HC Encoder...I Have a Question

[ron spencer]

I finally got around to trying HC encoder on my home movies (hi-8) all is good and my AVISynth scripting capabilities are coming back.

HOWEVER, I am stumped with when to use avisource or DirectShowSource in loading my avi. How do you know what to use when? Is there a general fulr. For example, when I try to load an AVI captured with my canopus ADVC 100 HC says it cannot decode it if I use avisource. All other encoders can right away. If I change it do DirectShowSource it works. What is the rule here?

thanks!!!!

[Mug Funky]

rule is (btw this is more an avisynth question than a HC one, but there is a specific HC situation that makes it relevant) if there's no VfW decoder installed, use directshowsource.

so if you installed Cedocida (opensource DV codec) you'll suddenly be able to use DV with avisource, because Video for Windows will have a DV decoder then (it'll be faster and better, too :)).

there's one exception - ffdshow's vfw decoders disagree with HC for some reason. if you find HC exiting with a 0kb m2v file, try directshowsource and it may work.

[ron spencer]

thanks for the advice....appreciated!!!!

[trolltuning]

You might be better off building a d2v file and using mpeg2source in the cases where you have to use directshowsource. Remember to dub the audio back in in your script.

[ron spencer]

not for avi as d2v is only for vob or mpeg is it not? why dub audio back if HC cannot output audio?

[Ebobtron]

@Ron
I do not remember HC saying much of anything these days, it just does not work.
take a quick look here http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=767000#post767000.

Some other encoders will accept other colorspaces / pixal types than YV12.

[trolltuning]

not for avi as d2v is only for vob or mpeg is it not? why dub audio back if HC cannot output audio?
Of course you are correct. I read too fast.

[ron spencer]

just to let everyone know, with Cedocida installed HC works perfectly with my interlaced home movies....very nice!!!!

With Cedocida I can have it force YV12, should I do that or is AVISynth doing it better. In any case good results for me!!!!

[Mug Funky]

cedocida has a nifty feature to give YV12 sampled just right for mpeg-2 (DV is sampled differently but stored the same, but the difference is footling). you can set the decoder settings in virtualdub (or anything that lets you access codec settings, really).

avisynth just asks for yv12 anyway.

[ron spencer]

yes it sure does...but is it better to let cedocida handle to conversion to YV12 or to let AVISynth do it? Or does it not matter....just thinking of quality vs. CPU time

[colinb]

Ron I'm doing exactly the same as you, except I'm playing the 8mm analog tape in a Digital8 camcorder which digitises directly from the tape (see threads elsewhere).

As DV's native format is YV12 and HC expects to have YV12 as input I've kept the whole Avisynth script in YV12 color space throughout, so there are no color space changes.

I've forced Cedocida to output YV12 (I think it does by default anyway), applied a couple of filters which have made a lovely job or removing color-shifts at the edge of the frame and then output to HC. Stays in YV12 all the way.

Cedocida supports output of 3 variants of YV12 which (AIUI) vary very slightly in the exact placement of the chroma samples. One of these formats is used in DV, so I have selected the "MPEG2 interlaced" option which will interpolate the chroma. This is on the assumption that HC expects "MPEG2 interlaced" form of YV12 - but I don't know if this is the case. I guess it just encodes whatever YV12 is thrown at it and then it's up to the DVD player to reconstitute the full RGB picture. In doing this I suppose the DVD player will expect the choma samples to be in "MPEG interlaced" placement, so that's my rationale for for chosing Celocida's "MPEG2 interlaced" option.

[ron spencer]

you sure DV is YV12...without the convert thing HC balks (my DV comes from canopus advc100)

[colinb]

you sure DV is YV12

Yes PAL is. The sampling of NTSC is slightly different - are you using NTSC?

Add the Info command to your avisynth script immediately after the avisource command. This will display various info about the format that is being delivered by the dv codec in use. If you are using cedocida it should say YV12, but you can force it to produce YV12 using one of its settings.

Maybe avisource is using a different DV codec on your PC in preference to cedocida?

According to a google search the Canopus unit creates DV files with the fourcc code of CDVC, whereas others use DVSD - perhaps this is the cause of your problem. It also said that only a canopus codec will recognise this fourcc code. Apparently if you change the fourcc code of your DV avi file from CDVC to DVSD then other (non-canopus codecs) can read it. You can do this with the "Fourcc code changer".

http://www.inmatrix.com/files/avic_download.shtml

You could also try installing VCSwap which allows you to see which codecs are installed on your system and also allows you to enable and disable selected codecs. You can therefore make sure that only cedocida is enabled for DV source.

http://members.chello.nl/p.bekke/

[Mug Funky]

that's weird... the ADVC-100 simply makes DV streams. it's the capture app that assigns the fourCC code (which is why you can plug these things into macintoshes and cap in quicktime, not that you'd want to).

also, cedocida can easily be made to decode CDVC as well - the only difference is the four character code, the data is still DV.

[colinb]

Perhaps in the postings I found the users had used a capture app that was bundled with the ADVC-100.

Anyway hoepfully there should be enough tips there for Ron to find out what is happening in his setup.

[ron spencer]

oh yes....thanks all....it works well!!! I find HC to be better than CCE for interlaced sources, slower though.

is HC still being developed?

[Mug Funky]

yeah, hank's working on a new release right now.

[ron spencer]

cool....any idea what he is adding?

[dragongodz]

any idea what he is adding?
yes.

does this mean i or others will tell you ? no ,its best to let hank315 decide if he wants to say whats in the next release or not. consider that some things can be experimental and may be mothballed until future versions if hank315 isnt happy with them. so beta testers saying what they are playing with would not be a good idea.

[Ebobtron]

ron spencer,

I was going to pretty much tell you what "dragon" said. I would like to add though that if you would read through the link I gave you above, which is the thread "HC encoder, release 016", you could see when the version was released, and a lot of talk about some of what is next.

bye

[ron spencer]

yah you're right (of course) but had to ask since I am getting some nice results