VDUB wont open .avi

[hoops10]

I captured an .avi from my digital 8 camcorder but vdub wont open it. Complains about a directshow filter or something. How do I fix this?

[chemmajik]

Which DirectShow Filter does it say, there are 100's of them?

[hoops10]

It doesn't say which DirectShow filter. Just says that they are not supported at all. I captured the video with Premiere.

[theReal]

The DV-avi filters installed by DV capture programs like Premiere or Ulead can't be opened with VDub or similar programs because these are direct show compatible codecs, but not VFW compatible. VDub needs a VFW compatible codec.

There are three ways to do it:
1.Frameserve through avisynth from Premiere
2.Install the Mainconcept DV codec (I don't know anything about it, because I use number 3.)
3.Download the Panasonic DV codec (http://www.panasonic.co.jp/avc/video/DIGICAM/mdv/soft/pdvcodec.exe), decompress it to the winnt\system32 directory and
a)use this reg file (http://www.slashcam.de/files/PanaDV.reg) for Win2K/XP
or
b)add "vidc.dvsd=pdvcodec.dll" in system.ini below [drivers32] in Win98/ME

More on this (in German only) you can read here: http://www.slashcam.de/cgibin/dvfaq/dvfaq.pl?lesen&quid=125


oh, I almost forgot: save to "type 2 DV" with the Panasonic codec (it's a lossless conversion from your original DV file)

[hoops10]

@theReal

Ok, I have the Panasonic DV codec and installed it in the winnt/system32/drivers folder. I then d-clicked the reg file. My question is this, do I still use Premeire or Ulead to output the .avi file. Is the Panasonic codec able to be chosen when I go to save the .avi file? I ask becuase in Premiere, I can't find the codec when I go to save the .avi file. BTW, Im using win2k.

[theReal]

oops, sorry, I totally messed up the path, it should be in winnt\system32\

NOT in "drivers", then it should be there in all Video progs.

[hoops10]

@theReal

Ok, I got it in the right path now and installed the reg file too. But I still can't find it in Premiere. Where should it be? I go to Export->Movie and it gives me a new box. I look under File Type but all that is listed is: Microsoft DV AVI, Microsoft AVI, TIFF Sequence, Targa Sequence, QuickTIme, GIF Sequence, Animated GIF, FIlmstrip, Flc/fli, Windows Bitmap Sequence. I also check under video, and in the compressor tab, my only 2 options are Microsoft DV (ntsc) and Microsoft DV (Pal).

Ok, I got it to work in Ulead (had to find the setting). But no luck in Premiere, where would the setting be?

[theReal]

Sorry, I really thought the Panasonic codec was available through all video-editing programs. At least it should be (it is in Ulead and in VDub. I can't imagine why it shouldn't be available in Premiere.

I have never tried it in Premiere, but you can frameserve through avisynth in Premiere (maybe an even better solution - you don't need any intermediate files)
You need a plugin for that to work, and of course avisynth, I think it's both on doom's download site.

**EDIT** You say there's an option that says "Microsoft AVI" - use this, it should give you further options for the compression method.
"MS AVI" doesn't mean anything except the filetype will be avi, but the compression could be Divx, Indeo, uncompressed, Premiere DV... etc. (this is like you chose the Panasonic codec in Ulead as well)

[hoops10]

@theReal

I'll use Ulead for now. I did a test clip of about a minute and created an svcd. The quality was kind of blurry though when I played in on my stand-alone (max bitrate=2356, avg bitrate=2100) Should I apply some filters in Avisynth to improve the quality? If so, what filters should I use? BTW, thanks for all your help so far.

[theReal]

I never create SVCD's, so I don't really know what encoder is the best and what filters you could use. The only thing I can say is that DV video seems to loose very much quality on conversion to SVCD or Divx. Divx needs to be >2200k bitrate to kind of preserve the good looks of DV at 640x468 (without further filtering), but still the result is more blurry than the original.

In every case use the resizing filters in avisynth, don't use the Ulead filters, they are crap (that is: only convert the MS DV file to Panasonic DV Type 2 in Ulead without any changes). Then maybe a little temporalsmoother(1) or (2) or (2,1) can help, either before or after resizing, which is best with bicubicresize(nnn,nnn) or (nnn,nnn,0.333,0.333).

Whatever, try it... but too much filtering usually doesn't look good as well.