Compessing to H264 in virtual dub mod...

narutoball · Post by **narutoball** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:50 pm

Well, since i haven't been able to use zarx to compress to mp4s (i'm on vista and its well known now that its not supported, the vanishing file error <.<) i've been trying to compress to h264 in virtual dub (or x264 as it appears) i set the bitrate to 2500 on a single pass and i've kept most of the settings at default since i really don't know what alot of the stuff means...But whenever i render my project and watch the result the audio gets more and more out of sync with the video to a point where its unbearable to watch. I've checked the frame rate and have tried option 1 (which is to keep the frame rate as it is, which is 29.970) and i've tried option 3 which is "change so video and audio durations match" but still it unsyncs.

Can anyone help me with this problem, i just want to encode in smexy ass h264 ;_;

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:40 pm

you don't want to be encoding to .mp4 with vdub/mod, here's why

Qyot27 wrote:
BasharOfTheAges wrote:I skimmed through the other thread and didn't find any mention of encoding methods. Am I to assume i can use virtualdub to encode (with the proper files installed, of course) or is there a preferred alternative GUI floating around?
Which other thread?

As for using VDub to encode, it's strongly recommended not to, because many of the features that allow H.264 to achieve the much smaller sizes that it can don't like to play nice with VFW (which VDub uses to encode), even moreso than the B-frames in XviD or DivX - especially because those two are limited to 2-3 at the most, and H.264 allows up to 16, and the B-frame pyramid, and mixed references, which make for a trifecta encoding nightmare when using H.264 inside of AVI or VFW-based MKV (which is why most H.264 releases are either in MP4 or proper ISO-based MKV - both of those handle those features the way that they're supposed to).

Basically, as far as GUIs go, there are several, including (remembering strictly off the top of my head here), StaxRip, RealAnime, a GTK-based one for X11, and MeGUI. Out of those, I've only ever used MeGUI to any extent. And of course there's the command-line interface. New versions of MeGUI allow you to update without having to keep track of everything it depends on, which is nice.

MeGUI can be gotten here (along with current ffdshow, Haali's Media Splitter, and Media Player Classic builds):
http://x264.nl/

meGUI needs the .net framework v2 (as does zarx264GUI)

if you use meGUI, you'll have to encode the video and audio separately IIRC and then mux the two streams together (meGUI has a built-in muxing UI)

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:45 pm

Well, I've already been quoted on this, but might as well post what I was going to anyway:

How to encode H.264 in VDub? Don't. Precisely because of the problem noted. The only way to fix it is not to use most of the features which make H.264 worthwhile (B-frames and the B-pyramid, although Mixed refs probably screw with it too).

My suggestion is to grab MeGUI and use one of the preset profiles if you can't get zarx264gui to work and don't want to mess with the internals (although MeGUI does use tooltips to explain what most of the important features do). MeGUI does have to be run as administrator in Vista, make sure of that.

Download it here:
http://x264.nl/

You will want to make sure you run update before doing any encoding.

narutoball · Post by **narutoball** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 7:04 am

O: thanks alot. I wasn't trying to make ti mp4, just avi =P

but i'll try it out, thanks =)

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:13 am

narutoball wrote:O: thanks alot. I wasn't trying to make ti mp4, just avi =P

but i'll try it out, thanks =)

Saying AVI is not an ideal container for h264 is... a bit of understatement. Although there is argument on MKV (I am not a fan of it), there is general agreement that h264 should only be placed in MKV or MP4.

narutoball · Post by **narutoball** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 11:25 am

Ok so i tried meGUI but whenever i import the avs script i get an error =/ so it tells me to see if ti can open in vdub (which it can) and if not install a YV12 codec, even though i have one...is there any other software that can help me encode to H264?

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 1:31 pm

what error are you getting?
I'm guessing that it's telling you that your video has to be in yv12 colorspace
in which case you just add convertToYv12() to your script

also, which version of avisynth do you have?
don't know? make a script with one line, version() and open it in something

narutoball · Post by **narutoball** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:21 pm

The error i get is,

"the file C:\users\David\Desktop\If Nobody Had Cared--default3.avs cannot be opened. Please make sure its a valid AviSynth script and that AviSynth is properly installed. You can check the validity of your script and AviSynth installion by opening the file in your favourite media player. If that works, try opening the video in VirtualDub(Mod) as well. If the former works and the latter doesn't, install a YV12 codec. Error message for you reference: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt"

my script already had convertToYv12() O: the version of avs i have is version 2.5

hope this helps. I am also the admin of this computer as well.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 5:54 pm

Kionon wrote:Although there is argument on MKV (I am not a fan of it), there is general agreement that h264 should only be placed in MKV or MP4.

To elaborate, the only thing that H264 in MKV lacks is hardware support, which some use to object to placing it in that container (I don't find that a compelling reason myself, seeing as hardware support is dependent on far more than the container involved, like the encoding features used in the video stream).

The streams, however, are stored exactly the same way in MKV as they are in MP4, so structurally there isn't an issue, hence why both are usually listed as options. VFW-mode H264 can also be stored in MKV but it's incredibly rare these days to find it - the point about VFW being too old and decrepit to support H264 has finally been driven in, I guess (for a while MKVMerge's GUI refused to mux VFW-H264 without an override, but I don't know if that's still true; that could also have a lot to do with it as well).

On the subject of MKV, though, apparently VC-1 has no 'native' container according to the SMPTE specs, so while logic would deem ASF/WMV as its most appropriate container, it really doesn't care as long as it gets stored according to the specs. VC-1 in MKV would therefore be entirely compliant if it keeps to spec and only subject to the same lack of hardware support for the container (which may or may not be changing - it's primarily a matter of what CoreCodec happens to do or achieve on that front). The only strange thing is that in my tests, the ID code for VC-1 is a VFW marker (V_MS/VFW/FOURCC/VC1), despite posts I've read claiming it's supposed to be V_VC1. Go figure.

narutoball · Post by **narutoball** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:45 pm

narutoball wrote:The error i get is,

"the file C:\users\David\Desktop\If Nobody Had Cared--default3.avs cannot be opened. Please make sure its a valid AviSynth script and that AviSynth is properly installed. You can check the validity of your script and AviSynth installion by opening the file in your favourite media player. If that works, try opening the video in VirtualDub(Mod) as well. If the former works and the latter doesn't, install a YV12 codec. Error message for you reference: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt"

my script already had convertToYv12() O: the version of avs i have is version 2.5

hope this helps. I am also the admin of this computer as well.

anybody know any kind of fix <.<?