Help! Help! Help!

**benedict** · 22 Oct 2002, 08:21 AM

You are a bit confused to start with. This is understandable. Computer video is not like any other computer application you've done before. There is a big learning curve, and it has almost nothing to do with all the applications you have dutifully downloaded (good ones, btw. Start with VirtualDub), but rather with what video itself is.

A little background before I get to your confusion: Video files are humongous when stored "raw". How big is your hard drive? Let's say 40 Gigs. You might fit a 3 hour "raw" video on that. And that's only if it could get rid of all the other data (your OS?) in the process. To stop that from happening, we use programs called "codec"s (COmpressor/DECompressor). By using these, we can fit 50 times as many videos on that same hard drive. Not bad, huh? And there are more of these codecs around than you can imagine, and enough fights between this person and that over which one to use.

Now to your confusion. You speak of AVI as something the same as DivX. It is not. AVI is a file format, one of those 3-letter things that tell your OS what to use when opening a file. DivX is one of these codec things I've mentioned above. The AVI file format can use just about any codec, and DivX is merely one of them. It is a good one, but only one of them.

Now, as to what software you've downloaded: As a newbie, start with VirtualDub. Create a folder under your "Programs Files" with that name and simply unzip your download to it. There is no installation other than that. You might want to then go into that folder, highlight the EXE file, and say "Send to DeskTop as ShortCut" so you don't have to go looking for it again. It will just be there when you want it.

The next thing you need to do is trash the DivX Pro you downloaded. You don't need it. It costs money, and simply adds encding features that you are a long time away from understanding. Download instead the bottom level of DivX, and even uncheck the DivX player when you run the install. Any other player you have simply needs the DivX codec to play. It's not that the DivX player is bad by the way; it's just that you don't need it to play a DivX-encoded file.

I'm going to stop at this point. Before I go further, I'll need to know that you understand (pretty much) what I've just said. Whether you do or do not, I'll get an e-mail notification that you've responded to this post. As I said above, this stuff is very hard to break into, but I'll attempt to move you through it if you so desire.

**WDL** · 22 Oct 2002, 08:55 AM

Many thanks!

Thanks for the generous offer to help, Benedict!
Yes, I do understand what you have told me so far. I did make reference to AVI and DivX but only because most of the postings I have read say AVI to DivX and the like. I have done a fair share of video editing so far with Pinnacle Studio and Movieshaker and I catch on real well. So, don't be afraid to lead me fast! I hope I have a sufficient computer to do what I need to do. P3 with 640Mb SDRAM, Ultra 66 controller with 2 40 Gig drives ( one for OS and apps, one for video only), IEEE card, and running XP. I have been thinking of upgrading my machine if I get into this editing thing. I know that even with the fastest machine there is still a lot of wait time but its about time for a change anyway. Since I have a nice 19" monitor and a good gateway case with 300W pwr supply, I would like to upgrade with new motherboard, P4, 1Gig DDR, and O Raid for the editing. What do you suggest? Anyway, lead on Professor! I can't wait to learn.

**benedict** · 25 Oct 2002, 05:17 AM

@WDL - You certainly have the horsepower you need for video. Many here have a lot less than you and get along fine. I don't use packages like you mentioned (I'm strickly a bare bones type...VirtualDub, etc.), so I can't comment on what they require in terms of resources, but most of what I've looked at doesn't use much over 100 Megs of RAM, so you are obviously well powered there. Most of video rendering revolves aroung compute speed, and that consists of three main components: processor speed, RAM speed, and motherboard speed. The fasest processor in the world isn't much good if you can't get your motherboard bus and RAM feeding it the data as fast as it can use it. You seem to be going in the right direction on all of these. I haven't looked at doing the upgrades you are suggesting, so I can't give you specific recommendations but to suggest that you consult some web sites or (your local vendor) on a good match between the motherboard and the processor. Overspending on one means underspending on the other, and that means you'll end up with less than you are paying for.

One other note on hardware: you mentioned your hard drives, but didn't mention their speeds. Two things contribute to a drive's speed. The first (and most obvious) is how fast it spins. There are two speeds available: 5400 and 7200. Naturally, you would want a 7200 drive. That's the easy part, because it's right on the box in big print. The second item that they don't tend to display so prominently is the size of the read-ahead cache. I can't give you specific numbers on this, but the larger the better. If you've not heard of this, let me tell you what it is and you'll see why it's so important.

When you are doing a sequential read (e.g., a long video file), the drive senses this and "reads ahead" of what your processor is requesting and places it in that cache (think of it as "on-drive" RAM). When your processor asks for the next chunk of data, it's already there in this cache, i.e., no seek/read delay. As your processor empties this cache, the drive keeps trying to fill it back up with what it expects the next chunks of data will be. Obviously, the larger this cache is, the more time the drive has to keep it full. This will be especially powerful with your two-drive set-up with your second drive being video-only, because that drive will be doing nothing but looking for those next chunks of video data.

A final note on your video drive: Keep it well defragmented. This is always a good idea for any drive, but especially important for a drive dedicated to large files that are sequentialy read. But enough on hardware.
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I little about me so you'll better understand where I can help you and where I can't. I've been around computers for 40 years (yeah, they used tubes when I first started!), so obviously I've got a good comfort level with them.

As for video, I'm probably not your typical user. I've never worked on a video over 10 minutes long, and have no need to. My usual video venture is to place a number of short, heavily-edited videos into something like a PowerPoint presentation where the videos are but a piece of the full presentation. I cut these presentations to a CD, and mail them to potential customers. If those prospects then put my CD into their computer, hopefully my clients will sell their products (~$50-250K per sale). Obviously, my presentations have to be extremely professional.

So what does this mean in terms of me helping you along? First, If you are primarily interested in computer video and burning it to CDs, I'm with you. If you get into DVDs and TV video, those are different animals entirely. [Not to worry. Plenty of folks here are into those too.]

I did mention "heavily-edited" above, so let me tell you about that: The most obvious is cutting videos into pieces, keeping some of pieces while throwing out others. A second is cropping the area of view to remove what I call dead spaces. I might do this with raw footage that wasn't centered on what I was trying to focus on. These are fairly standard, and are likely included in the software you've mentioned.

Something more technical: Let's say I have footage of a waitress taking an order at a table. At some point, I want to pan in on her hands as she writes the order. When I get there, I want to morph the pad in her hands into a PDA (because that's what I happen to be selling at the time). Also, I might want to add a 3-D title on a solid background at the front of the video and have that background fade into my video a bit before my title does the same. These are the kind of things I do with editing. I you're interested in stuff like that, I can help you with that also.
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But back to your project: From your first post, you've said "burning to CD". This is nothing. Just follow the instructions with whatever burn program you use. Why do I think you already know that? Because I think you're thinking of something a bit more than that. To direct you properly, I'd have to know what that was. If you are merely backing up your videos to CD or simply making more room on your video drive, simply writing them is all you have to do. If you want them to autostart when you put them into your computer, that's another thing (and not too hard). If you want to send your video CDs to family and friends, that too is another thing and a little bit more difficult. All of these can be done; I just need to know which ones you are interested in.
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As to what you can do now: Download VirtualDub (freeware, the link for it is on this site in our software section). This is the basic utility editor almost everyone on this forum either uses or keeps in his/her toolbox. I say basic, but there is not a single thing any of your editors can do that VDub cannot. Basic only in it's user interface. Even if you don't actually use it for your editing, when you post a problem here, as often as not someone will tell you to open the file in VDub and tell them what VDub says. You might also want to check out our tutorials section. Lot's of tutorials specifically address VirtualDub and its sisters, NanDub and Gordian Knot. Read them. If you can D/L them as PDFs (good if you are on a dial-up), do so. Even if you don't understand everything in them up front, they'll help you immensely in getting familiar with the terminology of video editing.

Second: Scan the lists of posts for both "Newbies" and "General Discussion". Read any post that interests you. Also, look over a to the right and you'll see who the last person was that answered the post. If you see "Enchanter" or "UncasMS", READ IT! These folks are really sharp, and I've learned a lot from them. There are others too who are quite the cat's meow, and you will find them also and do the same with them. Don't worry if you don't understand quite what they are talking about. It's all in the learning curve, and these folks will help you master it.

Third: You might also want to check in with doom9.net. They've got a very good forum over there too. A lot of the same questions there, but there is a difference in "flavor". What I've found is that for your "average" stuff (what most people are doing), this forum is a bit better. When you start getting deep into the technical stuff (like my hardware review above), Doom9 tends to produce a better result. To me, I find both to be indispensible.

Finally: Sooner or later, video is going to frustrate you. There is a reason for that. It's simply not your typical computer application. It may look like it, but it's not. I might compare it to trying to use an accounting package when you didn't yet know arithmetic. Or better yet, it's like trying to find out whether you know how to swim by stepping off the deep end of the pool. Not to worry. You will get it. If you put your mind to it and are not up to speed in 30 days, I swear I'll send you a refund! Just the kind of guy I am.

**WDL** · 26 Oct 2002, 10:47 AM

Thanks again Benedict! You mentioned in your private message to me that you sensed I wasn't the average newbie. Actually, as far as the video goes, I really am new to the stuff. Sure I've done a fair bit of editing using Pinnacle and Movieshaker but manipulating video files with downloadables and tweaking settings is all new to me. I stumbled onto all of this because I was in search of the best way to store my home video. You see, I am a fanatic about exploring the latest available technology in anything that I do. There is just about nothing I hate worse than investing time, effort, and money in something only to find that it could have been done faster, easier or cheaper. I have become very intrigued by what I have read about DivX. This new format seems to be almost "to good to be true" if it does really work. Why should I invest in a DVD burner and DVD media when I can use much cheaper CD media and the CD burner I already have?
Simply put, I bought the MMV camcorder for its compactness and latest technology. Since it records in MPEG2 (which I realize is MPEG2-TS, not MPEG2-PS), I assumed it would be the best choice for storing my edited video to DVD. I guess I had pretty much set my sites to go DVD until I found out about DivX while exploring VCD and SVCD. I think the DivX thing is most intriguing because it is actually cheap and I can use my current equipment. However, it doesn't matter that much to me which format I end up with. I just want to retain as much of the original quality of my video while choosing a storage solution that offers maximum dependability now and into the future.
Thanks again for your input and I look forward to your reply.

**benedict** · 30 Oct 2002, 01:31 PM

Sorry for the delay in my response, but I was caught up a project that has been a hot button for me for a good while. As I mentioned, I make these CDs for marketing products, but they can't do any good if the person that gets them doesn't have the codec I use for the video parts. I can hardly even assume these folks know what a codec is, much less than ask them to merely install one to view my ads.

I had posted this query here and on other forums several months back, but had gotten zero replies. Late last week, I found a new forum, and noticed that there was a "damsell in distress" asking for the very same thing. She also had gotten zero replies. Knowing nothing about there registry except that it held my answers, I finally set out to write one myself. I've been testing it via that forum on different operating systems, and it seems to be doing well so far. I test for DivX 5 in it, but am now trying to find a way to generaize so it simply refers to an outside file for what it tests for instead of having to regen the program everytime I want to test for a new codec.

That was a long explanation that you might not think applies to your situation, but I suspect it does. In my last post to you, I asked about what you wanted to do with your videos. You've indicated mostly backing them up offline (on CD) and perhaps offloading them so your 40 Gig drive last more than a few weeks. These are both good things to do. I just crashed my hard drive on my 3 year old computer, and it took perhaps 5 Gigs of video with it.

More than that, however (I may be wrong), but you sound like someone who probably would like to share some of these videos with others at some point, and that is where my codec detect comes in. If they don't have your DivX 5, my program will figure that out and let them optionally install it in a quite user-friendly sort of way. Another reason to give up DivX Pro, by the way. Pro requires a payment, while the intro version does not. {You also are in no way even close to using the advanced features of it. The intro version will confuse you well enough.}

OK, so let's get to work. You've said a bunch more here than before. You're a fanatic, and that is good because I'm going to try to get you down into the world of real fanaticism. As I've said, I don't know everything about this, but I think I can get you well along the way, at least enough to where if I don't know it, may here will.

What is fanaticism? At my top level, I don't want to pay anything for my programs. I have been a junkie on freeware sice I got my first PC. Rare is the task, video or otherwise, that I cannot find a free program to do for me. I mention this because you've mentioned that you are not to fond of just going out and dropping a few buck hoping that the package will do what you want. I pretty much don't do this, and so, when I mention a program, if I do not say otherwise, I got it for free.

Fanaticism 2: If you are here asking me for help after purchasing what is most likely quite nice video software, those software packages are likely not producing a product that satisfies you. What you've got is quite likely fine for lots of what you want to do, but insufficient for the precision you want. This stands to reason. In order for these packages to insulate you from the technical details of the video file structure, they have to distance you from it. The more they do so, the less control over the final result you will have.

Fanaticism 3: Frame by frame control. This is the ultimate level. You cannot even yet concieve of what can be done at this level. You've seen it in movies, most likely, but never even considered how someone actually got it done.

For example, I have no doubt that you software will do transitions between clips; a fade between, a clock rotation where the new one appears instead of the old one. These are great, but what if you want a title on a solid backgound, with the backgound fading into you clip 2 seconds before your title fades. This is the sort of control you can get from frame by frame editing. The bad thing about this is that the difficulty level rises quite quickly the more you seek it. The good thing is that we have programs that work at this level that will automate whole bunches of it.
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Now, about some more of your comments:

DivX is an excellent format. For a while, I've been seeing div3 as a format of choice for web video, and web video probably has themost size pressure on it. Of late, however, more and more I am seeing DivX 5 coming over my connection. Don't take it from me, take it from them: DivX 5 is rapidly becoming an industry standard.

But there is another point to address here: You've said that maximum quality retention is one of your goals. How about perfect quality retention? Lossless is what we call it. Everything that went into your compression comes out identical. There are codecs to do this too.

Now naturally, these codecs are not going ot get the compression of others, but if you are dealing with clipsof say under 45 minutes and quality-retention is your primary goal, lossless codecs are what you want. There are at least two available here. The most popular is Huffyuv, although some perfer LCL (lossless codec library). Both of these are available in the software section here.

If fact, when I am editing a video, I always use one of these because my video will not deteriorate through my successive editing sessions. It is only when I am done with my editing that I encode in DivX.

The point is this: If your overriding goal is original quality, lossless hits 100%. Less on a CD, for sure, but they ain't all that expensive. Burn a few just for safety.
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What else did you want to get done? And did you download VirtualDub? That's a must if you even want to consider starting to get fancy.

**WDL** · 31 Oct 2002, 04:22 AM

Hey! No apology for the delay is necessary! I totally understand. I have a very busy schedule myself; with little time left for video. The sad part is that video can demand a lot of time so I see me taking quite a while to get things going. What's worse, I have about 60 Gig of raw video in MMV format that needs to be edited and saved before I can continue shooting anymore. The little Micro MV tapes cost a minimum of 10 bux a piece so I hate to buy too many of them. I have 3 right now and will probably buy a couple of more. Anyway, the stored video adds another kink to my situation in that since it has already been captured, I will need to get it from its current format of MPEG2 TS to PS from what I can tell. Maybe as you educate me on the various forms of editing a simple solution will be available.

To answer your questions, yes I have Virtualdub and as far as what else do I want to do I'm not really sure. I guess I'm just going to sit back and learn and let the new ideas flow!

I have been experimenting lately with Pinnacle Studio 8.3.12 and Vidomi. The new Studio version now handles capturing from Micro Mv devices and supposedly stores the format as Product Stream instead of Transport Stream. The Vidomi program seems to be very easy to use however I am unsure about what files to use for conversion. I mean, I can use the raw captured file of say 10 Mb, run it through Vidomi, and come out with a much smaller compressed file that seems to look and run as good or I can save the raw file in the editing mode as a DVD quality export which compresses it somewhat, then run it through Vidomi and end up with an even much smaller finished compressed file. Anyway, I may not be heading down the right path but I just wanted you to know. I look forward to you reply Benedict. Trudge on!

**qualitycatalyst** · 31 Oct 2002, 04:44 AM

Hey Benedict, your really cool for helping out like that, thanks for helping out , I got a lot of useful information, I'm printing out the whole thread, thanks guys for being so useful!

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