Lossless Fade In/Out on captured .avi

[Metallo]

Hi,

I've captured a movie in DV format from my digital video camera, I used VideoMaker 2.1 for the purpose.

The original movie does not have fade in/out at the beginning/end and I wanted to do it.

Questions:

1) Is it better to do it on the .avi source file or should I do it once the movie has been converted to DVD format?

2) If it is better on the source, do I have a way to do it lossless?

Thank you for your help

Alex

[jggimi]

A "capture" of DV is really just a digital file copy. You may want to look through our DV forum's stickies for more information about the DV format, per http://forum.doom9.org/announcement.php?f=10.

Your particular question, though, is likely better suited to discussion in our Non Linear Editing (NLE) forum, rather than anywhere else, so I am moving your thread there.

[gameplaya15143]

If you want the fadein/fadeout to be on the final dvd, then you must do it using the source. Fades are an effect, and shouln't effect the source file but should only only be seen when previewed/exported from your editor.

... I'm not sure if that answers your question, but there you have it.

[Metallo]

Originally Posted by gameplaya15143

If you want the fadein/fadeout to be on the final dvd, then you must do it using the source. Fades are an effect, and shouln't effect the source file but should only only be seen when previewed/exported from your editor.

... I'm not sure if that answers your question, but there you have it.

Hi,

Well, actually I'm not sure to understand what you say, I can, either change my .avi file (Source) or the mpeg file (what you get after the encoding).

I also think it is better to do the fade in/out on the avi file, but I don't know which software to use to do it in a lossless way.
For instance, VirtualDub does it by recompressing the file, therefore you get a loss.

I could not find any software so far that allows me to do 3 sec. fading without recompressing the whole file.

Hope my question is now clearer.

Thank you
Alex

[Zarxrax]

Yes, you will have to recompress the file, but that does NOT mean a loss if you save it using a lossless codec.

[Metallo]

Originally Posted by Zarxrax

Yes, you will have to recompress the file, but that does NOT mean a loss if you save it using a lossless codec.

Can you give me an example of lossless codec I could use?

Alex

[Zarxrax]

Here is my personal favorite: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

On that page it also mentions a few others, if you would like to try them as well.

[smok3]

if thats all thats required you can use avisynth and feed that to encoder...
http://www.avisynth.org/Fade

should be easy like:

avisource("somefile.avi")
fadein(50)
fadeout(50)

[Metallo]

Thank you guys, I will try

[jesus2099]

Hi Metallo.

The audio inside your DV video is plain uncompressed WAV. Just edit the sound ; Only the fade-in and fade-out parts will be reprocessed by your sound editor but it's minor change really ; no compression.

So demux -> edit (any sound editor) -> compress to mpeg2 for DVD.

[Mug Funky]

metallo means to fade the video up and down (and presumably the audio too, but who knows?).

if you have a decent nonlinear editor (premiere pro isn't decent, but it'll do the job), it'll apply the fades and recompress only the parts you tell it to. the rest will be "direct stream copied" in virtualdub jargon.

but i'd go with avisynth - it wont require any recompression and wont touch your original avi file - it'll simply apply the effects and feed the result to your encoder (there's a multitute of mpeg-2 encoders that can handle avs input, including some free ones that are as fast and good quality, if not better, than the commercial encoders).