Video is jumpy and out of focus when editing.

[Angeteen]

I'm trying to do an AMV featuring "Welcome to the NHK," unfortunately all I got are .mkv files of the series. Whenever I convert the video to .avi the video seems to either jump up and down a bit, or flicker a little bit at the top. To make matters worse it appears the video is permanently out of focus (things look fuzzy). When playing the video back, however, the problems just went away. So far I have tried to do an uncompressed conversion of .mkv to avi, and then performed another conversion this time to compress the video. So far no luck with either ffmpeg or Xvid. I also tried using avisynth with the DirectShowSource, and the FFMpeg input commands, and again, no luck. Since I have tried everything I could think of to solve the problem I was wondering if there was anything else I could do?

[Mister Hatt]

Maybe explain what seemingly broken method you used to convert your probably decentish AVC files to AVI in the first place, and maybe which AVI format and codec you're using?

[Angeteen]

I'm using VirtualDubMod to handle all conversions. Since .mkv files are annoying to work with, instead of doing a conversion/compression in one pass, I do them separately. As a result the first pass is just for converting a .mkv to an uncompressed .avi file. Then I make a second pass using either ffmpeg or xvid to compress the image down into a smaller size (at 4400 bitrate in ffmpeg the image ends up being around 186 MB).

Since this method didn't work I tried using an avisynth file to import the uncompressed file into VirtualDubMod to be compressed. So far I've used DirectShowSource and FFMpegSource to input the file to be converted. Since the compressed video file still contained jumpiness and poor focus when editing, I tried to input the original video file using avisynth, did an .mkv to uncompressed .avi file conversion, and then tried to compress the new file using ffmpeg. As expected that didn't work out either.

So basically the cliff notes version of this is I do two passes using VirtualDubMod (one for file conversion, and one for compression), I regularly use ffmpeg for compression, and occasionally I'll use avisynth to try and import files into VirtualDubMod to see if it will have any effect on converting/compressing.

[Angeteen]

I apologize for the double post, but I just now realized that I goofed when I was referring to ffmpeg being used a codec. FFmpeg(Source) is what I've been using for the input command when using avisynth, where as for file conversion using VirtualDubMod, I regularly use ffdshow. So, yeah, I now realize why some of what I was saying didn't make a lot of sense.

[post-it]

.. simply make-up your mind on How Your Going To Edit It
and stick with that program.
1) Convertion tools and Virtual Dub
2) AviSynth and the AMV animation package
3) AviDemux and a large learning scale
4) all the above
5) none of the above

Virtual Dub was one of the Earliest "Section Editors Developed" and is still the easiest to use.
AviDemux is the next easiest.
AviSynth is said to be less painful than working with Adobe Products.

[Angeteen]

I use VirtualDubMod for converting/compressing files, and then I use Premiere for the actual editing. So to make things simpler I guess I should ask how can I convert a .mkv to an .avi using VirtualDubMod so as to remove the jumpiness/blurriness that appears in Premiere?

[Mister Hatt]

Completely ignore post-it. Firstly, stop using VirtualDubMod, get yourself the latest VirtualDub from virtualdub.org instead. Secondly, stop using an ancient version of ffms in avisynth and load your source material up with ffvideosource("yourfile.mkv") after downloading the latest version of ffms2 from whatever the googlecode site is now, and throw it directly into VirtualDub. Next, encode two versions of it. One with shitty compressed-as-fuck codec of choice, and another with UTVideo or some other lossless codec according to your preference. Now edit with the shitty compressed one, then switch it out for the lossless one and export. Encode all sugoi and shit with crf'd x264 and release a nice shiny mkv file, because the mp4 camp is full of wank and hipster bullshit.

[Angeteen]

Okay, I'll try what your suggested, and see what happens. It's not like what I've been trying so far has had any luck yet, so I'm willing to try almost anything at this point.

[Angeteen]

I've tried to use VirtualDub and I get the following error when trying to import the aviscript file; AVI Import Filter error: {Unkown) (80040154). Since VirtualDub has problems with .mkv files this would make sense, so i tried running the script with VirtualDubMod. I got another error message this time it said

Avisynth open failure:
script error: there is no function named "ffms2"
{C:\VirtualDubMod\Video.avs, line 2)

So here is a copy of my .avs script.

loadplugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\ffms2.dll")
ffms2("G:\Welcome to the NHK\[Oyasumi]_Welcome_to_the_NHK!_01_[B17D228B].mkv")

Since I've already copied the ffm2 plugin to the plugins directory I can't figure out why it didn't work. I've even tried adding a line to point to the plugin, but that seemed to make no difference at all, so what can I do in order to convert the following file to an .avi?

[Cannonaire]

Code: Select all

loadplugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\ffms2.dll")
ffvideosource("G:\Welcome to the NHK\[Oyasumi]_Welcome_to_the_NHK!_01_[B17D228B].mkv")

This should work better. Also, this should allow you to open it in virtualdub correctly. We aren't joking when we say that virtualdubmod is the cause of many, many issues people have here. It is enormously outdated and there is no reason to still use it.