Setup AMVpack and Ut Video on OSX (AviSynth and other tools)

[l33tmeatwad]

If you have exported to lossless Ut Codec then you can use ffmpeg to recontainer the MOV to AVI. Here's a guide on how to do that. Lagarith is not working with AvsPmod because you have not installed it for the PlayOnMac environment you setup, simply run that install and those files should work as well, however I do not recommend encoding to it as there will be no way to decode it in OSX.

[Anicsi]

If you have exported to lossless Ut Codec then you can use ffmpeg to recontainer the MOV to AVI. Here's a guide on how to do that. Lagarith is not working with AvsPmod because you have not installed it for the PlayOnMac environment you setup, simply run that install and those files should work as well, however I do not recommend encoding to it as there will be no way to decode it in OSX.

Oh, alright, I will try that, though I'm really shitty with the terminal, i've only used it like twice. I understand that I do need to 'install'/'compile' ffmpeg first, and the tutorial doesn't tell me how to do that. When I download the binary for mac here, i get a folder with ffmpeg, ffprobe, ffserver. Do I have to do anything else to install it? Or am I ready to go with the terminal command? It says:

The following command will do the trick for most videos:
ffmpeg -i movie.mov -acodec copy -vcodec copy movie.avi

Do I have to place the video i want to recontainer in a certain destination? And I suppose I have to substitute the 'movie'.mov with the 'nameofvideo'.mov? I'm just asking because the terminal is somewhat scary to me and I don't want to mess anything up.


On a different note, I still don't get why I got an error notice on every video I tested in my post above, despite having all of the codecs installed in my library. Do I have to install them somewhere else as well for it to work? With lagarith, i gotta install it in the AvsPmod, but just because it's a windows only codec. The others I have are cross-platform, so I don't get why i'd have to install them again and how to do that either.

Sorry for so many questions and thanks for the help!

[Anicsi]

With lagarith, i gotta install it in the PlayOnMac environment, but just because it's a windows only codec. The others I have are cross-platform, so I don't get why i'd have to install them again and how to do that either.

Sorry, typo'd...

[l33tmeatwad]

You would need the ffmpeg application and the .mov file in the same folder. As for the codecs, PlayOnMac is an easier way to run WINE on OSX and it is emulating windows so it would need the windows versions of any codecs you wish to decode installed inside of PlayOnMac. That said, these tools are mainly intended to help you convert sources for use with AMVs, so I'm not really sure what you need outside of what is included in AMVpack since that will handle any quality sources you can get (excluding lossless Lagarith that someone else sent you). Perhaps if you explain further what you are trying to open it might help me understand the problem.

[Anicsi]

Alright, thank you, that explains why it didn't work before! So I install the codecs the same way I installed the applications in the PlayOnMac environment? I have never had a windows computer before, so I don't really know how to install codecs there, for mac you just place them in the library folder. If there is a 64 and 32 bit version, which do I choose?

I always export my own MEP parts with Utvideo Mac version from Premiere. So if i change the container to .avi using the tutorial you showed me, and I want to script it, I still need the Utvideo windows version, correct? There won't be a problem because I encoded the video with the mac version?

And yeah, basically I am putting together a 15 minute long MEP and some parts I got are Lagarith, and others are very old and have heavy banding, so I wanted to post-process these parts before putting together the MEP. And in the end of course, I hope that zarxgui will help me compress it in a small file size, because Premiere isn't that good with small lossy compressing while still keeping good quality.

[Anicsi]

So I get

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Last login: Sat Jan 10 22:07:29 on console
Annas-MacBook-Pro:~ annawuki$ ffmpeg -i avisynthtest4.mov -acodec copy -vcodec copy avisynthtest4.avi
-bash: ffmpeg: command not found

when I try to move it into .avi folder.
As I said, i've never worked with the terminal, should I have done anything else? Location of my ffmpeg folder with the video is my desktop. I downloaded the version here for Mountain Lion. Then I didn't do anything more, except moving the folder to my desktop. Ah, shoot, I really have no idea why it doesn't work.

[Qyot27]

Lagarith [...] however I do not recommend encoding to it as there will be no way to decode it in OSX.

Any libavcodec-based player (VLC, mplayer, mpv, etc.) can decode Lagarith, so long as it's not a horrifically outdated build of the player. The decoder was added back in January 2011, literally two days before the FFmpeg/Libav fork occurred.

There's just no way to decode it in Quicktime unless someone's cooked up another libavcodec-based solution to take the place of Perian (which never was updated to expose the Lagarith decoder, IIRC).

So I get

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Last login: Sat Jan 10 22:07:29 on console
Annas-MacBook-Pro:~ annawuki$ ffmpeg -i avisynthtest4.mov -acodec copy -vcodec copy avisynthtest4.avi
-bash: ffmpeg: command not found

when I try to move it into .avi folder.
As I said, i've never worked with the terminal, should I have done anything else? Location of my ffmpeg folder with the video is my desktop. I downloaded the version here for Mountain Lion. Then I didn't do anything more, except moving the folder to my desktop. Ah, shoot, I really have no idea why it doesn't work.

If an application is not on the PATH (aka, the list of directories that the system searches for programs in), the user has one of three options:

A) The easy way:

Spoiler :

Copy the binaries to a place that is on the PATH (/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are the most common places on Unix-like OSes such as OSX and Linux). This is the most future-proofed option, since the only time you'd need to repeat this is if you want to update to a newer build.

Once you've used cd to get into the directory with ffmpeg/ffprobe/ffserver, do this:

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sudo cp ffmpeg ffprobe ffserver /usr/local/bin

which will copy the three binaries into /usr/local/bin. After this, you can be inside any directory and be able to run ffmpeg. So you don't have to move video files around or anything.

B) The quick way:

Spoiler :

Override the PATH detection. This is the quickest way, but if you're going to regularly use the programs, you really should use A). The reason it needs to override the PATH is that unlike Windows, Unix-like OSes will not allow users to execute binaries from directories that aren't on the PATH. If, however, you give it the absolute path to the binary, it will run it.

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cd ffmpeg
./ffmpeg -i "input.mov" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "output.avi"

The ./ tells the Terminal to override the PATH and run ffmpeg from the current directory. Or more exactly, './' actually says, 'in the current directory'. It makes the current directory get treated like an absolute path, and it's the 'treating it as an absolute path' part that makes it override the PATH.

C) The geeky way:

Spoiler :

Add the directory to the PATH environment variable. This is the geekiest option, and isn't any easier than B) if that's what you were shooting for. The benefit is that you don't need root access (the 'sudo' part of the copying command from the A) option) to update the ffmpeg binary. Like A), you can run the binary from anywhere.

To test it, you can do this (let's assume the ffmpeg folder is located at /Users/yourname/ffmpeg, 'yourname' being whatever your username is):

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export PATH=$PATH:/Users/yourname/ffmpeg

and then go into some other directory and run ffmpeg. It should see it, even though ffmpeg isn't in the current directory.

This can be made permanent by adding it to the user's .bash_profile file where it handles the PATH.

You also technically don't need to have everything in the same folder, since you can give ffmpeg a relative or absolute path to the video files using standard Terminal shortcuts:

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./ = the current directory ; usually not needed, unless you're trying to run a binary from a non-PATH location.
../ = up one directory; so if you are in /Users/yourname/videos/bigtime, ../ refers to /Users/yourname/videos
~/ = a shortcut to the root of your User directory (/Users/yourname).
$HOME/ = like ~/, a shortcut to the root of your User directory.

To actually give examples, let's say you have a video file /Users/yourname/Documents/myvideo.mov, and want to have the output in /Users/yourname/AMVstuff.

You can use long relative paths:

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ffmpeg -i "Documents/myvideo.mov" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "AMVstuff/myvideo.avi"

or

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cd Documents
ffmpeg -i "myvideo.mov" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "../AMVstuff/myvideo.avi"

or

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cd AMVstuff
ffmpeg -i "../Documents/myvideo.mov" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "myvideo.avi"

[l33tmeatwad]

Yes Qyot27, I know you can play the files, but natively decoding for editing with is not possible at the moment so it's not really that useful to Mac users.

Anicsi, yes you will need to install them similar to how you installed AMVpack, but you will want to install it to the same virtual environment you created for AMVpack. As for how to use ffmpeg with terminal, Qyot27's explanation pretty much covers it.

[Anicsi]

A) The easy way:

Spoiler :

Copy the binaries to a place that is on the PATH (/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are the most common places on Unix-like OSes such as OSX and Linux). This is the most future-proofed option, since the only time you'd need to repeat this is if you want to update to a newer build.

Once you've used cd to get into the directory with ffmpeg/ffprobe/ffserver, do this:

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sudo cp ffmpeg ffprobe ffserver /usr/local/bin

which will copy the three binaries into /usr/local/bin. After this, you can be inside any directory and be able to run ffmpeg. So you don't have to move video files around or anything.

Okay, A then xD uhm, you said 'once you've used cd to get into the directory with ffmpeg(...). .... how do I do that? I tried just typing the sudo command but I got this error:

Spoiler :

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Last login: Sun Jan 11 18:57:09 on ttys000
Annas-MacBook-Pro:~ annawuki$ sudo cp ffmpeg ffprobe ffserver /usr/local/bin
dyld: DYLD_ environment variables being ignored because main executable (/usr/bin/sudo) is setuid or setgid

WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

Password:
cp: ffmpeg: No such file or directory
cp: ffprobe: No such file or directory
cp: ffserver: No such file or directory
Annas-MacBook-Pro:~ annawuki$ 

Sorry for being such a noob in the terminal, i really wanna have the time to learn more, but I just don't have at the moment xD

[Qyot27]

A) The easy way:

Spoiler :

Copy the binaries to a place that is on the PATH (/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are the most common places on Unix-like OSes such as OSX and Linux). This is the most future-proofed option, since the only time you'd need to repeat this is if you want to update to a newer build.

Once you've used cd to get into the directory with ffmpeg/ffprobe/ffserver, do this:

Code: Select all

sudo cp ffmpeg ffprobe ffserver /usr/local/bin

which will copy the three binaries into /usr/local/bin. After this, you can be inside any directory and be able to run ffmpeg. So you don't have to move video files around or anything.

Okay, A then xD uhm, you said 'once you've used cd to get into the directory with ffmpeg(...). .... how do I do that? I tried just typing the sudo command but I got this error:

'cd' is the 'change directory' command. You use it to enter or exit a folder from the Terminal. Basically, the first thing anyone needs to learn when using the Terminal is how to navigate in and out of folders with it. That's what 'cd' does. The second thing is to know how to find out what files are in the folder you're in at the moment, which is the 'ls' (list) command.

In this case, you'd use it to move into the ffmpeg folder that you said you moved onto the Desktop. I can't remember what OSX's treatment of unzipping stuff is (whether it creates a folder to put the stuff in or whether it just unpacks as-is - if it unpacks as-is, then what you moved probably was the ffmpeg binary, not a folder). One trick is that you can start typing the directory name, and then hit the Tab button - it'll autocomplete the directory name so you don't have to continue typing it out. So hypothetically, if the ffmpeg folder on the Desktop is named 'ffmpeg', you'd do this:

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cd ~/Desktop/ffmpeg

To break the individual pieces of that command down:
cd (change directory, to the destination that follows)
~ (move into your home directory)
Desktop (move into the 'Desktop' directory)
ffmpeg (move into the 'ffmpeg' directory)

and then do step A like above.