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Why isn't there a suite of command-line tools to handle video clips yet, such as cutting, merging, transitions, variable speeds, inserting still images for a certain length, etc.?

AviSynth is a scripting language/library that can do those things, but it's more useful as glue logic than a standalone editor. You really need to see what you're working on when editing video. Even simple effects can involve some manual tweaking to figure out what looks good, and having a real-time random access preview in a non-linear editor is ideal. Seeing audio waveforms is also helpful -- maybe you want to synchronize a video effect with the audio, for instance. I'm currently adding RiffTrax commentary tracks to movie audio/video to make custom Blu-rays, which is a lot easier if I can see how the waveforms line up at the synch points.

You also have the question of how to handle (or rather, avoid) re-encoding. Does each tool output a huge raw temporary file? Do you use pipes to go from stdout->stdin through a mile-long command line? Do you have to run the tools in video-chronological order? How do you synchronize the audio with the video?

Can you share what tools / scripts / arguments you use for this?

I've not found any way to do it without a massive headache.

I use Windows and AnyDVD, which removes all protections from both DVD and BluRay, but if you only use DVD, pretty much anything will work to get the content into the right format. I would recommend something like DVD Shrink to quickly grab only the main movie and the soundtracks and subtitles that interest you.

After that, I prefer semi-manual means instead of an all-in-one system, so I use DG Index to feed into AVISynth. You don't need anything fancy in AVISynth, but you will want to use something like SmartDecimate to de-interlace the movie back to the original 24fps. Apply other filters as you see fit.

Then, to convert to H.264, something like x264 --preset slower --tune film --crf 18 --output "MovieName.264" "MovieName.avs" will do the job fine, giving you filesizes averaging about 700MB/hour. Eventually, you can learn more about x264 and do some fancier things, but all they will buy you is a smaller filesize for the same visual quality.

Then, rename the MovieName.264 file to MovieName.h264 and use mkvmerge or the GUI front-end to combine the original audio and subtitles from the DVD with your newly encoded video. This will get you movies you can watch. If you want to add things like chapters, or modify the original audio, you'll have to use a few more tools, but those are completely optional steps.

And don't forget to use Lanczos anti-aliasing when downsizing to avoid moiré.

FWIW, to do these kind of processing/conversions I once used an AVISynth script with Nero Recode. No match on flexibility and speed (repsectively) at that time.

I'd like to take the opportunity to plug video editing with AviSynth. No, there's no GUI and it only runs on Windows. But, if you want to take the power of scripting and programming to the world of video editing, this tool is for you.

There was at one time a project to make a version that ran cross-platform, but it ran out of steam.

Hopefully it wraps Avisynth -- it's got some incredible community-made scripts and plugins that are unmatched by anything else, but isn't newbie-friendly when it comes to what most people think of as "video editing".

With AviSynth, you can write scripts for complex video editing tasks. AviSynth with do mixing on the fly in your video player when you run the script. Very nice; it moves complex video editing from the world of point-and-click GUIs to coding!

DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink. How hard is it, really?

True, I can find DVDFab HD Decrypter just fine, but the first several results on Google for dvd shrink say "we're not allowed to host this nor tell you where it is hosted; use Google". So it is hard. That said, I use VirtualDub-MPEG2 and AC-3 ACM to turn DVDs into AVIs so that I can play them in a DivX player or use Avisynth to make remixes.

Wow, that's got to be some of the coolest tech I've seen in years. I can't wait for some software to come out that uses it. Avisynth plugins, anyone?

The newer version supports SetMTMode which works quite well in many cases.

I just use FLVSplitter and open them in any DirectShow capable player/editor. WMP or MPC work.

Usually I run them through an AviSynth DirectShowSource() script and then open them in VirtualDub, where I can apply filters, edit, and/or reencode.

Good use of Avisynth should help keep the filesize down. Also try using a KDVD matrix.

I love Gimp. Even animations are relatively easy with it.

One thing I'd like to do with it is similar to the way VirtualDub or AviSynth works: saving a script of all the actions I performed on an image/video, that I can then use on other images. You can save curves, but you can't save HSV adjustments that I can tell.

Is there a way to do this with Gimp?

Something similar could probably be put together fairly quickly using programs like Avidemux or VirtualDub for those who don't mind distributing the work of classifying and sharing the necessary edit-decision lists.

This is really simple to implement using AviSynth, if anyone wants to try it. Just install that, an MPEG-2 (DVD) codec, and AnyDVD or DVD43 to decrypt the DVD on-the-fly. Then create a text file called myscript.avs with this code:

# Combine all the VOBs.
a=DirectShowSource("E:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VO B")
b=DirectShowSource("E:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_2.VOB" )
AlignedSplice(a,b)

# Cut out frames 1500-1550 and 3000-3023
Trim(0,1500) ++ Trim(1550,3000) ++ Trim(3023,0)

You can then open that in any DirectShow or VfW compatible player, such as WMP. Or distribute the *.avs files to others.

AviSynth: Frameserver, scriptable non-linear video editing.
VirtualDub/VirtualDubMod: Video capture, linear processing. Use in conjunction with AviSynth.
Isobuster: CD/DVD data recovery
ExactAudioCopy: CD ripping even from badly scratched CDs.

Why not have it just play embedded in firefox just like the windows users get? A much easier way is to install mplayerplug-in and make sure you have avisynth.dll. Then it will play embedded just like it does for windows users.

To install mplayerplug-in, the easiest way is to use `yum install mplayerplug-in` (if you have yum installed). As for avisynth.dll, just go to http://www.avisynth.org/ and downloaded the zip file. Unzip it and put the .dll in /usr/lib/win32/ or /usr/lib/codecs/.

That is all!

I am in the business of converting film to video and feel it should be noted this is quite an expensive undertaking. In addition to cartoons and classics, there are millions of film reels in archives in places such as the Smithsonian, The Library of Congress, your local university and historical societies. I attended the 2004 Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference and found most curators are focusing on preservation of originals, which is a good thing. However, I would love to gain access (video, maybe streaming) to the millions of other movies that will likely never make it out of the vaults due to cost and available funding. Frame by frame restoration may have its place, but I would prefer a scratched up copy (on video). Automated filters could help, here are some freebies (which I do not use) that you could try for yourself with avisynth and virtualdub (all open source projects). http://bag.hotmail.ru/ http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/ http://virtualdub.org/

One commonly used DNR product is made by Sweden's Digital Vision AB, which sells equipment ranging in price from $35,000 to $150,000.

HuffYUV

I use VirtualDubMod (http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net) and AVISynth (http://www.avisynth.org) extensively for video processing. They're the two big reasons why I keep a Windows XP partition on my computer.

You can find a large collection of AVISynth filters at http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/. I don't do much filtering in VirtualDubMod (I use it mostly for viewing AVISynth output, writing AVISynth scripts, performing compression, and muxing), but you can find a good starting list of VirtualDub filters at http://neuron2.net.

The doom9 forums for AVISynth development are also a good place to look for software and hints.

I use VirtualDubMod (http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net) and AVISynth (http://www.avisynth.org) extensively for video processing. They're the two big reasons why I keep a Windows XP partition on my computer.

You can find a large collection of AVISynth filters at http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/. I don't do much filtering in VirtualDubMod (I use it mostly for viewing AVISynth output, writing AVISynth scripts, performing compression, and muxing), but you can find a good starting list of VirtualDub filters at http://neuron2.net.

The doom9 forums for AVISynth development are also a good place to look for software and hints.

If they don't shy away from writing a very simple script with a text editor once, AviSynth can do the job.

Hilarious. MJPG is "lossy" too and any editor that cannot do frame accurate editing on that ain't much of an editor.

Anyway, if all you want to do is chop up already produced content, ripping out commercials and such, then get a real editor made for the job. I used avisynth for years, contributed to the project (and the docs) and I can tell you it has zero trouble giving you frame accurate editing from damn near ANY type stream.

And yes, sending uncompressed video over USB is heinously stupid. If you really care about quality then you get a machine that'll take a PCI card and add a forty dollar video capture card (or if you really care then waste a bunch more on a pro rig - whatever). But you can send 12Mbps MPEG2 (or even 3:1 MJPEG) over USB a whole lot more efficiently and it won't take 2GHz of CPU just to handle the communication protocol and on the fly encoding when you want dvr functionality.

If you're capturing DV you use firewire; if you're capturing HD and you care about quality, get a decent tuner. But if all you're doing is capturing broadcast TV or VHS tapes (and you really do care what the picture looks like) you're going to have to post-process it anyway and there's no fucking way you'll ever see the "loss" in the final product from that initial encode to 12Mbps MPEG2, much less high quality MJPEG.

Seeing as Quicktime movie trailers have been using Sorenson Video (1, 2 and 3) for video since about the time that trailers for The Phantom Menace were coming out, I'm wondering if you somehow remembered the page wrong. I do know that to get that kind of quality out of Sorenson needs the Pro version of the codec (which gives you bidirectional coding, VBR and other goodies) and an encoder that actually supports 2-pass VBR properly (Cleaner comes to mind).

I can't help but think that given the same sort of quality source material that Apple has, home users could get that kind of quality with a little know-how and the right tools. AviSynth, for example, has tons of fantastic user-created filters for cleaning up less-than-ideal video and removing noise. Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the main thing I've noticed about successive versions of Sorenson is that it seems to be better about not wasting bits compressing background noise in places with little motion. (This comes, of course, from years of diligent trailer-watching.)

Someone's already mentioned VirtualDub, but I'd like to point out AviSynth too. Although VirtualDub provides a simple GUI and can be good for video filtering and for re-encoding, its capabilities are limited to linear editing.

AviSynth, on the other hand, is very powerful script-based non-linear editing system. AviSynth operates as a frame-server--other applications (such as VirtualDub) load AviSynth scripts, and when they request frame N, AviSynth generates that frame and feeds it to the calling application. Most applications don't even need to support AviSynth explicitly; as long as they use Windows' native AVI handlers, AviSynth should work with them just fine.

It doesn't provide a GUI, although there are a number of third-party graphical front-ends to ease the script-writing process. It's harder to learn for non-programmers, but as a script-based system, in many ways it's more powerful, flexible, and precise than traditional methods.

An AviSynth script often looks something like this:

# load foo.avi, and refer to it through the
# variable clip1
clip1 = AVISource("foo.avi")
clip2 = AVISource("bar.avi")

# output a new clip that has frames [0, 1000]
# of clip1, frames [500, 1500] of clip2, and then
# frames [2000, 3000] of clip1
#
# (the ++ operator concatenates, and the Trim function cuts)
editedClip = clip1.Trim(0, 1000) ++ clip2.Trim(500, 1500) ++ clip1.Trim(2000, 3000)

# AviSynth provides filtering support too
editedClip = editedClip.TemporalSoften(4, 4, 8, 15, 2)
editedClip = editedClip.Levels(0, 1.1, 255, 0, 255)

return editedClip

There are quite a number of third-party plug-ins. So far, though, AviSynth has been used primarily as a tool for processing TV captures and DVD rips, and the vast majority of its filters are different types of denoisers. There are few "effects"-based filters, but hopefully this will change as more and more people use it as an editing system. However, there is support for basic fades, pans, and wipes.

More information can be found at the avisynth.org site and on the doom9 AviSynth forums.

This would be very handy to me, since I use XP for Video

Transcode,
Cinelerra, ...

Try again... What do you need windows for?

Do you know of anything equivalent in quality and/or speed to TMPGEnc? As an alternative, do you know how to get TMPGEnc working under Wine? The last time I tried (maybe a year or so ago), I didn't get very far with it.

(While we're at it, something comparable to Avisynth would be nice. Access to Avisynth plugins would also be a Good Thing...though given that it's open-source, maybe the more interesting plugins have already been implemented in some other Linux-native software already.)

.. files if they should have the same extension .. avisynth files are not video files .. but script files for video transparent pos-processing (filtering, etc) with Avisynth . They could have named it something else

And does the world need yet another incompatable video format?

Ffdshow is a filter for most mpeg4 codecs. Works with divx 4,5, xvid and other mpeg4 implementations. If all you do is playback, no codec required. Also if use alpha xvid codecs and it doesn't playback properly with ffdshow, you know that your vid isn't mpeg4 compliant. Btw, I capture/encode shows all the time in windows and would like to do this in linux, but it seems really lacking. First off, avisynth is an indispensable tool for dealing with video. What first attracted me to it was the best ivtc plugin by Donald Graft. This processes telecined sources back to their original film frame rate which I use on toons/film sources.

But the versatility goes way beyond that. Here's an animated menu I made for batman tas for a vcd I was working on, which btw I authored with videopack 5 to include animated menus, galleries with audio and chapter selection (I love pimpin that :) ).

Also worth mentioning is Tmpgenc, probably the best mpeg 1 encoder, which is free. And not to shabby mpeg2 encoding. Also of course is virtualdub, which has come in handy on many occasions.

So where are the comparable linux equivalents? I couldn't find them. I'd love to see a write up on video encoding on linux, maybe I'll do one myself.

Since it's on the DVD in video format, they would also have needed a video editing suite (stand alone or PC based) which are never cheap unless you pirate them).

Not to say that it's cheap to produce DVDs, but the software doesn't necessarily need to be that expensive.

Video editing: Avisynth. Since it's a script-based NLE, it's not the most user-friendly thing around, but it's powerful and free.

MPEG2 encoding: Tsunami MPEG Encoder. MPEG1 encoding is free; MPEG2 encoding support costs $48 US. Considered one of the best encoders around for quality, especially for its price.

Of course, these tools may not have been available (or may not have been too usable) when this project was started.

The best user interface that I have yet found is still a command line.

When you figure out how to draw a picture with the command line, or edit a video...

Avisynth is pretty nice...

People doing video editing on x86 will have to use Windows. There simply isn't any kind of video editing software available for Linux that is even remotely affordable. And the ones that are available for Windows are crap.

You must have a different definition of "crap" than most people. I've found VirtualDub and Avisynth to be pretty decent. Avisynth, in particular, offers some fairly nifty editing capabilities...one script I've written for it takes two AVIs and overlays them on a third AVI. (It's designed to mimic the appearance of a Win2K desktop running some video-telephony software I wrote...a conversation is captured with the software and converted to a pair of AVIs.) More frequently, I use it to cut the ads out of TV shows captured by my TiVo or my All-In-Wonder and to do inverse 3:2 pulldown. The script then gets loaded into TMPGEnc for compression to SVCD.

I pity the people stuck with PCs to do their video editing. I've tried it on my Pentium III before, and it is slow as all hell. Pity, too, but you really do get what you pay for.

Unless you're willing to pay through the nose for a pair of the fastest Xeons, you don't want Intel processors for video editing/encoding. OTOH, the dual Athlon MP 2100+ I have at home hauls ass...over 30 fps for two-pass XviD encoding and somewhere around 6 fps for two-pass VBR MPEG-2 encoding with TMPGEnc at its highest-quality settings. The processors and motherboard were under $700 (it was an upgrade from a single 1.0-GHz Athlon) a few months ago; you could more than likely get something even faster for less money now.