cce avs woes

[Kedirekin]

Okay, this message is just a lament. No one can help me, so there's no real point in replying.

After over a year with nary a problem with CCE, suddenly it can no longer open avs files. It crashes the moment I click Open in the add window. I've haven't installed anything on the PC for weeks (maybe months), and I haven't made any configuration changes, so I can not reason out why it is suddenly misbehaving.

I'm not ready at the moment to restage my PC. Guess I'll have to get used to frame serving from vDub or using VFAPI. Woe is me.

Thanks for letting me vent.

[ScooterMyth]

If you have an old ECL file hanging around, edit that and then open it in CCE and your problems will go away. Even allows you to ignore the audio definition if yo want.

[mb1]

Simply post your avs if you want some help.

Did you add ResampleAudio(44100) in the skript.
Furthermore it would be best to use avisynth 1.0 beta 5.
Should work without problems.

regards
mb1

[Kedirekin]

I appreciate the responses, really I do. But I don't think there is a solution to this.

However, to set your minds at ease, I'll reply in kind.

I could try the ecl trick, as I'm of the opinion that CCE is crashes when it requests the avi information through the avs. However, I'm in the middle of a 21 hour encode, so I can't try it right now.

I believe the ResampleAudio command is a hack for AMD processors. I'm encoding with Intel processors. Besides, I've done dozens of encodes using AviSynth, and I've never needed ResampleAudio before. I appreciate the suggestion though, and since it'll only take minute, I'll give it a try when the encoding session is done.

Here is a copy of one of my avs files.

LoadPlugin("E:\RIPPIN~1\DVD2SV~2\MPEG2Dec\mpeg2dec.dll")
AVISource("E:\DVDCopies\OutlawStar\EPP1_tpr-vfapi.avi")
ConvertToYUY2()
TemporalSmoother(2,1)
BiCubicResize(448,448,0.00,0.50)
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)

Some background: I used TMpg to do IVTC (I don't like avisynth's IVTC filter - besides, TMpg IVTC is faster). I used vfapi to convert the IVTC tpr to avi, hence AVISource rather than mpeg2source. I cropped overscan in dvd2avi, hence the resize to 448,448 and the AddBorders command. I load mpg2dec.dll to allow me to use TS, and the ConvertToYUY2 is necessary because vfapi avi is RBG, but TS needs YUV.

Some more background: I currently have 9 avs files on my hard drive, all identical to the above except for the AVISource (EPP1, EPP2, ... EPP9).

On Friday night, I started encoding. I wanted to do eppisodes 1 through 4. However, CCE would crash when I tried to add the 4th avs. And the problem wasn't EPP4.avs; I could load 1, 2, and 3, with crash on 4. I could also add 4, 3, and 2, with crash on 1. Very strange, but WTF - I decided to encode 1, 2, and 3. They finished sucessfully Saturday afternoon.

After a few hours ripping subtitles and encoding audio on Saturday, I decided to start 4, 5, and 6. Now CCE crashes when I add even one avs. I even tried reloading 1 (crash). I tried reloading 3 (which had just finished encoding a few hours earlier - *crash*). Rebooting does no good.

So now you can see why I think there is no solution for this. At the moment, I'm thinking the obvious gradiated (but rapid) degradition points to a performance issue (i.e. CCE crashes if it doesn't get the avi information quick enough). I notice that getting the first frame in vDub from these avs files is noticably slower than it has been in the past (yes, I can open the avs files fine in vDub).

The most likely reason for loss of performance is HD fragmentation, but all this is happening on an NTFS partition, and I have no tools to defrag NTFS, and I'm simply not ready to restage this PC. Maybe after the holidays.

FYI: at the moment, I'm frame serving avs files 4, 5 and 6 though vDub and encoding in CCE that way. This results in about 10-15% lower performance, but I did the first 3 via avs, and I want to maintain consistency across the 9 episodes. In future (till I can restage), I expect I can apply resize and temporal cleaner in vDub and avoid AviSynth altogether. That, plus avoiding the extra RGB-YUY2 conversion, should gain me back some performance, so it isn't all bad (though I've never liked having to keep multiple vDub frameservers running while I encode).

[gldblade]

>I believe the ResampleAudio command is a hack for AMD processors. I'm encoding with Intel processors.

Totally untrue. It's not because of the processor, but the fact that CCE doesn't support 48000 audio. So ResampleAudio is supposed to trick CCE into working.

[Kedirekin]

@mb1, @gldblade,

Thanks for your help. The ResampleAudio function did seem to fix things. Once I added it to the avs files, I was able to add all 9 to CCE without crashing. I encoded the last three eppisodes that way (5 passes - no errors and they turned out fine). I said that I lost 10-15% by frame serving though vDub, but in truth it was closer to 20% (unless the resampleaudio command improved avs performance, but I don't really think so).

I could have sworn I'd seen that the ResampleAudio trick was only necessary with AMD processors. Either I am recalling things wrong (which I do a lot), or other people are also misinformed.