how the hell to use avisynth

[aussiestew]

I have seen that a prog like avisynth is good for filtering rainy vhs prior to burning to dvd, so I dow loaded avisynth 2.5, installed it and hit a big…WTF…. .how do I run this thing, so I look on google and find the site here…
http://www.avisynth.org/Section+1%3A+About+AviSynth#q1.10

cant figure out what its on about with lines like
“First, you create a simple text document with special commands, called a script. These commands make references to one or more videos and the filters you wish to run on them”

could someone please tell me what the hell this means? I couldn’t write script to save my life.
better still, what is a better prog to use where i can install it and just click and run xxx.exe

[digidragon]

You can just open Notepad, type a couple of lines like...

AVISource("c:\myvideo.avi")
TemporalSoften(4, 4, 8, scenechange=15, mode=2)

Then save the file as "testvideo.avs" (be sure to include the quotes so that it doesn't get saved as a txt file) and open the avs with a media player. You should then see the results of the softening filter.

[MaximRecoil]

AviSynth is a frame server that sort of runs unseen in the background. You write scripts in Notepad and save them with an AVS file extension. Then you load the AVS file into an editing program like VirtualDub and the filters will be applied. Say you have a 640x480 AVI file that you want to resize to 320x240 using the Lanczos resizing filter. You would open Notepad and type:

AviSource("c:\folder\myclip.avi")
LanczosResize(320,240)

Then save the file in Notepad as "all files" in the "save as type" drop down box and give it a filename with a .avs extension, such as myclip.avs.

The first line tells AviSynth where the video file is located that you want to process. The second line tells it what filter you want to use to resize with and then the values (320,240). If you then open this AVS file that you just created in VirtualDub you will see that it is resized to 320x240. Read more about it at http://www.avisynth.org/index.php?page=YourFirstScript

After you get the hang of it you need to find the filter that you want to use and put it in the "plugins" folder in the AviSynth install directory. Then check your filter's documentation to find out how to implement the filter in an AVS script. It generally goes like - NameOfFilter(parameters)

It is a tool that is worth learning because it is quite powerful.

[aussiestew]

You can just open Notepad, type a couple of lines like...

AVISource("c:\myvideo.avi")
TemporalSoften(4, 4, 8, scenechange=15, mode=2)

Then save the file as "testvideo.avs" (be sure to include the quotes so that it doesn't get saved as a txt file) and open the avs with a media player. You should then see the results of the softening filter.



i still dont fully understand this...what does the 'TemporalSoften(4, 4, 8, scenechange=15, mode=2)' mean? where do i save it to? and if i got 100 odd mins per file, how can i see whats going on?

so i guess the mpeg's from the video capture have to be converted to .avi, then back to mpeg for authoring to dvd? isnt all them conversion steps gonna degrade the file a lot more?

[MaximRecoil]

so i guess the mpeg's from the video capture have to be converted to .avi, then back to mpeg for authoring to dvd? isnt all them conversion steps gonna degrade the file a lot more?You'll need an MPEG decoder plugin for MPEG's in AviSynth.

[digidragon]

I assumed that you'd converted the VHS to avi, but if it's in mpeg format, just use DirectShowSource instead of AVISource. Save the avs file to the same folder as the mpeg. Open the avs with media player, and play it, move along a few minutes, play some more, just like you'd play a regular video.

The TemporalSoften filter removes noise.

[mg262]

where do i save it to?
Anywhere!

and if i got 100 odd mins per file, how can i see whats going on?
Open the file in VirtualDub (or VirtualDubMod) and scroll around. If you haven't used that, I would recommend playing with it for a while before starting on AVISynth... VirtualDub also allows use of filters which come separately from the program itself, and while the range of such filters isn't as wide as for AVISynth, you will still get an idea of how to build up a chain of filters to use on a video -- and use a GUI while you do it.

so i guess the mpeg's from the video capture have to be converted to .avi, then back to mpeg for authoring to dvd? isnt all them conversion steps gonna degrade the file a lot more? Yes. Capturing in MPEG is not a good idea -- IMO really not a good idea. Have you read the analogue capture guide on the main site? Try to capture in HuffYUV if at all possible.

[aussiestew]

Yes. Capturing in MPEG is not a good idea -- IMO really not a good idea. Have you read the analogue capture guide on the main site? Try to capture in HuffYUV if at all possible.


ok, so if i get you right,

1) i capture useing huffyuv, plenty of space so zero compression.
(do not use mpeg)

2) edit audio as required

3) use authoring software (got tmpg dvd author) to get vob ect

4)burn

[smiller667]

Don't forget to encode to dvd-compliant mpeg before authoring - step 2.5. so to say.

[mg262]

ok, so if i get you right,

1) i capture useing huffyuv, plenty of space so zero compression.
(do not use mpeg)

2) edit audio as required

3) use authoring software (got tmpg dvd author) to get vob ect

4)burn

yup. you would use whatever filters you wanted to use after step 1 and before step 3. you can either filter and save the result as a separate AVI file (using huffyuv again) before encoding that or you can feed the .AVS file directly into whatever program is doing your MPEG encoding (probably TMPGEnc?).

HuffYUV does take up a lot of space -- maybe 600MB/min at ~DVD resolutions, perhaps a bit more or less depending on what sort of material you're capturing. But with modern hard disks its hopefully not too much of a problem... if you really can't manage the space, you want to use something like an mjpeg codec at 19 (out of 20) quality.

A while back, I pulled together a diagram of the capture process I normally use when dubbing, which might help to clarify things... let me hunt it out...

edit:
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mg262/posts/process.jpg

So you want to ignore the bit about ISOs, decrypting, DGIndex, etc... you just have that AVI going in from the bottom left. The output files at the end of the process are MPEG-2 video and audio files respectively which you would then feed into any DVD authoring program. The process I describe isn't the only or simplest or easiest way to do things... it's just to give you an idea.

[aussiestew]

thanks mg262, that flowchart kinda thing helps to see things better. so an .AVS is an .AVI file that has been processed bu avisynth? and is the 'Audition' any audio handling software, i got cooledit pro.

though i didnt realy want to use avisynth as it now looks too complex, prefer stuff with a good GUI ect

thanks

[mg262]

An .AVS is a small text file belonging to avisynth that 'pretends' to be an .AVI. It's the same as an AVI for most purposes but doesn't take up the space.

Audition is cool edit pro! it was bought by Adobe and renamed. I mainly use it for the hiss removal functions... things like normalisation and stretching could actually be done in avisynth if I wanted to. most people use besweet to encode audio but the last time I checked the besweet documentation suggested that it wasn't meant to function as a full-fledged AC3 encoder.