Avisynth extension plugin

[Wilbert]

On the news (Edwin made a new extension plugin):

The Avisynth extension plugin extends Avisynth's basic functions. It can read compressed audio from an AVI, read audio/video or one stream from an AVI, read various colorformats from an AVI (..)

Sounds nice, but ...

Instead of making a new AviSynth version with those new functions (which would be free of course), Edwin made a plugin which is not free. It does not fall under the license of AviSynth. Instead of a part of the license I will quote a part of the readme.txt:

"Some functions have a SPEED limitation when this plugin is not registered. It is mandatory to read the license of this product before using/installing it. After 30 days this plugin stops working and needs to be removed from your computer.

Functions with a speed limitation are:
- AVIsource (5fps after reading 5 minutes of video)"

Well, too bad ...

[LordDethstar]

Originally posted by Wilbert
Well, too bad ...

Yeah, too bad...
Well, there is nothing this plugin can do which AviSynth in combination with the VirtualDub frameserver and VFAPI can't do, and it's free/faster than 5fps.

I'm not buying any of this stuff...

[Marc FD]

How do you use VDub's frameserving to load audio in avisynth ??
i would really like to use it.
Can you give a sample script.

I don't know who is "Edwin" but i don't like him.I would never dl (and crack of course) such a "extension". (beurk, reminds me DivX/RV sh*t, i don't want this in avisynth)

I think there is plenty of gifted avisynth coders who are acquired to the freeware cause. Maybe a group of these could add audio support to avisynth?

[Richard Berg]

While I'm actually an audio guy (musician) at heart, I know very little about manipulating digital audio. I see that sh0dan's added some audio-related tweaks (a new Normalize() function) to the code recently, hopefully he can lead us in this direction once he's done optimizing SmoothHIQ.

[Marc FD]

I'll offer my help to any project to add audio support to avisynth.
I think adding .AVI Audio Parsing and MP3 decoding like in VDub would be already very good.

[trbarry]

I am also not a digital audio guy but I would love some way to be able to pass ac3 audio with proper sync all the way from DVD2AVI through Avisynth. I wouldn't even care what format it was as long as it could keep all the channels.

Is anybody actually planning anything even similar to this? I seem to have a mental block against setting off on any audio projects on my own. But I'd be willing to help if anyone got a sensible project together and actually knew anything about it.

- Tom

[Blight]

I think that fixing the DirectShow reader so that it reads audio should be the best. Although, it may be odd with AC3.

[trbarry]

If you mean the DirectShowSource() function it has the problems of random access and correctly reporting frame counts. Otherwise I'd be using it a lot more even without sound. I don't know any way to get around those problems without a d2v file or the equivalent but maybe someone does.

- Tom

[Wilbert]

@Marc FD,

I don't know who is "Edwin" but (..)

He (Edwin van Eggelen) is one of the developers of AviSynth (see Q&A and http://www.videotools.net/uk/index.php). Strangely enough he is also the project administrator of the original (now dead) sourceforge project and a member of the revised sourceforge project.

[Marc FD]

everybody can turn bad ...

[Richard Berg]

You're the DirectShow expert, Blight, so any help you can lend us in this area is appreciated. I won't have time to learn a new API for a week or three at best...

[poptones]

I don't get it. Do you really use audio functions? I don't even worry about them any more; I always separate the audio and video anyway so they can be properly muxed by the encoder I'm using. And for anything more sophisticated than a simple rip you're going to need to use an audio tool anyway. I think a far more valuable contribution would be an open source sound editor - something like a combination of Cool Edit and Acid.

This kind of nonsense is why I quit sharing my (admittedly small) contributions to the first project. Oh well: let the market decide, I guess. I hope the money edwin makes compensates for the damage done to his reputation. The site remains up, so I guess he's offering value to somebody.

Edit, hours later...

I knew there had to be something like I mentioned.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Not quite a replacement for Acid, but for most a very good replacement for Cool Edit...

[Marc FD]

You get me wrong (Sh0dan too)
what i want is not audio filtering, but the ability to take the audio from the compressed mp3 interlaved in the .avi
Because creating a 1,4 Gb wav each time i want to see a movie using postprocesing with avisynth is NOT a solution.
Yes, just one little feature who'll make me very happy, but maybe it's harder than it seems (but why VDub can do it ??)

I'll give an exemple :

AVIsource("avi_with_mp3_audio.avi")

I would like to load this in my player and to see AND to HEAR !!!
Is it too much to ask :( ??

[trbarry]

I don't get it. Do you really use audio functions? I don't even worry about them any more; I always separate the audio and video anyway so they can be properly muxed by the encoder I'm using. And for anything more sophisticated than a simple rip you're going to need to use an audio tool anyway. I think a far more valuable contribution would be an open source sound editor - something like a combination of Cool Edit and Acid.

poptones -

The problem for me is that I have no musical ear and almost zero talent for manually fixing lip sync problems. So I would rather put up with dragging the sound along with the video during processing if only it could automatically keep it synced up somehow. But HDTV digital capture sound sync problems are pandemic, on most capture cards. :(

People with Golden Ears may want to fine tune the audio with a good sound studio. People with Tin Ears like me should leave it alone. ;)

- Tom

[Richard Berg]

I haven't run into sync issues very often, but FWIW this has never failed to correct matters:

-load into VDub, write down video length, extract WAV
-load WAV into audio editor of choice, change length to match video
-compress into format of choice
-remux in VDub

However, I do highly agree that 'AVIsource("avi_with_mp3_audio.avi")' should work. If we're to be useful as a frameserver, at least supporting audio pass-thru is a must; actual audio filters are gravy.

[lovelegend]

Originally posted by Wilbert
@Marc FD,
He (Edwin van Eggelen) is one of the developers of AviSynth (see Q&A and http://www.videotools.net/uk/index.php). Strangely enough he is also the project administrator of the original (now dead) sourceforge project and a member of the revised sourceforge project.

You know why did I start using avisynth? CCE didn't accept vdr file, and then I searched this forum and found his site, I found that he's link2 program was very handy, but if it's not registered, it passed only 5fps... Therefore, I don't know it's irony or not, but if he didn't charge me money for using his program, I would never enter the world of avisynth... :D

[Blight]

Here's the thing with DirectShow, Microsoft blunders and Accurate Frame Seeking:

1. Microsoft screwed something up in DX8 that causes frame-based seeking to be EXTREMELY slow and thrashes your hard disk bad. This only applies to non-AVI seeking (MPEG1) as far as I remember.
2. Not all formats support frame based time measurements
(MPEG2/WMV/ASF).
3. The DivX 5.02 codec has a bug where it won't decode (or at least display) the currect frame while seeking & paused. I don't think it was an issue with DivX 4.xx and it's NOT an issue with ffdshow, so that may be one way of overcoming this bug.

However, aren't we all using AVI here? I believe that AVI does support frame-accurate seeking. I mean, you can at least modify the code to use frame-based mode and use that to seek, instead of interpolating the aproximate frame from the duration/frame rate.

So ... you won't have ASF/WMV/MPEG2 support, but you should have AVI, which should be ok. Just throw in audio support, and you're done.

[Koepi]

Nope, DShow seeking in avis is screwed, too, believe me - else OggMux could do frame-accurate cutting/splitting...

Regards,
Koepi

[Blight]

I'm not sure what you mean by cutting/splitting, unless you're a source filter, directshow doesn't give you key-frame information and as such, cutting can be an issue, but I don't think there's an issue with seeking.

[Marc FD]

I think decoding DShow audio without desync is "mission impossible".
But the thing we need in AviSynth is avi-compressed audio support.
It's possible, at least for mp3, because VDub already do it.
If AVIsource could deinterlave and decompress MP3 audio from the AVI, it would already be very interesting. because every user of avisynth don't have time to decompress the audio to wav, then to recompress and interlave it...

Maybe it's possible to frame-serve the mp3 stream ?
so VDub or any other player would simply decode it

The both could be usefull, direct stream for lossless transfert and decompression for filtering.

[dividee]

@Marc:
Apparently you don't know what ACM is ;) Have a look here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30484)