| 4500+ Great Links | VirtualDub and AviSynth FAQs |
| Copyright © 2008-2009 by Zack Smith. All rights reserved. Q: What is a decent free video editor for Windows?VirtualDub is a useful but inadequate tool for doing simple edits of videos. Many people pair it with AviSynth, which is a scripting language and tool that permits more complex operations.
It's available at
VirtualDub.org.
Q: What does VirtualDub allow?It is a basic tool that lets you open a video for editing, append another video to it, cut and paste segments of video, apply various filters, change the frame rate, compress the video, overlay sound, and so on.Many filters are built-in to VirtualDub, for instance one that converts a color video to B&W; another that lets you change brightness and contrast. Others are free and available for download. Q: What does VirtualDub not allow?A couple of limitations come to mind:
Q: What is Avisynth for?
Available from AviSynth.org
It's another tool that expands what you can do with VirtualDub. It lets you use .avs scripts that you've created, which can accomplish a range of tasks. These scripts are created using a text editor. Some things you can do with .avs scripts:
Q: How do I remove shaking & jittering from video using VirtualDub?Setting up:
Using it:
Results of using DeshakerHere's a link to a YouTube video that someone produced showing a side-by-side before and after deshaking a video: Youtube deshaker demonstration.Q: Which video format compresses the best and retains decent video quality?Xvid. It compresses by a factor of 10. You can download that from Doom9 or from xvid.org .Q: Which video format compresses but does not have any loss of video quality?HuffYUV, available from HuffyUV page formerly at Berkeley. It compresses by a factor of 2.Q: How can read in an Xvid or Divx video? I am getting an error that says I need a Video For Windows (VFW) compatible codec.This occurs with older versions of Windows. Try ffdshow from Sourceforge.net. Or, ZoomPlayer includes ffdshow so installing that may help VirtualDub. You should also download the Divx codec.Q: How can I use VirtualDub to create a video effect of zooming in?There is a Zoom plugin filter.Q: How can I use VirtualDub to create a video effect of panning?There is a Pan plugin filter.Q: How can I use VirtualDub to create a video of many frames from one still photograph?You'll need to create a tiny AviSynth file for this. To show by example, if you want to generate a movie of 240 frames using VirtualDub, first create an Avisynth AVS file that contains this:
ImageSource("MyImage.jpg", end=240)
Q: How can I create a dissolve transition between 2 or more clips?Create an .avs script like this:
c1 = AviSource("clip1.avi")
c2 = AviSource("clip2.avi")
c3 = AviSource("clip3.avi")
return Dissolve(c1, c2, c3, 30)
The above does dissolves at the junctions of c1 & c2,
and c2 & c3, and the duration of the dissolve is 30 frames.
Q: How can I create a video from many photographs e.g. a timelapse film?Let's say you have 100 image files, numbered 0001.jpg throug 0100.jpg. To generate a four-second, 25 fps movie from these, create an AVS file that contains this:
ImageSource("%04d.jpg", 1, 100, 25)
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)
Note, the resize is typically required since
most people shoot higher-resolution photos than they would need
for a video.
Q: How can I add an audio soundtrack to my video?If the audio is in WAV format, it's easy.
a1 = WavSource("myfile1.wav")
a2 = WavSource("myfile2.wav")
a3 = WavSource("myfile3.wav")
soundtrack = a1 + a2 + a3
final_video = AudioDub(vid, soundtrack)
There is a way to use MP3 files, however
I've found that it crashes.
It is better to simply convert your audio to WAV.
Q: How can I convert audio to WAV?Use BeSweet and BeLight. You can download them from Doom9.net . First extract BeLight and then extract BeSweet into BeLight's directory. You actually run BeLight, which is the front-end.Q: How can I convert from one video format to another?Using VirtualDubYou can use VirtualDub to read in a video that's in one format, then set the video compression to something else, then use "Save As AVI" to write it out in another.Using FFMPEGIf you need to create a VOB file, you can download the utility FFMPEG. I personally use this under Linux, not Windows. Under Windows you should download the GUI version of FFMPEG, called WinFF. However, using this tool you can convert:
ffmpeg -sameq -i input.avi output.vob Q: I am getting a strange audio codec tag errorIf you don't have the right audio codec installed you will get an error. The codecs are as follows:
You can obtain the AC3 decompressor here. Links
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