Confessions of a n00b Part 2: Attack of the .avs

[d_redguy]

Wow! To see how far I've come in such a short while, compare this thread with this!

Anyway, I've got my hands on a copy of Premiere 6.5! I've even finished the first verse and chorus, and I am happy with the results thus far. However, I am running out of hard drive space with the method I am using for capturing video. First I'll describe what I am doing, so you can tell me how wrong it is. Then I will discuss the EADFAG and the issues that I come across when I attempt to utilize it. Then you can tell me how wrong I am again!

OK, so my method for capturing is as follows, rip a vob, create a dvd2avi file using (duh) dvd2avi. Then I have been using Gordian Knot 0.28 th create and .avs file. OK, cool. Using VirtualDub, I watch the video and cut away until I have a clip that I want to incorporate into my video. I save the clip as an uncompressed .avi file, which I then import into Premiere.

No sweat, right? It looks good, and doesn't give me many hassles except one. You know where I am going: An uncompressed avi file is bloody enormous. This is ok if I am very careful about my scene selection before I even get into Premiere with the file. But as I am sure most of you have experienced, I don't always know exactly what clip I want to use for this or that part of my video, so I find myself grabbing a bunch of clips that I may never use.

Not a problem at first, and may not be for a while. But with a source of 26 episodes and 2 movies (Yes, yes. It's another damn Eva video ) I can imagine the scenes I could use quickly filling up my hard drive. This process worked for the first verse, because it mostly draws from just 2 episodes. But I have altogether different ideas for the 2nd verse...

(Here we will take a brief intermission in this post for you to get a cup of coffee, take a whizz, watch more amvs that are actually completed, etc.)

Feel better? Good! So anyway, with looming hard drive capacity issues in my future, I head back to the EADFAG to see what I could be doing better. Lo and behold, I find Method 2 and Method 3 for editing .avs files directly in Premiere. So I download the AMVapp, install it, and then drop those neat little plugins into Premiere manually for good measure. Then I tried to import one of my .avs files in Premiere.

It was a bad scene. The entire .avs file consisted of 6 frames of pixelated colors. Pretty as that sounds, it doesn't exactly match my "artistic vision" for this video. I might use it if I ever decide to do a "St. Anger Tribute remix", but that seems rather unlikely. I wouldn't want to attempt to improve upon perfection.

OK, your turn. What am I doing wrong? How do I actually edit straight from the vobs? This would save me some serious anguish. Anguish of the type you may have just experienced slogging your way through this painfully long, convoluted post. BTW, I do thank you for hanging in there and reading the whole thing. It's long because I want to give you guys (and gals!) as much information as possible. Well, that and "OMGWTFBBQ LOLZ i C4NT 0P3N AVS F1L3Z!!! PR3M13R3 1Z T3H 5UX0RZ!!1!" just isn't my style.

Thanks again, you have all been a big help so far, just by being here and doing good stuff to inspire me!

[SS5_Majin_Bebi]

Well for starters (this is info on the video source and nothing else) The majority of the footage from Evangelion Death and Rebirth can be found in one of either 2 places: In the series, or in End of Eva. So why don't you scrap working with DnR?

[d_redguy]

Well for starters (this is info on the video source and nothing else) The majority of the footage from Evangelion Death and Rebirth can be found in one of either 2 places: In the series, or in End of Eva. So why don't you scrap working with DnR?

Good point, and actually I was planning on doing that. So I guess that makes it 26 ep's and 1 movie. 8) (Though I do recall this rather insulted feeling I got when I picked up DnR and EoE at the same time and watched them back to back. )

Heh. Still a whole lot of footage...

[turboneko]

It was a bad scene. The entire .avs file consisted of 6 frames of pixelated colors. Pretty as that sounds, it doesn't exactly match my "artistic vision" for this video.

Can you open your AVS files in virtualdub? That would be the first thing to troubleshoot

[Tab.]

Well for starters (this is info on the video source and nothing else) The majority of the footage from Evangelion Death and Rebirth can be found in one of either 2 places: In the series, or in End of Eva. So why don't you scrap working with DnR?

because DnR is properly telecined?

[Chaos Angel]

Can you post your AVS script?

[d_redguy]

It was a bad scene. The entire .avs file consisted of 6 frames of pixelated colors. Pretty as that sounds, it doesn't exactly match my "artistic vision" for this video.

Can you open your AVS files in virtualdub? That would be the first thing to troubleshoot

turboneko - Yes, I can. That is actually what I have been using to grab my video footage and bring it over to Premiere. Which again, I can continue to do, just so long as I am really really careful about my scene selection while actually in VirtualDub. My process is working, but if there is a better, more efficient way that is gonna save me space and time, I'm definitely open to it!

Can you post your AVS script?

Sorry, ya lost me there. I'd be happy to...ah!! Just opened it with notepad. So I guess I'm not that lost. Here is the Episode 1 avs:

#
# DEINTERLACING (1)
#FieldDeinterlace()
#FieldDeinterlace(blend=false)
#TomsMoComp(1,5,1)
#
# CROPPING
crop(8,2,708,476)
#
# DEINTERLACING (2)
#SeparateFields().SelectEven()
# or maybe
#Bob().SelectEven()
# or maybe
#GreedyHMA(1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0)
#
#
# SUBTITLES
#VobSub("FileName")
#
# RESIZING
BicubicResize(640,480,0,0.5)
#
# DENOISING: choose one combination (or none)
# 1) little noise
#Temporalsoften(2,3,3,mode=2,scenechange=6)
#mergechroma(blur(1.3))
#FluxSmooth(5,7)
#
# 2) medium noise
#Temporalsoften(3,5,5,mode=2,scenechange=10)
#Convolution3d("moviehq")
#FluxSmooth(7,7)
#
# 3) heavy noise
#Temporalsoften(4,8,8,mode=2,scenechange=10)
#Convolution3d("movielq")
#FluxSmooth(10,15)
#
# BORDERS
#AddBorders(left,top,right,bottom)
#
# COMPRESSIBILITY CHECK
# !!!!Snip Size now has to be 14 for use in GKnot!
#SelectRangeEvery(280,14)
#
# FOOL CCEnc
#ResampleAudio(44100)

I have no idea what all that stuff is. Maybe you can see what is wrong by looking...

Hey, thanks again everyone!

[Chaos Angel]

Well, I usually use a simpler script for making files for editing personally.

MPEG2Source("File path to D2V")

That's all you really need to import the footage itself. You don't really NEED to crop and resize and deinterlace it before hand if you don't want to. Course, if you have motion effects planned out, it may be a good idea to IVTC first, but if not, all you really need is just that one line, and make a seperate D2V for each clip.

Or make one big D2V and one AVSfor the whole thing. Either or.

Theoretically, if you can fit the VOBs for the series and the movies on your drive, you can just keep them there and not bother with making tons of AVIs. I could be wrong, but if my estimation that each DVD holds roughly 3.5 GB of info is correct, then the 8 DVDs and two movies would come to about 35 GB-ish. Course, if that's too much, just go delete the VOBs that don't hold scenes you need. Or rip specific chapters in the first place and just use those.

[d_redguy]

Well, I usually use a simpler script for making files for editing personally.

MPEG2Source("File path to D2V")

That's all you really need to import the footage itself. You don't really NEED to crop and resize and deinterlace it before hand if you don't want to. Course, if you have motion effects planned out, it may be a good idea to IVTC first, but if not, all you really need is just that one line, and make a seperate D2V for each clip.

Or make one big D2V and one AVSfor the whole thing. Either or.

Theoretically, if you can fit the VOBs for the series and the movies on your drive, you can just keep them there and not bother with making tons of AVIs. I could be wrong, but if my estimation that each DVD holds roughly 3.5 GB of info is correct, then the 8 DVDs and two movies would come to about 35 GB-ish. Course, if that's too much, just go delete the VOBs that don't hold scenes you need. Or rip specific chapters in the first place and just use those.

OK, I think I see what you are saying. Let me test my understanding: I should be able to rip a vob onto my hard drive using DVD2AVI, then just create a simple avs script in notepad or whatever text editor of my choice. And all it really needs to say is

MPEG2Source(C:\foo\bar)

Is that right? Thus far I have just opened up the dvd2avi file in Gordian Knot, and it creates the avs file for me. I guess that is why it is so complex, what with the deinterlacing and everything. Should I probably keep the deinterlacing stuff in there?

Then it would look something like this I guess:

#MPEG2Source(C:\foo\bar)
#
#DEINTERLACING (1)
#FieldDeinterlace()
#FieldDeinterlace(blend=false)
#TomsMoComp(1,5,1)
#

Is that all I need? Hmm. Back to the EADFAG for me.

As far as the vobs themselves go, if I get rid of the opening and closing I should be able to fit them all on both of my hard drives. Thanks!

[NicholasDWolfwood]

Code: Select all

MPEG2Source("C:\Bebop\Bebop01.d2v")
Telecide()
Decimate(5)
AssumeFPS(24)

That is what your script should look like, except changing the file path for your D2V file.