NEW Guides and AmvApp BETA

[Willen]

While I'm busy making a fool of myself...

Tweak also has some other parameters for things like brightness and contrast, but I strongly recommend against using these. Instead, you should use levels.

Maybe include a short explanation for why Levels should be used for adjusting brightness and contrast? The AVIsynth guide for Levels suggests to adjust them using Tweak.

For adjusting brightness or contrast it is better to use Tweak or ColorYUV, because Levels also changes the chroma of the clip.

I assume when the avisynth manual says that, they mean it in the literal sense of actually changing brightness and contrast. Brightness and contrast adjustments mean very specific things, and are usually NOT what you intend to adjust on your video. Brightness and Contrast are terms that everyone is very familiar with, but few people really understand them.

Let's take Brightness for example. Adjusting the brightness is basically the equivalent of taking a solid white or solid black image and overlaying it on top of your video. It doesn't really make your video "brighter" or "darker" according to what most people's perception's are--it merely makes it "more white" or "more black". A basic "contrast" control has similar problems. By using Levels, we can make the image look more visually darker or lighter, not simply whiter or blacker.

Here are a few links with some more information about levels, hope this helps.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/levels.htm
http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/198/en/

Whoever decided that a television's black-level controls should be called "brightness" and white-level control should be called "contrast" should be raked over hot coals.

http://www.poynton.com/notes/brightness_and_contrast/

The resultant confusion and eventual spill-over entrenchment into other display categories makes correcting this error impossible now.

[Zarxrax]

Corran: regarding bait-and-switch, the issue there was that Premiere 6.x had a feature where you could go in and replace the clips with other clips, but premiere pro took this feature away. I think you could probably do it in premiere pro though by simply moving all your files, then it should ask you to find them... at which point you can point it to your new files. I guess :\ I'd definately make project backups before trying anything like that though.

Regarding vista, sounds like it has quite a few issues. I'll see if I can do some testing on a vista system myself, but I'd still like reports on anything and everything you find that has problems though, so I don't miss anything.

[Corran]

I think you could probably do it in premiere pro though by simply moving all your files, then it should ask you to find them...

That is what I currently do in 6.x. It will ask for the location of the avis and I'd point it at the avs scripts. If they are all in the same folder it would then detect the rest automatically.

An alternative to the bait and switch method that I use and couldn't find any mention of is to make two versions of my avisynth scripts and place them in three folders as follows:

AVS Scripts
|
+--High Quality Scripts
+--Low Quality Scripts
+--Copies Premiere Sees

As long as the high and low quality versions have the same filenames, frame rate, and resolution, premiere has no problem switching between them. (Don't swap the files out while the project is open, obviously.)

Regarding vista, sounds like it has quite a few issues. I'll see if I can do some testing on a vista system myself, but I'd still like reports on anything and everything you find that has problems though, so I don't miss anything.

Will do.

[Kariudo]

alright, followed the guide and it works.

I took an entire episode which I had a script for already encoded it w/picvideo mjpeg.
made a project with proper settings
imported the low-quality avi
saved and made a duplicate of the project.
moved the avi and opened premiere, re-linked

after that worked I exported a section of the timeline (using the .avs)

I then re-linked the low-quality avi and cut it into random size chunks and randomly placed them on the timeline.
unlinked then re-linked the avs again
all my clips remained the same.
exported and did a quick comparison to make sure.

to un-link/re-link in premiere pro you right click the video file in the bin
about halfway through your options you see "link media" and "unlink media"
one of the two should be greyed out

when you click unlink media, an option window pops up asking if the media should remain on the disk or be deleted, I chose that the media remained on the disk.
then the clip(s) that were made with that file go to "media offline"

right click the same video file in the bin and choose link media, and link it to the avs script.
video comes back

I didn't test it with the premiere plugin in the amvapp beta (didn't get the amvapp beta, in the middle of a project)

I'm using this plugin for premiere pro
cpu: Athlon 64 3200 (2.0ghz, up to SSE2 instruction set)

footage was IVTC-ed using TFM and TDecimate (720x480, PAR 0.9, 24.00fps)
I did not change the colorspace to rgb24 or rgb32 (left it in yv12)

[Tiiscool]

Hello,
I found some point, where maybe something is wrong or some information can be added.

Colorspace:
"DV - This uses 4:1:1 YUV which has the same number of chroma samples as MPEG2 but in a different order."
Please add: DV (PAL) is 4:2:0

Telecine:
PAL-Telecine = PAL-Speedup
3:2 Pulldown = 2:3 Pulldown
See image, website (sorry only german) and doom9

pan&scan
I think it would be good to write a little more about pan&scan like:
„What is being done in a pan&scan transfer is that a part from the source frame, having an aspect ratio of 1:1.33 or 4:3 is being cut out. This is symbolized by the red square in the picture. This "window" is not fixed but flexible. So when the actor moves to the right border the window can follow him up to a certain extent. This is the pan part of pan&scan. In certain cases the window might also zoom in on the frame, hence the scan part. „
See doom9

Maybe nice info for ripping:
Which PGC is played ?
„By selecting the right PGC you can get the right version of the movie. Also.. the PGC corresponds to the Title number being displayed in your player. Here's just an example (Matrix - follow the white rabbit feature = Title 6 or in other words PGC 5 since the PC starts counting at 0 internally). „
See doom9

Best regards,
Ti

[Corran]

It appears Premiere 6.x won't install on the 64 bit version of Vista so I could not test the Premiere plugin for this OS version. (Premiere Pro supposedly works on the 64 bit version, haven't tested.)

Otherwise these are what I found:

Installation
-Premiere plugin is placed in multiple locations: Premiere plugin directory and root folder of the drive premiere is installed on. (all os)

-Besweet gui will not launch because MSVBVM50.DLL could not be found. Copying this dll from my XP system32 folder to the Audio Apps/Besweet folder fixes my problem. (Vista)

-AMVApp avisynth tests fail. The follow error is displayed each time mplayer.2.exe is invoked. (Vista)



Program issues
-DGIndex causes Vista to fall back to the Basic version of its graphic desktop. Error does not impact functionality of DGIndex, it's just slightly annoying. (Vista)(Something for Donald Graft to eventually fix I guess)

-The following error message and and resulting crash is created when attempting to open an avs file in ZarxGUI on the 64 bit version of Vista. Vista RC1 32 bit seems to have no problem. Virtual dub and other apps can open avisynth scripts fine. (Vista x64)

[Corran]

I've just finished attempting two encodes on Vista RC1 x86 with Zarx264GUI

E:\Test.avs -> E:\vistatest.mp4
E:\test2.avs -> E:\test2.mp4

Both ran, created the proper intermeadiate files to be muxed, and appeared to encode fine; however, the resulting files are not found in E:\ or anywhere. I'm guessing there was a problem with the muxing in mp4box.

[Corran]

I've just finished attempting two encodes on Vista RC1 x86 with Zarx264GUI

E:\Test.avs -> E:\vistatest.mp4
E:\test2.avs -> E:\test2.mp4

Both ran, created the proper intermeadiate files to be muxed, and appeared to encode fine; however, the resulting files are not found in E:\ or anywhere. I'm guessing there was a problem with the muxing in mp4box.

Encoding/Muxing works fine if I tell Zarx264GUI to create a batch file and then run that instead of encoding with the gui. Intermeadiate files are still left on the hard drive though. (Which can be a good thing if for some reason you don't like the fact that he the GUI automatically deletes them.)

[shishlik]

o.k i went through some of the pages and tried the new encoding tool and for some reason it crashes after a couple of seconds after i hit the "encode" button. Also, for some reason, Megui doesn't work either now (can't even load) - probably has something to do with AMVApp's installation. Thank you for the guide.

[Zarxrax]

o.k i went through some of the pages and tried the new encoding tool and for some reason it crashes after a couple of seconds after i hit the "encode" button. Also, for some reason, Megui doesn't work either now (can't even load) - probably has something to do with AMVApp's installation. Thank you for the guide.

What operating system are you using? If you uninstall amvapp does megui work again?
Can you give me more information about the crashing? What exactly happens? Does it simply disappear with no error message? When the encoding progress window comes up what messages does it display before it closes?