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View Full Version : Converting Webcam Footage from uncompressed Avi to XViD


View Full Version : Converting Webcam Footage from uncompressed Avi to XViD


DrewWilson
August 27th, 2008, 08:20 PM
I've been testing my webcam for video-making. I'd like to burn the video's to DVD, but the files are too big (24GB each) Strange since they are about an hour long each, but WMP spat the DVD back out and thought 'whatever' and figured that I'd be better off sticking 4 to a data DVD anyway. Before you ask, I'm not doing the Numa Numa dance, I'm actually attempting to make some educational video demo's.

Anyway, I noticed there is generally positive comments about AutoGK. I spent about 4 days in vane to encode these video's. It started out with an error that said that I needed to have a dimension of at least 4. Since it was on auto, I put the settings at maximum (640) width. I tried again and had the error 'can't find frames.log' So, my usual n00b hacking self said 'create a blank log file for it to find' Once it started encoding (since that's the moment it seems to clear out the temp directory), I thought I had successfully got it to work. After a half an hour of compressing the audio, it spits out another error which is basically 'unable to open avi' I browsed through the AutoGK directory and it said that I should delete the comptest avi. After doing that, I redid the previous steps and went back to the usual 'width must be greater than 4' Since I already messed with the width setting, I said 'screw it, this is rediculous'

I downloaded DVDx, but it only seems to recognize IFO files. Whatever. Looked at Dshow, but it seems to only be a player. I looked at Virtual dub, but the intro page doesn't say it supports Vista. The last choice I even heard of was Vidomi. Downloaded that and installed it. After starting up the program, had a gui conflict (which didn't seem to be a major issue) and when I loaded the avi file, the program completely crashed.

Considering most stuff is encoded in XViD, it's been surprisingly a huge pain in the ass to do a seemingly simple compression task.

So, any ideas on what I'm doing wrong (besides using Vista, I know that :P )? Thanks in advance. :)

mountain_rage
August 27th, 2008, 08:32 PM
Virtual dub worked great for me in XP, never tried it in Vista. Its also a great capturing program, tons of free plug-ins for cleaning up the video. My advice would be to try it on Vista, never know it might work. One of the programs with the same filters as Virtual dub is AviSynth (http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page) but its all command interface, pain in the ass to use.

If all you want to do is convert video, try MediaCoder (http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/), or Super (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html) (super might have a Trojan built in, people found it had some kind of call home feature which seems to do nothing).

As you have found out, Vista is really incompatible with old video editing software. Has to do with how it handles video, it apparently wasn't originally built with OpenGl in mind. So basically Microsoft temporarily gimped all open source video programs, and many commercial products as well. Things are getting better, and OpenGl 3 is supposed to come out eventually, hopefully that will fix most of the Vista video issues. Not sure if this is whats causing all the problems, but I've kept XP on my machine in the event I need to do some work with videos.

DrewWilson
August 27th, 2008, 09:43 PM
OK, update. Installed MediaCoder and on opening the program, I get this:

Windows - No Disk
Exception Processing Message 0x0000013 Parameters 0x75E4023C 0xE370ADB4 0x75E4023C 0x75E4023C

Try Again doesn't do anything other than bring up the same window. Either Cancel of continue gives me this message:

Unable to access registry for system font information

From the looks of things, they are still working on the bugs of this for Vista. In any event, I can't even do anything with the program, but I got a wierd message telling me I installed Google Desktop.

It's increasinly looking like I'm screwed since I doubt I can transfer the files onto my XP machine... though I think I can do it one at a time, but I don't think I'll continue this week long plus headache (though it's been an off and on thing admittedly) any more this evening.

To think I thought Vista has become relatively in the clear of all these issues by now. Definitely wrong on that one.

Edit: I just noticed a new icon on the system tray. Turns out to be the program. I'll see if it still works after the errors I got. Might still work.

DrewWilson
August 27th, 2008, 11:29 PM
Hmm... for some reason, the output files have no problem with audio, but the video is twice as fast (I actually think it's 4 times too fast) Since this is, by far, the farthest I've gotten along on this, is there anyway to sync the video to the audio? Would time have anything to do with this as well?

I'm, of course, using MediaCoder.

mountain_rage
August 28th, 2008, 12:06 AM
Haven't used the program in a long time so I'm not sure what to tell you. On top of that I always converted using Divx not Xvid so I'm completely unfamiliar with the encoder. I know you can change rates and syncing with Virtualdub, but thats probably no help. To be honest I've never had syncing issues except when I was capturing from VHS. In that case the computer couldn't keep up with the video so it dropped frames, because of that the audio was out of sync. From what I understand that shouldn't be an issue when converting from one filetype to another. Did you try adjusting some of the encoder settings?

DigitalJunkie
August 28th, 2008, 11:22 AM
@DrewWilson,

Do you have GSpot, don't worry it's freeware. It should be able to tell you what the frame rate from the original video, so you know what is the difference between the original & converted video for your encoding settings.

Free GSpot: http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

DrewWilson
August 28th, 2008, 11:50 AM
I actually am aware of gspot and have it installed. Didn't use it up to this point because I didn't actually think it was needed. :\ the program (MediaCoder) sees the video as 30fps and is trying to convert it to 25 fps. I don't think this alone would cause the video to speed up to 4x the audio speed because it doesn't mathematically make any sense.

Though, good thought, I'll compare the notes of the original uncompressed video and compressed video.

Oh yeah, and testing the output file, I'm using VLC which, to my knowledge, is about as good as a video player comes when it comes to different codecs. (BSplayer for subs usually, but this has nothing to do with subs of course)

edit: and I've messed with the quality of the audio at one point, but returned it to the default setting with no effect after the video issue. Still looking in the settings to see if there's an option to disable 'video spaz mode' ;)

DigitalJunkie
August 28th, 2008, 04:07 PM
Have you check the hardware acceleration settings?