Shareware and HDV (attempts rather than solutions) at DVinfo.net

Dylan Pank · November 3rd, 2004, 06:10 PM

Hi there.

I'm, new around these partsd so go easy on me.

I've been messing around with Kako Itu's excellent footage. But am having a few problems getting my evil way with it. I'm just throwing in these ideas for the benefit of discussion and have no problem with anyone just responding by saying :"WHAT! ARE YOU CRAZY? WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

1. FFmpegX. I wanted to demultiplex the files into mp2 and .m2v files. FFmpegX's demultiplexer woun't accept anythng but .vob or .mpg files, and no, changing the file suffix doesn't work. I also tried using ffmpeg to transcribe into DV. This was a little more successful but still hit and miss. some files (cocoon) seemed to work great, but others either took on strange frame rates (QT always insisted they were 29.97 but it looked faster to me) or failed completely. Some were OK. However on a few the sound stuttered and repeated. Still it showed some promise.

2 DiVA - a bit more reliable than FFmpegX. Again it could be transcoded to DV or any other format but again weird things started to happen. If I deinterlaced (essential in all cases as neither FFmpegX nor DiVA can do field by field rescaling, only on the frame as a whole) then the resulting frame rate seems to be 23.976 in some cases. Even when this didn't seem to be the case there were problems - when I tried to paste the DiVA converted DV cocoon footage (whch QT claimed was 29.97) over the audio from the FFmpegX DV converted cocoon footage, it was out of sync.

DiVA also cannot transcode audio.

3. mpegtxwrap - I wanted to use this to demultiplex but had no luck. others have mention this on the forum but I had no joy with it. It spat out a few sub 4Mb files and then gave up. I'm using panther - what could I be doing wrong? Do I have to give up and buy LumiereHD? Actually it's very reasonably priced (compared to other solutions), but I'm a total skinflint.

I'm shooting to shoot a short film in the new year and am hoping I might be able to rent a 50i model here in the UK and use the short film as a test for the format. I have a feature length project that I am planning to shoot in the summer. AT the moment my set up is limited to a pretty ancient (don't ask how ancient) G4 and Premiere 6.5 but I'm an academic (hence the unwillingness to spend anything), so I have plenty of spare time at weekends and evenings, and busy days teaching when I can leave the machine churning out renders.

Thoughts? Inputs?Gasps of Horror?

Paul St. Denis · November 8th, 2004, 12:07 PM

You can give Project X a try, it works for me. for others on the board results have been mixed.
www.dvinfo.net/jvc/media/ProjectX.tar.gz

Dylan Pank · November 9th, 2004, 06:40 AM

Thanks Paul, I'll give it a go. At the moment I'm using streamclip which I find very useful. It demuxes very reliably and quickly in most cases though has a problem with some of Kaku's clips. I guess they may have got a little corrupted in the capture/ upload process.

Graham Hickling · November 9th, 2004, 06:31 PM

Hi - not quite sure what you want/need to achieve, other than demuxing. But here is a cut and paste out of an old post of mine regarding various shareware foolishness on HDV footage (JVC 720p footage and a PC rather than mac, so YMMV).....

-----------------------------------------
From several months ago: Tried capturing with the little CAPDVHS.EXE freeware app that's available on the web (Google for it) and that was 100% successful.

I also tried exporting a project from Premiere to a .ts file on disk, closing Premiere, and then sending the .ts file back to the camera using WRTDVHS.exe (a companion freeware app to CAPDVHS...). That worked 100% also.

I was interested in authoring some DVDs from the HD1's footage, to see if the extra resolution in the raw HD footage provides better 480p MPEG2 files that I've been able to achieve from my 480i DV cameras. So....I decided to try exporting to a .ts file on disk, and then opening that file with the Avisynth2.5 frameserver (which would allow me to encode the footage with other standalone encoders).

As I discovered, there is indeed a way to open a transport stream in Avisynth2.5, using the MPEG2DEC3.dll plugin. The first step is to open the .ts file with a modified version of DVD2AVI called DVD2AVI-TS (available at http://pbx.mine.nu/dvd2avi/). Save the project as a D2V file and then use the MPEG2Source="file.dvs" command within your AVS script to access the video stream.

One snag I encountered was that DVD2AVI-TS would open the raw .ts streams captured by CAPDVHS, but for some reason would not open the edited ts streams exported by PPro. This was easily fixed however by doing a quick remux (CapDVHS.exe provides a remux option) of the .ts file.

Once I had the .ts file successfully open in my avisynth script, I tweaked the gamma up a notch with the 'levels' command and applied mild spatio-temporal smoothing using the Fluxsmooth plugin (set on it's default values). To encode the file, I opened the AVS script in Procoder and encoded it using the default 'high quality NTSC DVD' template, with aspect ratio set to 16:9.

The end result was great! - much-reduced luma and chroma noise. Definitely a step up from what I've ever been able to achieve from DV footage using similar smoothing and tweaking. So I'm happy.

Kyle Edwards · November 10th, 2004, 02:38 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Graham Hickling : As I discovered, there is indeed a way to open a transport stream in Avisynth2.5, using the MPEG2DEC3.dll plugin. The first step is to open the .ts file with a modified version of DVD2AVI called DVD2AVI-TS (available at http://pbx.mine.nu/dvd2avi/). Save the project as a D2V file and then use the MPEG2Source="file.dvs" command within your AVS script to access the video stream. -->>>

You can also use DGIndex, which is the newest version of DVD2AVI. Just drop the M2T from the Sony into the program and it loads fine, I am not sure if DVD2AVI-TS does that...might. But for your case, it doesn't matter with the Sony.

John Yamamoto · November 23rd, 2004, 11:26 PM

Dear Folks,
I am looking for a HDV version of WINDV or DVIO.
it's simply fast and run almost on any win OS without installation.

i have yet to get the FX1 but downlaod the clips and play with it. anyone has try to output it back to DV tape?

i did try to use Vegas to export as HD 1080i/ and it's seems OK.
also uncompressed avi to Virtualdub and virtualdubMOD/

can anyone be more specific anout AVisnyth?
it's very powerful tool but i forget how to make the script and a GUI version is avaialble too.

thnaks
J. Yamamoto

Steve Crisdale · November 24th, 2004, 12:54 AM

Dylan,
I've demuxed Kaku's m2t files in Womble MPEG-vcr without problems.

TMPGEnc 3 XPress (not the DVD author which is also good - even has dual layer support!!!) works with the m2t files as well, and has excellent capabilities for such an affordable app.

The difficulty for many video utilities is that they're designed for DV/DVD 'at most' material so HDV stuff is beyond the capabilities they were designed for.

In that regard you may well have to become a 'suck it and see explorer' like the rest of us.... though there are some guys who've been playing with their HD10 footage for a year or more now who have some insights on the software front.

November 3rd, 2004, 06:10 PM	#1
Dylan Pank Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Portsmouth, UK Posts: 611	Shareware and HDV (attempts rather than solutions) Hi there. I'm, new around these partsd so go easy on me. I've been messing around with Kako Itu's excellent footage. But am having a few problems getting my evil way with it. I'm just throwing in these ideas for the benefit of discussion and have no problem with anyone just responding by saying :"WHAT! ARE YOU CRAZY? WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" 1. FFmpegX. I wanted to demultiplex the files into mp2 and .m2v files. FFmpegX's demultiplexer woun't accept anythng but .vob or .mpg files, and no, changing the file suffix doesn't work. I also tried using ffmpeg to transcribe into DV. This was a little more successful but still hit and miss. some files (cocoon) seemed to work great, but others either took on strange frame rates (QT always insisted they were 29.97 but it looked faster to me) or failed completely. Some were OK. However on a few the sound stuttered and repeated. Still it showed some promise. 2 DiVA - a bit more reliable than FFmpegX. Again it could be transcoded to DV or any other format but again weird things started to happen. If I deinterlaced (essential in all cases as neither FFmpegX nor DiVA can do field by field rescaling, only on the frame as a whole) then the resulting frame rate seems to be 23.976 in some cases. Even when this didn't seem to be the case there were problems - when I tried to paste the DiVA converted DV cocoon footage (whch QT claimed was 29.97) over the audio from the FFmpegX DV converted cocoon footage, it was out of sync. DiVA also cannot transcode audio. 3. mpegtxwrap - I wanted to use this to demultiplex but had no luck. others have mention this on the forum but I had no joy with it. It spat out a few sub 4Mb files and then gave up. I'm using panther - what could I be doing wrong? Do I have to give up and buy LumiereHD? Actually it's very reasonably priced (compared to other solutions), but I'm a total skinflint. I'm shooting to shoot a short film in the new year and am hoping I might be able to rent a 50i model here in the UK and use the short film as a test for the format. I have a feature length project that I am planning to shoot in the summer. AT the moment my set up is limited to a pretty ancient (don't ask how ancient) G4 and Premiere 6.5 but I'm an academic (hence the unwillingness to spend anything), so I have plenty of spare time at weekends and evenings, and busy days teaching when I can leave the machine churning out renders. Thoughts? Inputs?Gasps of Horror?

November 23rd, 2004, 11:26 PM	#6
John Yamamoto Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 94	Freeware rocks too Dear Folks, I am looking for a HDV version of WINDV or DVIO. it's simply fast and run almost on any win OS without installation. i have yet to get the FX1 but downlaod the clips and play with it. anyone has try to output it back to DV tape? i did try to use Vegas to export as HD 1080i/ and it's seems OK. also uncompressed avi to Virtualdub and virtualdubMOD/ can anyone be more specific anout AVisnyth? it's very powerful tool but i forget how to make the script and a GUI version is avaialble too. thnaks J. Yamamoto

November 24th, 2004, 12:54 AM	#7
Steve Crisdale Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Katoomba NSW Australia Posts: 635	Re: Shareware and HDV (attempts rather than solutions) Dylan, I've demuxed Kaku's m2t files in Womble MPEG-vcr without problems. TMPGEnc 3 XPress (not the DVD author which is also good - even has dual layer support!!!) works with the m2t files as well, and has excellent capabilities for such an affordable app. The difficulty for many video utilities is that they're designed for DV/DVD 'at most' material so HDV stuff is beyond the capabilities they were designed for. In that regard you may well have to become a 'suck it and see explorer' like the rest of us.... though there are some guys who've been playing with their HD10 footage for a year or more now who have some insights on the software front.

November 8th, 2004, 12:07 PM	#2
Paul St. Denis Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Stony Brook NY Posts: 169	You can give Project X a try, it works for me. for others on the board results have been mixed. www.dvinfo.net/jvc/media/ProjectX.tar.gz

November 9th, 2004, 06:40 AM	#3
Dylan Pank Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Portsmouth, UK Posts: 611	Thanks Paul, I'll give it a go. At the moment I'm using streamclip which I find very useful. It demuxes very reliably and quickly in most cases though has a problem with some of Kaku's clips. I guess they may have got a little corrupted in the capture/ upload process.

November 9th, 2004, 06:31 PM	#4
Graham Hickling Trustee Join Date: May 2004 Location: Knoxville, Tennessee Posts: 1,669	Hi - not quite sure what you want/need to achieve, other than demuxing. But here is a cut and paste out of an old post of mine regarding various shareware foolishness on HDV footage (JVC 720p footage and a PC rather than mac, so YMMV)..... ----------------------------------------- From several months ago: Tried capturing with the little CAPDVHS.EXE freeware app that's available on the web (Google for it) and that was 100% successful. I also tried exporting a project from Premiere to a .ts file on disk, closing Premiere, and then sending the .ts file back to the camera using WRTDVHS.exe (a companion freeware app to CAPDVHS...). That worked 100% also. I was interested in authoring some DVDs from the HD1's footage, to see if the extra resolution in the raw HD footage provides better 480p MPEG2 files that I've been able to achieve from my 480i DV cameras. So....I decided to try exporting to a .ts file on disk, and then opening that file with the Avisynth2.5 frameserver (which would allow me to encode the footage with other standalone encoders). As I discovered, there is indeed a way to open a transport stream in Avisynth2.5, using the MPEG2DEC3.dll plugin. The first step is to open the .ts file with a modified version of DVD2AVI called DVD2AVI-TS (available at http://pbx.mine.nu/dvd2avi/). Save the project as a D2V file and then use the MPEG2Source="file.dvs" command within your AVS script to access the video stream. One snag I encountered was that DVD2AVI-TS would open the raw .ts streams captured by CAPDVHS, but for some reason would not open the edited ts streams exported by PPro. This was easily fixed however by doing a quick remux (CapDVHS.exe provides a remux option) of the .ts file. Once I had the .ts file successfully open in my avisynth script, I tweaked the gamma up a notch with the 'levels' command and applied mild spatio-temporal smoothing using the Fluxsmooth plugin (set on it's default values). To encode the file, I opened the AVS script in Procoder and encoded it using the default 'high quality NTSC DVD' template, with aspect ratio set to 16:9. The end result was great! - much-reduced luma and chroma noise. Definitely a step up from what I've ever been able to achieve from DV footage using similar smoothing and tweaking. So I'm happy.

November 10th, 2004, 02:38 PM	#5
Kyle Edwards Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: LI, NY Posts: 274	<<<-- Originally posted by Graham Hickling : As I discovered, there is indeed a way to open a transport stream in Avisynth2.5, using the MPEG2DEC3.dll plugin. The first step is to open the .ts file with a modified version of DVD2AVI called DVD2AVI-TS (available at http://pbx.mine.nu/dvd2avi/). Save the project as a D2V file and then use the MPEG2Source="file.dvs" command within your AVS script to access the video stream. -->>> You can also use DGIndex, which is the newest version of DVD2AVI. Just drop the M2T from the Sony into the program and it loads fine, I am not sure if DVD2AVI-TS does that...might. But for your case, it doesn't matter with the Sony.