DDogg
16th March 2003, 20:19
Primarily my video interests have morphed towards DVCams and the DV format, but I still do a fair amount of rips and I have found some of the tools I use for DV to be very helpful in evaluating the effects of avisynth filters used in that ripping. If you are bored, you might like to try some of them.
Video Vegas (full downloadable demo, but big- Link below) - The SoFo folks have spent a lot of time perfecting real time preview. Those scripts that will yield only a frame or two over a few seconds in WMP will actually preview fast enough in Video Vegas to get a good (and quick) feel for the effects of the filter set. VV seems to have a very smart framebuffer and since it must be used in combination with VFAPI to view the AVS script, perhaps it is a series of buffers that help. Also, VV does framedropping very intelligently so as to provide a decent preview when it cannot show the full framerate. Another helpful feature is the ability to "pre-render" a loop or section of the video. This section will then playback in real time to the screen, OR if you have a dvcam and external monitor, play your script directly out to TV via the firewire port! Really lets you see what you are doing in a time efficient way.
One of the very useful features I use when ripping is VV's ability to view multiple video events. What this means to the ripper is that multiple scripts like the unfiltered original AVS, and all your various different AVS scripts using different filter sets can reside in Vegas. Because each event can be "muted" or "soloed", this allows you to evaluate all the different scripts together on a frame accurate basis. This is REAL handy for the ripper to say the least!
Another useful tool is one recently mentioned in the DV forum, Video2DV.exe. It is only useful to those of you that have a DVCam and firewire hookup. You can directly play back an AVS script (shelled with VFAPI) to a TV monitor via the firewire port. Even slow, filter heavy scripts will render enough frames speed to get a good feel for the effect of the filter chain.
There are instruction in the NLE forum for those of you that have not needed VFAPI before if you would like to try these tools.
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step2.asp?DID=435
IMPORTANT NOTE: Right click on the video in Vegas, select properties > Media Tab and then change the pixel aspect ratio to .9091 to get the proper ratio view.
Video Vegas (full downloadable demo, but big- Link below) - The SoFo folks have spent a lot of time perfecting real time preview. Those scripts that will yield only a frame or two over a few seconds in WMP will actually preview fast enough in Video Vegas to get a good (and quick) feel for the effects of the filter set. VV seems to have a very smart framebuffer and since it must be used in combination with VFAPI to view the AVS script, perhaps it is a series of buffers that help. Also, VV does framedropping very intelligently so as to provide a decent preview when it cannot show the full framerate. Another helpful feature is the ability to "pre-render" a loop or section of the video. This section will then playback in real time to the screen, OR if you have a dvcam and external monitor, play your script directly out to TV via the firewire port! Really lets you see what you are doing in a time efficient way.
One of the very useful features I use when ripping is VV's ability to view multiple video events. What this means to the ripper is that multiple scripts like the unfiltered original AVS, and all your various different AVS scripts using different filter sets can reside in Vegas. Because each event can be "muted" or "soloed", this allows you to evaluate all the different scripts together on a frame accurate basis. This is REAL handy for the ripper to say the least!
Another useful tool is one recently mentioned in the DV forum, Video2DV.exe. It is only useful to those of you that have a DVCam and firewire hookup. You can directly play back an AVS script (shelled with VFAPI) to a TV monitor via the firewire port. Even slow, filter heavy scripts will render enough frames speed to get a good feel for the effect of the filter chain.
There are instruction in the NLE forum for those of you that have not needed VFAPI before if you would like to try these tools.
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/download/step2.asp?DID=435
IMPORTANT NOTE: Right click on the video in Vegas, select properties > Media Tab and then change the pixel aspect ratio to .9091 to get the proper ratio view.