Capturing HV20 Footage

[Owen Meek]

informative thread. thanks!

[Thomas R. Dickens]

Didn't work. Came up with 0KB sized AviSynth Script. It won't go into VirtualDubMod. Just gets an error.

Back to the drawing board

Thanks,

Argh,

Thomas

[Gavin Ouckama]

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

Hmmm ... you're the second one to have this sort of problem. The original template.avs must not be created correctly for you. Wonder which part isn't clear. I have a hunch ...

I "think" I know the problem. I have been putting my m2t file in the c:\capture\24p directory versus just the c:\capture directory.

When I get home tonight I will move the m2t file up a directory and see if that fixes things ...

[Steve Szudzik]

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

doublepost ...

Also, you may want to consider steve's new process ... http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=94235

Mike, did you have a chance to try the plugin? I saw about 190 views to the thread but no responses, so was wondering a bit.

I think I might create a second version that isn't a Vegas Plugin, but just a straight .exe file that folks can run on their PC's and specify a folder that contains the video files they want to convert, similar to the .bat scripts, but that automate VDub as well. It would be 95% re-use of my existing code, so shouldn't take too long to produce.

-Steve

[Thomas R. Dickens]

My files were in the caputre and not the 24p directory, and I still get the issue. Don't think that is it...

On another note... now there were a few "gotchas" in the installation directions on the tutorial (maybe this was a source of problems?):
1. ActivePerl was a little confusing as to exactly which one of the files on this page to download and install (I do not have a 64bit machine):
http://www.activestate.com/store/dow...5-08d58c2648ca
2. MPA Source there are two files: Cache and Float. Both contain different files for mpasource.dll
3. There is no "Left click" install on msu-ls-codec.exe, or Lagarith, or HuffYUV, only right click install.
Perhaps, it is some of these things that were somehow not done correctly, as to why this isn't working?
Could someone grab all of the final files that will be needed, exactly as is and put them in a directory and zip it up for download, with appropriate names, etc. as to exactly where to put it so there is no chance of mistake? I really want to make this work for my edit.

[Thomas R. Dickens]

Steve,
Could you do that please? Make a stand alone .exe that would do all of this stuff?
That would be amazing.
Thank you,
Thomas

[Steve Szudzik]

No problem Tom. I'll try to get to it tonight if I have a chance. We had to take our dog to the emergency vet last night and will probably have to spend some time there tonight as well depending on how he's recovering from his surgery.

--steve

[Thomas R. Dickens]

Steve,

Thank you!!! I hope your dog is OK... :-)

PS: Some great things would be this:
a. I can bulk alter all of my files to get rid of doubled frames/ghosting/interlacing, and have true 24p frames from my HV20.
b. Sound synced up automatically (in the same file as the video file would be awesome)
c. Proper aspect ratio for final video file so no resizing needed.
d. converts to 1440X1080 or to 1920X1080?

Thanks again,

Thomas

[Steve Szudzik]

Thanks Tom, the pup is having a hard year. He had a stomach contortion (or something) last night where his stomach flipped around and cut off his esophagus. They had to do surgery to flip it back around and sew it to his side to keep it from happening again. I believe they also had to remove his spleen. He's 13 and we're just hoping that he'll make it through the post-op. Won't be getting many new toys anytime soon with the $$$ it's costing me, but I can't bring myself to put him down.

For your other q's:
a. Should be able to do this in bulk without a problem. DGIndex & VDub seem to do a good job with this. I'm just batching things around those apps.
b. The sound sync is in my current plugin and would be in the exe as well. It all winds up properly sync'ed in the final single output file that VDub generates.
c. VDub maintains the proper aspect ratio, doesn't alter it from the original, at least in the testing I've done with a few codecs. The cineform one I had (which shouldn't be working for me) produced it's file but was very narrow and tall with funky colors when viewed in Win Media Player, but when I put it into the Vegas timeline it look perfect and I rendered a 24p WMV with it and that played perfectly in WMP.
d. Are you asking to scale up a 1440 to a 1920 or vice-versa? Not sure whether VDub does that offhand, but if it's scriptable in the VDub language then it should be possible.

Steve

[Mike Dulay]

@Steve
I'm away from my editing PC so I can't try out the dll quite yet.

@Gavin
Give that a try. I found a note at Doom9 with your error message, it happens to older releases of DGIndex.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...382#post917382

I've tried the same process on a Windows XP SR2 and Windows Vista Home Premium box and encountered a similar problem to yours initially. Back then it had to do with the template.avs not being found by dgindex because of the pathname.

Could you post a sample of your d2v file?

@Thomas
1) You want the Windows (x86) MSI file for 32-bit version. I'll update the blog. I was also compiling my version of the script with PAR for those that don't have Vegas ... unless Steve beats me to it. 8-)
2) I use the Float version because its newer. Unless you're running 80486 or less you probably have a built-in FPU.
3) The choice of codec wouldn't have anything to do with it. That part doesn't come until dgindex is done.

Could you post a copy of your d2v file also?

BTW, would have zipped everything up into one package but the virtualdub license agreement said not to bundle it with any other application. Hmmm ... I didn't see that clause in avisynth and others ... hmmm.

[Mike Dulay]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/d71x3y

I've zipped up avisynth, the 24p scripts, plugins, and lagarith codec into a zip. You still need to install HDVSplit and Virtualdubmod separately.

Decompress the file and you will find an installme.bat. Run that, it will step your through Avisynth install. Then automagically create c:\capture and install lagarith. Drop an m2t file into c:\capture. Then follow the instructions in howtotest.txt. These new instructions use a compiled version of my perl script, so that hopefully takes away the perl version question.

Don't worry if you've already had avisynth previously installed. It seems to take care of itself.

[Thomas R. Dickens]

All who helped me with this. It seems to finally work. Important is to keep the name of the file with no spaces, but also, this new download, and install seems to work so far. I only tried it with one file so far though (and there is no lip sync sound in the file to really put it to the test), but I will test more files soon, and hope for the best. As for the one file I did test, it seems to be great so far. No ghosting/interlacing/flicker, etc.
Thanks a lot!
If I don't write again for a while, it is because all is well!
Thank you!
Thomas

[Steve Szudzik]

Hey Tom

I got a chance to update my Vegas script to a standalone executable tonight that you can use to automate and batch the workflow. You can find it at the below location:

http://www.szudzik.net/vegas/scripts/HV20Pulldown.html

It's C#, so requires the .Net Framework 2.0, just like vegas but his doesn't have any Vegas dependancies. The UI is similar to the vegas script, so that documentation will pretty well guide you through. I'll setup a better documentation page soon.

Here's the script doc page: http://www.szudzik.net/vegas/scripts/24pWorkflow.html

The difference here is that one the 2nd tab, you can select all the media files, from wherever you want and add them for processing. This version also does not require the copying of the file to the "working directory" so it's much faster.

Let me know what y'all think..

Steve

[Thomas R. Dickens]

This is great. It seems to work very well with my footage now...

Only thing...

When I save as MSU or similar (uncompressed) from Virtual Dub the footage is so huge (like 20X the size it was captured from Vegas [by the way, is there any benifits to using HDVsplit for Capturing, over Vegas?]).

I went from huge original 1.5 gig .m2t files captured out of Vegas, to now 22 gig .avi files (uncompressed) out of VirtualDubMod!

They don't play properly, and are impossible to view/edit, though I think uncompressed is the smartest way to go (hoping that this film eventually goes to theaters, or high def dvd).

Is there another compression that is much smaller that looks just as good, or is there another way I should be doing this? Perhaps making a high res and low res version and subbing in the high res for final output from the edit? I've never done that before (only having edited in NTSC before this).

Is that what you all would suggest, or a different compressor, so I can stay high def, but be able to move around.

When I went to MPEG 4 it looked OK to me, and was actually smaller than my original .m2t file, and played real time (but for some reason in Vegas it only loaded the sound!). But I assume this is a huge quality hit from uncompressed.

Any suggetions?

Thank you,

Thomas

[Gavin Ouckama]

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

http://www.sendspace.com/file/d71x3y

I've zipped up avisynth, the 24p scripts, plugins, and lagarith codec into a zip. You still need to install HDVSplit and Virtualdubmod separately.

Decompress the file and you will find an installme.bat. Run that, it will step your through Avisynth install. Then automagically create c:\capture and install lagarith. Drop an m2t file into c:\capture. Then follow the instructions in howtotest.txt. These new instructions use a compiled version of my perl script, so that hopefully takes away the perl version question.

Don't worry if you've already had avisynth previously installed. It seems to take care of itself.

Mike,

You are the man ... this seems to do the trick!

Now to play with all the codecs and pick one that I like ...