Converting from MP4 to AVI?

[Jessie-kun]

I read somewhere that you can use AVISYNTH to convert video files, but I haven't a clue how to work AVISYNTH, write the scripts or any of that. So, if someone could help me, I'd like to know how to convert MP4 files to avi with AVISYNTH and Virtual Dub Mod, and if I can't do it that way, what other AMVAPP programs can I use to do it?


Thanks!

-- Jessie

[Mister Hatt]

Doing it with virtualdubmod is really dump. Use regular virtualdub, you can get it from avery's site (virtualdub.org) or I think it's in the latest amvapp. Make sure your avisynth has FFMS2.dll in it's plugins folder.

Make a plain text file with ffvideosource("your.mp4") in it in notepad and save it as plaintext with the name whatever.avs in the same folder as your MP4. Then open virtualdub and use it to open the avs file as a video (file -> open). You can then use the video menu to set "Fast Recompress" and under the compression option, set what codec you want. If it's for lossless, then lagarith is good enough, if it's for a playback encode then xvid should be fine. As for audio, it depends what format your mp4 has. If you don't need audio, then in the audio menu set it to none. If it's mp3 audio, then just use YAMB to demux the audio and set open other file in the audio menu. If it's any format that AVI doesn't support, you'll need to use your favourite audio converter to make it mp3 and then open it as the audio track. Once you're sorted, hit up file -> save as avi.

You could have figured that out if you did some basic googling on what avisynth is, because it is NOT a format converter, only a frameserver. It takes input frames, does operations, and outputs the results to other things to use.

[Jessie-kun]

Everytime I try and open the script in VirtualDub, it either gives me an error message, or crashes.

[Haeresis]

Post your script please. Also I would suggest using AvsP over Notepad.

[post-it]

at one time in editing, the answer was Virtual Dub 1.3a
asf, avi, divx, xvid, mpg.
if you are looking for an all-in-one solution, use Avidemux.
divx, xvid, mpeg-2, mp4, mkv.
if you want something newer than that, your out of luck.

no codec should ever need help from another program to
load stuff into an editor ( Avisynth )

.. 'Sorry Ma'am, its the law of the editor.

[mirkosp]

post-it... no. Just... no.
What you said is wrong in many ways, and you're just going to confuse KaseiHikari. It is not true that "no codec should ever need help from another program to load stuff into an editor" - most codecs weren't meant for editing to begin with, since afaik there are many more lossy codecs than lossless out there anyway. Hell, even DVDs and Blu-Rays aren't meant for editing since they store lossy video. Avisynth wasn't meant to be just an help to load stuff into an editor, its purpose is much wider than just that.
Also, the answer, imho, is still avisynth+virtualdub, which btw is continuously updated (latest version is v1.9.9, released this April)... and even if you wanna use Avidemux (which isn't quite as good as avisynth for processing, if you were to ask me), the latest version is 2.5.2 released December 2009... not exactly old.
Furthermore... never treat codecs and containers as the same thing. They are not.

[Mister Hatt]

Avisynth is a frameserver, not an editor. plz2know what you're talking about post-it, this is like the 10th time I've seen you saying something completely wrong yet passing it off as fact. You have no place giving advice to anyone if you are seriously recommending avidemux or old vdub to anyone. You don't seem to understand what avs does, nor what avidemux/vdub do. That said, avidemux can't handle mkv properly, and it has completely broken h264 decoding.

[Kionon]

You don't seem to understand what avs does, nor what avidemux/vdub do. That said, avidemux can't handle mkv properly, and it has completely broken h264 decoding.

Was raging about this with Mirko yesterday. Avidemux has the tendency to screw up frame accuracy pretty badly, too. Now, it's not a bad tool, even on intel Macs; quite the opposite. I use it every day. However, unless you're stuck with a PPC, then Avidemux is not the best option for preprocessing footage. And even on PPC, it's only great largely because it's free (and the best thing is Autodesk Cleaner with an outrageous pricetag).

If you're running windows, as 99.9% of AMV editors are, you don't even need Avidemux. You have native AviSynth, and half of what makes Avidemux useful on the PPC is the AviSynth ports. So what's the point?

[Mister Hatt]

AutoDesk are godly. Don't knock them. Their best stuff runs on RHEL workstations though, Inferno/Smoke.

Avisynth is currently the best way to do pretty much everything, and coupled with a tool like VDub to preview/encode lossless avi/mux avi and a nice linked AVC encoder like x264 it gives you everything you need. AVIDemux is broken as hell.

[Kionon]

I've not knocked them. In fact I bought one of their programs a few days ago. But their stuff is pretty expensive.

I presume your second comment is not directed at me, since we agree on that.