Working with Video in VirtualDub - Tips, Tricks and Tutorials

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This thread is for people to share their favorite tips and tricks for working with videos in VirtualDub.

This is not a discussion thread

Please just post your favorite VirtualDub tips and tricks. If you have any questions or comments about anything posted here please post it as seperate thread in Computer help.

As there are a number of versions of VirtualDub please include information concerning the version of VirtualDub you used when preparing the tip. The menus in VirtualDub Mod for instance are slightly different then the vanilla variety of the programme, and not all versions have the same features.


VirtualDub is free to download and use. Click the following links to download.

VirtualDub 1.9.11
VirtualDub MPEG2
VirutalDub Mod

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VirtualDub 1.9.11 and VirtualDub MPEG2 1.6.19

1. Open VirtualDub
2. Click the File on the top menu and select Open video file. Got to the location of the file you want to open, select, and click open.
3. Click Video on the top menu and select Direct Stream Copy
4. Click Audio on the top menu and select Direct Stream Copy
5. Move the slider at the bottom of the screen to find the point where you want the clip to start.
6. Click the Mark in icon at the bottom of the screen
7. Move the slider at the bottom of the screen to find the point where you want the clip to end.
8. click the Mark out icon at the bottom of the screen
9. Click File and select Save as AVI....
10. Select where you want the file to be saved and enter a name for your file
11. Click the Save button and your clip will be saved. Got to the location where you saved your clip and open it to check that it was saved correctly.

VirtualDub Mod

The process is the same in VirtualDub Mod except for item 4. To set the Audio to Direct stream copy in VirtualDub Mod

1. Select Streams from the menu at the top of the screen.
2. Select Stream List
3. Right click the listed stream and select Direct Stream Copy from the context menu.
4. Click OK

Note

This method will only copy video between keyframes. For frame accurate editing please see the tutorial posted later in this thread.

Creating the clip will be very fast and there will be no loss of quality as no re-encoding takes place.

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There is a very neat filter plugin available for removing logos or DOGS (Digital Onscreen Graphics) from videos. Here are two samples screenshots - one with logo and the other with the logo removed. You can see in the lower screenshot the logo has been removed. The picture is a little bit smudged where the logo used to be. In reality the smudge barely noticeable while viewing.



To remove a logo with VirtualDub you need to download the Delogo plugin here. Unzip the file. Copy the file named delog.vdf into your VirtualDub plugins folder. The delogo filter will be now be available the next time you open VirtualDub.


To do a basic logo removal as shown in the example above go to the online manual here and follow the basic instructions 3. Quick Start. That is the most basic way to remove an opaque logo. It is pretty easy to follow - just work carefully and follow the instructions.

The online manual also has instructions for more advanced procedures in dealing with alpha-blended and transparent logos.

Works with VirtualDub 1.9.11, VirtualDub MPEG2 1.6.19 and VirtualDub Mod

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The following tip was provided by EverGreen13 in another thread. Due to some difficulties it was not possible to copy the post to this thread. So if you find this post useful, please thank his original post here.

The problem with all other software except virtualdub is that they will not split your avi file at the exact key that you want to split your video. You can only cut on a keyframe which is annoying since your split scenes will start either a little too late or a little too soon.

Avidemux allows you to cut at any moment but from my experience it will lead to audio synchronization problems very often and other encoding issues.

The best solution to split avi (xvid,divx) files is to use virtualdub using these steps.

1. Open the file in Virtualdub
2. Make sure the audio is set to direct stream copy.
3. Select video -> Full Processing mode.
4. Go to Video -> Compression.
5. Select Xvid MPEG-4 Codec. If it's not there google xvid codec download, install it and restart virtualdub.
6. Select Configure -> Encoding type: Single Pass. Also it's a good idea to drag the bar to maximum quality.
7. Leave the rest as is and click ok twice.
8. Now click Video and select Smart Redndering. This is very important. What this does is since you are not allowed to cut at a frame that is not keyframe virtualdub will cut to the specific frame that you want and re-encode only those first frames of the video that need to be re-encoded. The rest of the video will be a direct stream copy.

From virtualdub's website: Smart rendering allows frame-precise editing of compressed video by only recompressing small sections around edits, with the rest of the frames copied in Direct mode

9. Finally click File -> Save as Avi and save your file.

If you don't want to repeat the process for every video click File - > Save processing Settings and save your settings anywhere you want. Then whenever you open vd just load that file by going File -> Load Processing settings and you are good to go.

Edit Notes

1. This method will not work with VirtualDub Mod or VirtualDub MPEG2 as they do not have the Smart rendering feature. Use VirtualDub 1.9.11

2. In step 5 above it is important that the codec you use for encoding is the same as the codec of the original video. To find out the codec of the original file click File and then select File information.... If you dont use the same codec you may run into problems.

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If you have a number of videos you want to process or encode you can save time by setting VirtualDub to process them as a batch of processing jobs. You can then run the batch of jobs while you are out, or overnight while you sleep. To set up a batch of jobs

1. Open the first video you want to process.
2. Set up all processing paramaters - Video compression, Audio Compression and any filters you want to apply.
3. In VirtualDub Mod click File and select Save as...
In VirutalDub MPEG 2 click File and select Save as AVI...
4. In the Save As dialog box you will find and option that says - Don't run this job now; add it to job control so I can run it in batch mode - make sure this option is ticked.
5. Select the location you want to save the file to and enter a file name.
6. Click Save
7. Repeat this process for the other jobs you want to add to the batch.
8. When you have set up all your batch jobs click File and select Job control...
9. In the Job Control dialog box click Start. VirtualDub will process all jobs in order one after another. Now go to bed and have a good nights sleep.

VirtualDub 1.9.11

The process is slightly different in VirtualDub 1.9.11. When you get to item 3 above click File and select Queue Batch Operation, then select Save as AVI...

The job will be added to directly to Job Control.

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It is very handy to get VirtualDub to turn off your PC when it finishes an encoding job, particularly if you set it to encode overnight or while you are out. To have VirtualDub turn off your PC after it finishes a job.

1. Open the video you want to encode and set up all encoding paramaters - Video Compression, Audio Comprssion and any filters you want to apply.
2. You need to run the encoding job through Job Control in the same way as you would for Batch Processing described in post 5 above.
3. Having added it as a batch job click File and select Job control...
4. In the Job Control dialog box click Options and make sure the Shutdown computer when finished option is ticked.

VirtualDub Mod and VirtualDub MPEG2



VirtualDub 1.9.11



5. Now click Start. VirtualDub will encode the video and shutdown your PC on completion.

If you have set up more than one job in Job Control, VirtualDub will complete all jobs and then shut down your PC.

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I made these two animations below with a variant of VirtualDub called "VirtualDub Animated PNG Mod"

It makes very good animated PNGs and Gifs although each type has it's own advantages and inconvenients.

And yes PatrynXX you can make BIG Shakira gifs with this

animated gif


animated png (might not be animated in your browser)



Pro's & Con's

GIF : doesn't always yield good quality but are smaller in size, many tools to edit them separately.

PNG : They are only visible in Firefox Or Opera or applications that support animated PNG's. very good quality, larger in size, not that many tools available to edit.


Link to application : VirtualDub APNG Mod

To use it, just use it as regular Virtualdub:

1) select all the scenes you want to remove and just keep what you're interested in.

2) Apply any video filters that you might be interested like Resize, Crop (With NullTransform), Deinterlace, etc..

3) Frame Rate : I found good results by halving the frame rate of the loaded video.

4) Set Audio --> @NO Audio,

5) Set Video --> Full Processing Mode

6) File Export --> Animated PNG or Animated Gif

And that's it! Now open your browser and throw in your animatioms to view them.


Last thoughts: out of curiosity I tried to look for freeware or Open Source tools to make Gifs, and strangely enough it seems that every application that matures into a nicely done product ends up from beeing free into either shareware, shareware/free crippleware, Adware or abandoned/immature opensource.

Such is the life of gif making applications. Considering the demand for such applications I wonder why no Opens Source / Free projects ever mature into nicely done applications like these below that I use on an almost daily basis :

7zip, CrapCleaner, Free Commander, HJsplit, ImgBurn, NotePad++, OpenOffice, Peazip, PSPad, RevoUninstaller, TheSage
---
Avanti, AviDemux, FFCoder, Foto2Avi, MediaInfo, MKVToolnix, PhotoFilmStrip, Super, VirtualDub & Variants, WinFF, XMedia Recode, Yamb
---
IrfanView, JpegView, Magnifier, PhotoFiltre, PhotoScape, Xnview,
---
Foobar2000, BSPlayer, GOMPlayer, KMPlayer, Potplayer, SMPlayer, Media Player Classic / Home cinema, VLC, XMplay
---
Audacity, BonkEncoder, CueSplitter, ExactAudioCopy, LameXP, Wavosaur

And dozens and dozens more for which I have menu links for quick access on my desktop. I wonder if there are websites of programmer communities à la SourceForge, CodePlex or even something like Doom9 where we could request such kind of applications?

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Sometimes it is helpful to be able to crop a video. You may have interference lines or black bars around the edges of the picture as shown in example below.



To crop a video like this.

1. Open the video in VirtualDub.
2. Enter all your processing settings - Video Compression, Audio Compression, and in and out points if required etc.
3. From the menu at the top of the screen select click Video and select Filters...
4. You will see the Cropping... option second from the bottom is greyed out and cannot be selected.



5. Click Add... and select null transform



and then click OK

6. You will now see that the Cropping... option is no longer greyed out.
7. Click the Cropping... option and the cropping input window will open.
8. Using the X and Y offsets you can now set the necessary crop sizes. as shown in the example below. The amount cropped is indicated by a grey line that increases with each click on the co-ordinates.



9. When you are happy with your crop settings click OK and then click OK again to exit the Filter... dialog box.
10. From menu at the top of the window click File... and select Save As..., set the location where you want the file to be saved, give the file a name and click Save.

VirtualDub will encode a new video with what you didn't want cropped out.



Note. This may change the aspect ratio of the video. So it may be necessary to resize the video so that it doesn't look distorted. This can be done as part of the same re-encode but I have left this step out for clarity.

The example used above was originally 768x576. To restore the aspect ratio I would have also set the resize filter to restore the image to it's previous aspect ratio, making sure that the resize filter appears after the null transform filter.

Works with VirtualDub, VirtualDub Mod and VirutalDub MPEG2.

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VirtualDub is limited to certain video file types, and now and then it may have problems opening .avi files that are broken or have unusual .avi codecs. Using DirectShowSource you should be able to open nearly any video file that you can throw at it. Assuming you already have VirtualDub on your system, this what you need to do to open files using DirectShowSource.

1. Download and install Avisynth. This is a pretty easy process. Just double click the AviSynth .exe file when you have it downloaded and follow the instructions.

2. I would strongly recommend that you download and install Klite Codec Pack if you don't already have it on your system.

3. Open Notepad and type the following.

DirectShowSource("C:\Myvideofolder\Myvideoname")

Type as I've shown including the quotation marks, but of course change the path, folder name and video name to suit the video you are working with. Obviously you can add subfolders as necessary by inserting backslashes and the subfolder names where appropriate.

4. Save the text document as Myvideoname.avs in the same folder as your video.

Note. .avs is the file extension for Avisynth scripts. If you accidentally save it as a .txt document - just change the file extension to .avs.

5. Open VirtualDub

6. Click File>Open and then select the .avs script you created, click the Open button, and the video should now open in VirtualDub.

Works with any flavor of VirtualDub I have tried so far.

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VirtualDubMod makes it a bit easier to open files using Avisynth and DirectShowSource. The basic steps to open video files not normally native to VirtualDubMod, or .avi with unusual codecs are as follows:

1. You can download VirutlDubMod here

2. Make sure you have Avisynth and Klite Codec Pack installed on your machine.

3. Open VirtualDubMod, click File>Open video file.... and locate the folder with the vid you want to open.



In the example above you will see the only file that appears to be listed is a .jpg file.

4. To see all the files that are acutally in the folder click on the Files of type: option at the bottom of the window as shown below



You will notice that the option at the very bottom is All types (*.*). Click on that and you should be able to see all file types including those not normally opened by VirtualDubMod.

5. Now click on the Use AviSynth template option at the very bottom of the screen.



and select DirectShowSource as shown above.

6. Now select the video you want



and click the Open button.

7. And your .wmv, .mkv etc should open...



8. Finally, if you go to the folder of the video file you opened, you will notice a new file in the folder with a file extension of .avs. This is a script file that was automatically created by Avisynth when it opened the video. In the example given above it created a file with the name of mdjav274B--directshow.avs.

Note you can use this script file to open the same video at a later point in time. Just open any version of VirtualDub, click File>Open, select the .avs file and click the Open button, and the video should open for you.

Quad erat demonstrandum....