Cure for lag? ^_^

[x_rex30]

nvermind

Bicubic
BicubicResize is similar to BilinearResize, except that instead of a linear filtering function it uses the Mitchell-Netravali two-part cubic.
The parameters b and c can be used to adjust the properties of the cubic, they are sometimes referred to as `blurring' and `ringing,' respectively.

With b = 0 and c = 0.75 the filter is exactly the same as VirtualDub's "precise bicubic," and the results are identical except for the VirtualDub scaling problem mentioned above. The default is b = 1/3 and c = 1/3, which were the values recommended by Mitchell and Netravali as yielding the most visually pleasing results in subjective tests of human beings. Larger values of b and c can produce interesting op-art effects--for example, try b = 0 and c = -5.

If you are magnifying your video, you will get much better-looking results with BicubicResize than with BilinearResize. However, if you are shrinking it, you are probably just as well off, or even better off, with BilinearResize. Although VirtualDub's bicubic filter does produce better-looking images than its bilinear filter, this is mainly because the bicubic filter sharpens the image, not because it samples it better. Sharp images are nice to look at--until you try to compress them, at which point they turn nasty on you very quickly. The BicubicResize default doesn't sharpen nearly as much as VirtualDub's bicubic, but it still sharpens more than the bilinear. If you plan to encode your video at a low bitrate, I wouldn't be at all surprised if BilinearResize yields better quality.

[Aki Ameko]

Kerneldeint and lanczos resize will eat a lot of cpu time. If lag is really a problem it would be best to export to some form of lossless coding. You could use HuffYUV, Lagarith, or if your harddrive is up to it (both speed and size wise) raw YV12 (which for 640x480 is 450KB per frame).

Also you will get better image quality using bilinear resize, it will appear softer than lanczos, but you won't get ringing (haloing, or those light edges). The rule of thumb is bilinear/precise bilinear for downsizing and bicubic/lanczos for upsizing (you shouldn't be upsizing anyway unless necessary, it doesn't improve the quality and takes up more space).

And yeah, even HuffYUV can lag if you have a slow ass hard drive, there is more to lag than just CPU speed. RAM and HD are huge factors in video editing.

So, just use bilinear instead of biubic?

Also, if I change my avisynth code, will it affect all the clips that I've made, including the ones already imported to WMM?

[Aki Ameko]

Anyone?

[madbunny]

You have a few options.
Your ram should be fine for what you're doing. Keep your system running as lean as you can so that you're not wasting CPU power on stuff you don't need to have running, like 'quicktime news update'.
Do the obvious by defragging your sytem and cleaning it up.

To speed up your clips:

1) use the bait and switch method. Blazingly fast, and smooth to work with, but a pain in the ass to keep track of.

1.2) use another codec. Something not lossless that runs more smoothly but still looks good.
this one was done in Mjpeg as an example

2) Get a really fast hard drive - and keep it dedicated for editing. If you have an older system you might want to consider getting an SATA controller card instead of using IDE.

3) Are you editing in WMM, or premiere? If it's premiere, try rendering your clips out, and check what codec your preview renders are in.

4) annoying but theoretical speed boosts - Check your motherboards frontside buss and compare it to your ram. If you have an 800mhz fsb and 300mhz ram you can get better stuff.
4.1) overclocking - At the least, you can look into high quality cooling. If your computer is running hot, it'll er... 'de-cycle' so to speak and slow down.

[Melanchthon]

Here's a copy of my AviSynth scripts before I made them into clips:

[snip]

If it's rendered already, then it doesn't matter what the script is. I still don't know what codec you used (you mentioned Huffyuv, but I'm not sure if you are using it). The resolution might be causing some of the lag-- maybe you try could resizing to 512x384?

Changing your script won't affect files that are already rendered.

[Gepetto]

Back to the topic...

why did everyone assume Aki Ameko to be using HuffYUV?

Aki Ameko: If you don't know what codec you used in vdub, it's probably uncompressed video, which is the default setting. That would explain your lagging, because uncompressed video is BIG. Create a HuffYUV or Lagarith file on vdub. Just do what you already did, but before saving the file, click "Compression" on the "video" tab and select a lossless codec (of course, you must have them installed). Then, save normally. The file will be smaller than uncompressed without any quality loss (hence the name "lossless") and the lag should go away, or at least become considerably smaller.