Biggest Pile of Crap

[LastNinja3]

Let me share a revelation with you....

I lent few tapes the other day with a nice rare japanese drama hoping for capturing it and encoding to DivX for quality vewing later on.

Ran VirtualDub, captured first episode in 760x576 with audio stream at 44k1 Hz Mono.

Start encoding using DivX 5.0.5 and Lame Mpeg-3 audio compression at 96Kbps 44k1 mono. Can't process due to illegal image input. Blaha blaha..

Needless to say I used cropping and resize (to 640x480) filters. Apparently very "legal" configuration since resize applies before compression.

Tried to move Divx.log and renaming few times - doesn't help.

Finally switched to 1pass instead of multi pass. Hurray! Works!

Not quite. Now Audio Compression Management starts bitching.
Mpeg-3 codec did not have any option for 96 kbps 44k1 mono encoding. Lame had. But it refused to process.

All in all i tried XviD encoding and it worked a treat. Although took me 9 hrs for 30Min episode.

I have to return video tapes tomorrow and spent 3 days on DivX workaround didn't help much.

So, what is my point?

DIVX, LAME MP3 and Virtual Dub is a pile of gunk!
I should have used Xoom Video Clean or Pinnacle Studio 9 in the first place.

This horrible GPL garbage (only way to describe it) is not worth precious time.

I only wish I could stick my foot in the developers FACES and twist few times...

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[admin]

I don't think you'll get any supporters of your view here for obvious reasons

BTW, DivX is not GPL - it's commercial, and it's one of the industry standard codecs like WMV. Pretty much all the codecs (eg. XviD) now are based on MPEG-4, and are almost compatible with each other, so if you have anything to complain about, it should be MPEG-4. LAME is also an industry standard codec - some tests have shown it to be higher quality than your average MP3 codec.

I have a video capture card that comes with software that allows me to compress straight to DivX (1 pass of course) in realtime. Otherwise, I capture to MPEG-2 and then re-compress later using VDub at around 25 frames per second. With video tape, the best resolution to use is something lower, like 352x288. You'll also need a fast CPU, since video compression is very processor intensive.

[LastNinja3]

I can accept long compression time. After all I have only 2600Mhz Athlon XP machine with 512Mb RAM. I don't complain about that.

I just want to state the fact, that all above mentioned software is virtually useless.

Looking for support is not my intention either. I simply felt extremely angry due to the fact that the legit encode configuration options generate error after error.

Let me recite a very famous engineer responsible for Commodore Amiga:

"If you know how hardware works - you design better software. If you know how software works - you design better hardware"

Shame that the muppets designing DivX, LAME and VirtualDub never understood that fact.

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[ormonde]

"I should have used Xoom Video Clean or Pinnacle Studio 9 in the first place."

Well........Did any of those work out for you?

[LastNinja3]

Both Pinnacle Studio and Video Clean easied the recording significantly.

As for encoding - they were able to encode Audio at 96Kbps 44k1 Mono in Mpeg-3 format (which Virtual Dub failed).

DivX remained DivX and just refused encoding completely. Only difference is that Video Clean seemed to force encoding, supressing the error messages....

[ormonde]

I would give "VirtualDubMod" a try. (A different program than the regular Virtual Dub, but it is a varient of it)

[LastNinja3]

I was using VirtualDubMod actually. Sorry I didn't clarify from beginning.

The problem itself lies not withing VirtualDub, DivX or LAME alone.
It's the combination.

All this pulling in different directions creates issues. One program does not work with one codec, another program doesn't like other codec. The flexibility and cross integration is nonexistant as such...

[ormonde]

"The flexibility and cross integration is nonexistant as such.."

Well, I don't agree entirely with that assessment. Maybe in your case, it's the particular "VERSIONS" of the codecs that are causing the conflicts.

[LastNinja3]

That is possible.

Not at my home workstation at the moment, so the only exact versions I can provide is DivX 5.0.5 and VirtualDubMod 1.5.10 (stable). "Stable" is not exact word I would use in the description...

[SpikeSpiegel]

Re: Biggest Pile of Crap

Originally posted by LastNinja3
This horrible GPL garbage (only way to describe it) is not worth precious time.

I only wish I could stick my foot in the developers FACES and twist few times...

Assuming that you haven't done any configuration error and that these problems aren't due to you CPU speed/hardware, don't you think that it's not right to evaluate one program's worth just for some incompatibilities/bugs?

Anyway freeware programs like VirtualDub are ever updating thanks to those users that report bugs to programmers...that can't count on a well-financed-test-team like DivX Labs.

Why didn't you think on something (more constructive) like that before writing this thread?

Maybe you should have tested those programs with another VHS and...with more patience.

[reboot]

Big expensive crappy software companies just love people like you. You spit in the face of open source stuff in public, then run out and spend money on their products instead. Do you have a big advertising banner t-shirt for Roxio or somesuch?
You go ahead and keep buying software to do certain tasks. I'll save my money and do the same tasks for free.
The problem here is not with the software, it's with the impatient user, who hasn't learned enough about the process to understand video resolutions during capture etc.
If you knew anything about the end format you wanted, you wouldn't have tried capturing in 760x576, nor would you have had to do a re-encode with XviD, nor would you have had to wait 9 hours per 30 min...Next time, instead of blaming the software, do some research, then if it doesn't work, try ASKING why, instead of dumping on some exceptional "GPL" stuff.

[MPS]

reboot, you've expressed my feelings