still trying to work with mpeg2 (.m2v) in wmm

[Guest]

I have a .vob file I want to edit in WMM.

Renamed .vob as .mpg. and opened in VirtualDubMod. I can resize to PAL or
NTSC as required, compress with Panasonic codec, but am unable to work out
how to convert an MPEG-2 file to a DV-AVI file using this program. I have
followed PapaJohn's website's advice to the letter on this matter, but just
can't see how to start the conversion. I am sure it is something really
simple but I just can't see how?

If I can get this to work this will be great and I will not need to continue
mucking about with TMPGEnc, that was getting me nowhere as well.

Thanks for your help.

 

[John Hanley]

I used "VirtualDub for MPEG-2" to convert my vob files to avi files;
downloaded it from http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/index.html. It
was my understanding that I needed the version to deal with MPEG-2 files
that the regular VirtualDub would not handle. With my particular vob files,
it was necessary to download an additional codec - AC-3 ACM Decompressor
1.31; I don't remember where I got it, googled for it. To set VirtualDub
for MPEG-2 to convert the audio stream: click Audio then Full Processing
Mode. Next, click on the Audio tab again and select Compression and your
codec. I suspect that vob files from other sources may required different
codecs. I got good advice at:

http://www.hitthebongo.co.uk/videofx/virtualdub/virtualdub.html

After I obtained a good avi file, I imported the avi file into Windows Movie
Maker.

Hope this helps; the process requires a lot of attention, but my results
have been good.

 

[PapaJohn]

the conversion starts when you use File > Save As > enter a file name >
press the Save buton

 

[Guest]

Hope you are still following this thread.

Thanks very much John H and PapaJohn for your help, I have now managed to
get this to work and I have had a look around and understand much of what I
need to use it for.

One other question that is now bugging me with VDub (I apologise because I
know this is an MM forum, but VDub seems so necessary without MM having a
file format changer of its own) is that I have another video which although
720*576 in size (PAL standard?) it should actually be letterbox format (there
are thick black bands at the top and bottom as a result). This then means
that the video will not run at full size lengthways because the "image"
(actually the black bands) stops at the top and bottom of the screen. The
help and index seems to be poor, but I think I need to crop the images. But
I can't seem to crop the image and maintain the letterbox shape, it keeps
wanting to stretch it back out to 576 in height. Any thoughts on what I
should be doing here?

Any help would be very much appreciated,

Kind regards

A Taxed Mind

 

[PapaJohn]

no need to apologize.... I wrote the opening 20 page chapter of the book
'Learning VirtualDub'...

you need to apply the resize filter to keep the size at your 720x576....
even if you're not changing it's size yet. After any filter is in the list,
the 'Cropping' button will become an active option... explore it.

 

[Guest]

Thanks PapaJohn.

I used the resize filter and kept the size at 720*576 and I found that when
I cropped the black bands from the top and bottom the image was then
stretched back to 576 in height resulting in a lot of very tall and thin
people. I have then tried to resize the image to the actual "image" (approx
720*422) and then cropped off the black bands. This should work but the
problem is guessing the correct height of the image after cropping and thus
avoiding lines which are created across the image to stretch or shrink it.
Any idea how I can do this more accurately? There also seems to be a problem
that when I Save this file to a .AVI it becomes very jerky in both motion and
audio (didn't happen on my previous project). I have tried putting it
through the Panasonic DV filter but it still happens. Any suggestions what
might be causing this?

Thanks very much for your help, it is very much appreciated.

Kind regards,

A Taxed Mind

 

[PapaJohn]

A saved AVI file that doesn't play smoothly could be a huge uncompressed one
(if you forgot to select a compression codec)... or a highly fragmented
DV-AVI file, which is meant for editing, not viewing.

On sizes, it's best to align the cropped section with your starting aspect
ratio, and do the cropping such that you're cutting out even numbered 4 or 8
pixels in size...