x264?

I am sorry if these questions are repeated but I tried to search.

1.) You install it :)
2.) x264 is a command-line program, and there are GUIs for it. x264vfw is a way of using x264 to encode videos using VfW (Video for Windows), an ancient standard for video decoding and encoding used still by many video editors, particularly VirtualDub. VfW is also tied to the nearly as horrible AVI container (issues with large files in many apps, large overhead, limited format support, etc.).
3.) Any modern video codec usually requires innumerable hacks to work well with VfW, which often hurt performance and code maintainability, slow the process of transferring to better containers (MKV, MP4, OGM), and can create problems with playback. Therefore, VfW is no longer supported by the main x264 developers, and only lives on in custom builds by those like Komisar and BugMaster/MasterNobody.

A great video tool that's similar to VirtualDub without VfW is AviDemux. It's getting better all the time :)

[hurry]

Thanks so much for the detailed replies.

Can DarkShikari or other developers or supporters of x264 get in touch with the companies of these Video Editors like Cyberlink, Corel, Pinnacle, Sony etc. to integrate direct x264 output support into these editors into mp4 (with AAC & AACplus V2 audio) and m2ts (with AC3 audio) containers? This would make the best codec compression codec in the world much more widespread in adoption. Maybe a page with a detailed comparison in video quality and encoding speed with images and video samples (at similar bitrates) can be made (if not already there) with all the other H.264 codecs and x264 superiority be shown to these companies so that they can add x264 to their video editors.

With H.264 support in Flash, Silverlight and Blu-ray, it seems this is the age of H.264 and I feel that x264 should get its fair share of recognition and adoption among other H.264 codecs.

[Ranguvar]

Those companies just want to promote their own codecs, etc. :) Unfortunately, it's not going to happen any time soon I'm guessing. Especially since I don't think there's a working encoder in this world right now that has comparable quality at a given bitrate to x264, especially when you factor in speed ;) Sony makes their own H.264 codec, and most of the others use Main Concept's I believe.

[Conquerist]

For exporting from a NLE, the best way IMO is to use the DebugMode Frameserver (http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/). Plugins are available for Ulead, Premiere, and Vegas, of the editors you mentioned. The signpost .avi from the framserver can be loaded into Avisynth with AviSource().

[lilhobo]

you mostly specified containers, not codecs.
the codec used is what determines if its lossless or not; not the container.

install lagarith (fourCC: LAGS) from http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html
and use that from your video editor.
it will save to avi and then you can use that in x264, avs, or w/e.
- this is the preferred way of doing it to prevent vfw x264.

x264vfw is the vfw (video for windows) compatible version of x264 - which was never really meant to be.
with it you can have vfw dependent programs save x264 in avi - which again was never really meant to be.

To install under Vista 64, you will need to run cmd.exe as administrator

how do u run this as admin on vista?? i can right click as a exe but this is run from the start menu

[Comatose]

Use the installer.

[lilhobo]

Use the installer.

so how would i know if its installed x64 or not? i would love to be able to use 64bits in encoding process

[Comatose]

To use 64bit, the entire chain has to be 64bit. That means the decoder, Avisynth and the encoder.
Or at least that's what I vaguely remember from when I tried to get it to work :\

[Ranguvar]

x264 is not compatible with x64 Windows, only 64-bit GNU+Linux (and I think Mac).

[foxyshadis]

To install under Vista 64, you will need to run cmd.exe as administrator

how do u run this as admin on vista?? i can right click as a exe but this is run from the start menu

Create a shortcut to cmd.exe, run it as administrator. In fact, there's already one in the start menu to make it simple.

[lilhobo]

x264 is not compatible with x64 Windows, only 64-bit GNU+Linux (and I think Mac).

we are talking lagarith at this stage :D

well i guess we wait for sony to get vegas proper on x64

[Ranguvar]

D'oh :p

[lilhobo]

For exporting from a NLE, the best way IMO is to use the DebugMode Frameserver (http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/). Plugins are available for Ulead, Premiere, and Vegas, of the editors you mentioned. The signpost .avi from the framserver can be loaded into Avisynth with AviSource().


i thought avisynth was the frameserver LOL

what is avisynth?

[Conquerist]

i thought avisynth was the frameserver LOL

what is avisynth?

In that chain you need two frameservers. DebugMode is the frameserver that gets the video out of the NLE, AviSynth is the frameserver that encoders accept as input ;-). AviSynth is a more complex frameserver, and can be viewed as a scripting language, with filters/functions for every type of post or pre-processing you'll ever need (deinterlacing, inverse telecine, resizing, denoising, sharpening, etc).

Alternatively you can use a version of x264 with DirectShow input support (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141441), but that way you won't be able to do any filtering.

[lilhobo]

filtering should happen at the editing stage

[roozhou]

Alternatively you can use a version of x264 with DirectShow input support (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141441), but that way you won't be able to do any filtering.

Yes, you can do filtering through ffdshow. It can also use most avisynth filters without breaking the timestamps.