Exporting My AMV

Pas · Post by **Pas** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:55 pm

First of all, sorry if this is in the wrong forum (should it be in General Video?)

Ok, now I've gotten the amvapp-21 for video codecs that has been reccomended.

What I need to know is, do I have to uninstall my K-Lite codec pack (as some codecs may clash)

I'm asking because I don't think I need all the codecs from amvapp, I simply want to be able to encode my finished AMVs as MP4, H264 and HuffYUV. The reason I only want these few are because I see many MP4s floating around in AMVs (since they are harder to decode, therefore steal, and have better quality) and I hear H264 is a good way of encoding for smaller file size while retaining quality. I read off a guide that HuggYUV was the best way to render something uncompressed with as little loss as possible.

Then again, I am a total idiot when it comes to these things, so I may be wrong on all points. What I want to know is:

1) Do I need to uninstall K-Lite?
2) What specific codecs do I need to install to be able to do what I mentioned above
3) Have I just got everything wrong? If that's the case, please feel free to call me a noob, but point out what I should do next.

Cheers to anyone willing to take the time to help.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:27 am

1: most likely, but it's a good idea to remove k-lite at any rate.
k-lite has so many conflicting and redundant codecs in it that it isn't funny

2: I think that the amvapp comes with almost everything you need...but you should get the amvapp v3 as it includes moar avisynth goodness, and zarx264GUI (which I hear makes encoding your videos as .mp4's really easy)

In addition, you should get CCCP so you can playback those nice .mp4's (as well as .mkv and .ogg)
There's some configuration that you should do with CCCP, I'll post the details later (I know I've explained it in fair detail a few times)

3: you have a few misconceptions, but you are on the right track for most of it.
.mp4 isn't really much harder to decode than anything else. It takes a bit more cpu power to decode than something like divx, but anyone (with an adequate system) can play .mp4 files given that they have the right codec

Huffyuv is a good choice for exporting/rendering your video from your editing program because it yields smaller files than uncompressed with no quality loss (save for colorspace conversions) and it's encodes pretty quickly

When you encode with H.264 chances are that you're putting it into a .mp4 container, and AFAIK there is no .h264 file extension

Pas · Post by **Pas** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:31 am

Thanks for the feeback ^_^

Kariudo wrote:In addition, you should get CCCP so you can playback those nice .mp4's (as well as .mkv and .ogg)
There's some configuration that you should do with CCCP, I'll post the details later (I know I've explained it in fair detail a few times)

I have no idea what CCCP is, though I'm guessing it's a codec pack that goes well with AMVapps.

Anyway, so I should uninstall K-Lite, install AMVapps and then everything should be ok?

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:37 am

CCCP
download and install, then do the following...

Kariudo on configuring CCCP wrote:you go start, all programs, combined community codec pack, video decoder settings
go through the codec list and disable ffdshow for all the codecs you have (click on the boxes that say libavcodec, you should then see a few options, one of which is disabled)

you'll probably be disabling divx, xvid, huffyuv and mpeg2
do the same for audio decoder settings

when you're done with that, you may need to click the CCCP settings icon (in the same place as decoder config)
disable decoding of anything you have (checkboxes, similar to the decoder config)
dsiable avi support for haali media splitter and click re-register all filters

there have been some times where I've messed around with the settings and then not been able to play .mkv files, re-registering filters fixed that.

if you don't configure CCCP you will probably run into problems either in your editing program, or when you playback video (or audio)
I'll spare you the technical details of that unless you want them

Pas · Post by **Pas** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:13 am

Hmm, thanks dude, I really appreciate this.

I've installed amvapp3beta, CCCP and some winapp thing needed for amvapp.

I'm no techno savvy guy, so in the installation I just kept hitting "next" and "ok", wondering if I was inadvertantly screwing something important up :/

Just ran a check and I can (phew) once again play MP4's etc etc. What I need to know is

1) Did I screw anything up by just clicking "next"?
2) You said to disable divx, xvid, huffyuv and mpeg2, is that because amvapps already has them?
3) There are a few different versions of divx etc, do I disable them all?

Once again, thanks a lot ^_^;;

Pas · Post by **Pas** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:19 am

*sorry for the double post

Just to add onto that, I was playing my AMVs and noticed a considerable drop in quality from before (when I was running on K-Lite)

Is this because I installed it wrong, or are codecs clashing?

Also, this now means I can encode my videos as H264 etc etc right?

One last thing, but I was working on a project before the change. Will swapping codecs affect the project? (i.e. will I have to start from scratch again?)

Thanks.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:29 am

1: probably not, just clicking through installs default settings...which usually work
2: yep, the basic idea is that you don't want 2 different things to try to decode the same video (and/or audio) at the same time. This can cause video artifacts...audio clicks/chirps or even prevent playback
3: yep

there shouldn't be any quality drop, what files are experiencing this?
you should be able to encode videos using x.264 now

generally, you don't want to make changes in the middle of a project (I know the amvapp has a warning about that)
I really can't say if you'll have problems, but if you change the version of the codec you used to encode the footage you're using it could cause problems

Pas · Post by **Pas** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:38 am

Hmm Ok, I've disabled those few ones (mpeg2 and huffyuv were already disabled)

The quality issue is still there, but I don't think anything more can be done about that (since it probably came from my own incompetence)

I'm going to try export my AMV now, to see how it turns out. I'll probably be making another post in this thread complaining about something going wrong >.>

(also, a brief question, one that's not even worth posting on the avisynth forum, but should I resize some of the footage with avisynth before putting it into premiere? I didn't, then shoved it right into premiere at a resolution of 1280 x 720 and it took 3 hours to render 411 frames)

Pas · Post by **Pas** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:53 am

Feh, I knew this would happen. Either that, or I'm just overlooking something blatantly obvious...

Normally, when I render my final, I go:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1374/145 ... 3cb1_o.jpg

Then:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1374/145 ... 42e1_o.jpg

But, as you can see, there are no signs of Premiere recognizing the added codecs

So I tried:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1131/145 ... bd90_o.jpg

Then:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1149/145 ... bb37_o.jpg

Once again, nothing I could distinguish as proper. I don't know much about codecs etc, but this looks no different from when I began (although I suspect I did it wrong to begin with)

Eitherway, need I create a new project and just shift everything there? Or is it something else?

Thank you ^_^;;

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:55 am

resizing with avisynth is much better than resizing with premiere

the time thing depends on how complex your video is (lots of effects and transitions will slow down the export) and your computer (ram and cpu)

the quality issue may or may not be your fault, but I'll need more information if you want to try to solve it