Multidecimate won't run

[stephen22]

Anybody any ideas what might stop Multidecimate.exe from running? I've put all the relevant files in various places, C Drive, Data Drive, external drive, and I've got an entirely healthy mfile.txt, and shown where it is, but when I click on Create, nothing happens.

(This happened on a previous PC intermittently, and I never managed to identify the conditions) I remember you can tell when it has worked - the GUI gives a little jump.

I'm using MD because I want to remove duplicate frames without regard to frame-rate.

I'm on W10 Home

[Groucho2004]

Multidecimate.exeI don't think there's such a thing. Possibly a virus.

[manolito]

I don't think there's such a thing. Possibly a virus.

Of course there is... :devil:
http://rationalqm.us/multidecimate/multidecimate.html

[StainlessS]

Looks like Multidecimate.exe requires maybe a couple of dll's, the two at the bottom of this lot are suspects,
COMCTL32.dll and COMDLG32.dll.
The exe might be written in VisualBasic and use common controls and common dialog box stuff eg FileSelector.

https://i.postimg.cc/PJM1q95P/Untitled-00.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

Maybe videoH will happen by, I hear that he knows the author and could perhaps ask about it.

EDIT: And MDec2 plugins is roughly same as Multidecimate, but requires the Exe and other files from Multidecimate, supports v2.60 std colorspaces.

[manolito]

BTW I believe that MultiDecimate is superseeded by FDecimate. Avoid the latest DG version 1.10, it is broken. Version 1.02 works nicely for me. Or use the StainlessS mod from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/4uo0f2v2ls4fp4p/FDecimate2_x86_x64_dll_v2-00_20180428.zip/file

[StainlessS]

Nah, MDec2 is the one, I like multidecimate style best.

[johnmeyer]

I use Multidecimate all the time as part of the complex prototype I created to remove pulldown frames from the shutterless projector I use for transferring 16mm film. There is a DLL that is part of the package, and that needs to be in the same folder as the EXE. I am not aware of any other dependencies, although I defer to my betters who have already posted and said that there are.

It's been several years since I last used it, since I don't transfer film much anymore, but as I remember, Multidecimate simply creates the three decimation text files, but you then actually do the decimation with FDecimate, or something else.

[edit]Here's a link to the script I posted a long time ago which shows how I actually use the DLL portion of Multidecimate to do the decimation in my shutterless projector captures:

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1005949#post1005949

Now that I read it, I now remember that there are two parts to it: you run the EXE to generate the the text files and you then feed those to your AVISynth script and use the DLL plugin to do the decimation.

[manolito]

Nah, MDec2 is the one, I like multidecimate style best.

Matter of taste I guess..

I prefer simpler 1-pass solutions like FDecimate or TDecimate Mode 7.

[videoh]

I believe that MultiDecimate is superceded by FDecimate. Nah. FDecimate was a mistake, created in some kind of psychotic episode.

MultiDecimate has 3 parts:

MultiDecimate.exe
ProcessMD.exe
MultiDecimate.dll

The first two are used to create files that the Avisynth DLL uses.

The first two were built with Delphi 7. What was I thinking? Ah well, back in early 2003 I didn't know too much about making GUIs with plain old Win32 API, so I took the cheap route. I looked for the source code for those two but came up empty (it's very bad to lose source code; nowadays I have 4-deep backups of everything). Could be on some old tape backups. I should re-implement MultiDecimate in more modern form, and including a one-pass mode. Still it remains usable. Please let me know if you need the DLL rebuilt for anything, such as Avisynth+.

I would like to doff my hat to manono for his help in developing MultiDecimate. Remember 'Number Please' and 'The Cook', manono? This was cutting-edge stuff back then. A nice thing about MultiDecimate is that it can protect static video sections from being decimated. I don't know if the other tools support that.

And oh, SssS could be correct about missing dependencies. But maybe you are just missing ProcessMD.exe. You need both of them. Please post again if you still can't get it working.

[Groucho2004]

Of course there is... :devil:
http://rationalqm.us/multidecimate/multidecimate.htmlI stand corrected.

[stephen22]

Absolutely right - I forgot ProcessMD which was in another folder. Thanks.

Enjoyed TDecimate, sorts out and proudly displays dups, has seven modes - but can't just remove duplicates, no questions asked. How about a mode 8 that does this?

Occasional visitor - always enjoy visits to this forum. Thanks guys.

[johnmeyer]

Nah. FDecimate was a mistake, created in some kind of psychotic episode.Actually, it's two-pass approach allowed me to create my film transfer system and I couldn't have made it work without it.

I removed the shutter from a 16mm projector. I capture the output using an HD 60i camcorder, with the "shutter speed" set to 1/1000 of a second. thus getting 60 fields per second.

You have to look at the problem for a few minutes, but when you do, you'll realize that you will always get a clean video frame from each frame of film, but that you have to throw away the pulldown frame (which is horribly blurred, even at 1/1000 second); you have to throw away redundant fields (because 60 events per second have to be decimated down to 48 matched fields) and you then have to periodically re-match the fields so that the upper field from one frame goes with the lower field of the next frame. I use a combination of TFM, Multidecimate and Excel to do the job. TFM provides the matching; Excel lets me use TFM's matching vectors to then tell Multidecimate/FDecimate which fields to discard, and which fields to re-order into new frames.

So, I needed a kludge like Multidecimate to go with my kludge. They work perfectly together, and all that old 16mm film you see on my YouTube channel was transferred with this system.

I always told myself I'd get rid of all the intermediate steps, either by creating my own plugin or finding something simpler. However, it works, and I could never justify the several days it would take for me to come up to speed on the tools I'd need to do the job.

So, Dr. Graft, or whatever you call yourself today, thanks for what you consider to be garbage, because it helped me immensely.

[videoh]

I'm happy it was useful to you and thank you for your kindness. Thing is...in some (hopefully rare) circumstances it can deliver out-of-order frames, which is very bad. I never spent any time trying to hunt that down and fix it. Then I started wondering does it do anything more than ConvertFPS()? Anyway, it could not be garbage while still having been created during a psychotic episode. I have them quite often.

DG, videoh, Rocky, Bullwinkle, Natasha, Sherman, cheapredwine...it's all one. Wish I could claim to be Dr. but only have a couple of Masters. Perhaps my 17 peer-reviewed papers make up for that deficiency somewhat.

What is the link to your youtube channel? Sounds intriguing.

[johnmeyer]

DG, videoh, Rocky, Bullwinkle, Natasha, Sherman, cheapredwine...it's all one. Wish I could claim to be Dr. but only have a couple of Masters. Perhaps my 17 peer-reviewed papers make up for that deficiency somewhat.Most non-medical doctors are idiots (not a fan of the PhD), but you deserve the title, out of respect. I ran three software companies and, as someone who knows just enough about programming to get into a lot of trouble, I've always had tremendous respect for someone who writes code that solves problems and does so efficiently.

What is the link to your youtube channel? Sounds intriguing.Here is the link to the channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/johnmeyer77/videos

It is a completely weird collection of films that I have transferred:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL230DED9513ECA2CB
along with tutorials, music videos I created for various events and school functions, and other stuff.

The first few of the posts on the film playlist show what I've done with some of the AVISynth functions I've found on doom9.org. One of the most interesting results is one I did with the help of StainlessS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx26T6WOZ_4&list=PL230DED9513ECA2CB

[videoh]

Cool, thanks. I'll check it out with relish.

And BTW, I share your view of the PhD.

[manolito]

Thing is...in some (hopefully rare) circumstances it can deliver out-of-order frames, which is very bad.

In my experience it's only the latest version 1.10 which does this. The previous version 1.02 never showed this behavior for me. The StainlessS modded version FDecimate2 is based on the original DG version 1.02. FDecimate2 works just as well as v. 1.02, it is a little bit slower on my old computer, so I still use 1.02.

[StainlessS]

Maybe a bit slower because the mod scans entire frame, IIRC original scanned vertical stripes of frame, either 1 pixel in 4 or 1 pixel in 8, cant remember which.
EDIT: Something like [horizontal row of pixels, scanned=1, no scanned = 0]
1111 0000 0000 0000, 1111 0000 0000 0000.

EDIT: Also, I think original had bug which summed results from chroma stripe with wrong luma stripe, but magically did not seem to affect detection much.
[Each stripe had similar error in each frame, and so metrics were not so much affected overall]

EDIT: Incidentally, MDec2 [as original Multidecimate source never available] uses modified [full frame] metrics data using the source from FDecimate mod,
but also copes with v2.60 std colorspaces [whereas methinks multidecimate supports one only, either YUY2 or YV12, cant remember which].

EDIT:
This version supports YUY2 only for Avisynth 2.5. YV12 will be added when the functionality stabilizes.
https://avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/externalfilters/multidecimate.htm