Archive for the ‘software’ Category
HD Video Converter
A frustrating experience came my way a few months ago, when I was presented with footage from a Canon 5DII and a Canon 3Ti. This was a wedding shoot, and would be combined with footage from my Sony NX5U. The footage from the Canon looked amazing, but there was a problem. My editing software (Vegas Pro 9) would import the footage, but it would then promptly hang or crash. I tried several transcoding and conversion applications, including Cineform. The results ranged from audio that was out of sync, altered gamma, enormous files, and so on.
Then I ran across WinX HD Video Converter. The software accepted the footage from the Canons, and offered a wide range of output formats. The interface is intuitive, and there are a number of preset output options, each with it’s own preset bitrate and resolution settings and so on. You can of course opt to override the settings as desired. Several HD specific presets offer AVI, MP4, MOV and even a Youtube friendly HD preset. Conversions may be done in batch by adding multiple files.
Conversion speed with HD Video Converter was surprisingly quick, depending on the output format. Even at some of the highest quality presets with the “high quality engine” option ticked on, the conversion rate approached realtime on the Intel quadcore test machine. At lower resolutions, such as with the preset for “cell phone” it was actually faster than realtime. Botom line here was it turned a disaster into a successful editing session, and saved the project.
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Microsoft Expression Encoder is the latest Windows Media Video encoder from Microsoft. Some will scoff and say, why don’t you just use Quicktime??” Well, most business clients use some version of Windows. Installing new software on a corporate machine is often not an option due to security restrictions. Besides, Windows Media 11 offers a very high quality video codec that is also very space efficient. If your NLE does not output in Windows Media format, or does so poorly, this is a great free solution.
Those of us who use Sony Vegas Pro, and have had to deliver Windows Media Video files share a common frustration. Even as of version 9C, encoding of Windows Media (wmv) files are painfully slow to say the least. Depending on the output resolution, you can expect around 4X to 6X render times. Very annoying, because Vegas is blazing fast when rendering Mpeg2 files. One reason is because all processor cores are utilized. WMV rendering utilizes only a single processor core.
Recently, I was faced with a job that would require delivering over eight hours of video as WMV files. One final render started late afternoon was still running the following morning, and not even half way through! Rendering each hour of video would take around four to six hours each. Instead, I chose to output as HD 720P mpeg2 files, and this did so faster than realtime. About .8X or so. The segments were imported into Expression Encoder, and the jobs were encoding at faster than realtime! Even with the added step, render times were under 2X using a quad core Intel based machine!
Adobe Flash
The iPad reminded me of the strange confusion around Adobe Flash. Many were surprised that the iPad will not support flash. I can’t say that I was surprised at all. As many readers might know, the iPhone does not support flash. There actually only a few smartphones that do support flash, and only do so to a limited extent. Apple in particular, has a ax to grind with Adobe, as the flash player seems to occasionally cause system crashes in OSX. Apple feels this is a problem with Adobe’s code.
There is however some confusion about a couple of important aspects of Flash. What first comes to mind is the eye candy websites that use flash to animate all sorts of buttons and effects. Some elegantly so, and others to a ridiculous extent. Flash (and Shockwave) has been used to create many animated presentations, and applications and games as well. There is however an almost completely separate function supported by flash player, and that is video playback.
Originally, the flash player was designed to play a particular video file format known as FLV. This is a video file format specific to the Flash player. For years, this has been the method of choice for delivering video on the web. Youtube, and many similar sites, used this method for years. It of course required that you have Adobe Flash player installed on your computer. Most of you out there know all too well the prompt from your web browser, asking that you install the Flash Plugin.
There were many competitors over the years for alternate methods of online video delivery. Windows Media, Apple Quicktime, Real Media, and so on. A refreshingly new trend has however been afoot these past years, and that is the MP4 file format. Also known as Mpeg4, this actually represents a bit of a convergence. An odd thing indeed, when so many incompatible file formats and applications plague all things computerized these days. Not only does Apple support Mp4, it’s actually the chosen video format of the iPhone, and iPod touch. This was no doubt a factor that influenced the move towards mp4 video delivery that Youtube now embraces.
Where does Flash come in? As it turns out, as of version 9, Adobe flash player supports playback of mp4 files via a web page. The great thing about this is no additional plug-in is required to play the video. That is, if you have flash player installed, and of course that your device supports flash. While I do have some background in web development, I’m hardly a programmer. I wonder why that mp4 video playback via the flash player can’t be supported alone, and simply disable all of the other Flash functionality? Seems to me, this just throws the baby out with the bathwater.
DVD extraction software
This actually seems to be a rather decent DVD ripper. And for a while, it’s actually free! Please note that we don’t encourage theft of copyrighted material. I do however feel that I have a right to grab video from a DVD I already own, and put it on my iPhone. It does indeed do just this.
Free WinX DVD Ripper Platinum (for a limited time so hurry)! | Freebies | dotTech [.org].
Sony Vegas 9
I have banged my head against a wall over the audio problems with XVID encoding in Vegas for quite some time. If you came across this article by the way of a search, you’ve probably read other articles about audio encoding issues with DIVX and XVID in Vegas. You might have even tried a suggestion or two. Perhaps you have even installed the LAME MP3 codec. Let me save you some time, and tell you that high bitrate MP3 audio is simply not supported in Vegas.
Why not just use another video codec? AVC is pretty widely supported after all. The reason is simple. XVID (or DIVX) with MP3 audio, is possibly the most efficient codec(s) for the AVI container ever developed. Among other reasons, I have a Samsung bigscreen that will play these files directly. A great solution for quick customer demos.
There is a workaround. It’s not ideal, but at least it wont cost you any more money. First of all, you’ll need to grab a copy of VirtualDub. If you’re not familiar with this tool, you should be. Simply render your video in vegas with as an AVI video with the XVID codec. Choose PCM lossless for the audio codec. In the video menu, choose “Direct Stream Copy”. In the audio menu, choose full processing mode, and then choose compression. Choose “Lame MP3″ as the codec (you did install this earlier didn’t you?), and choose your preferred bitrate. Then choose “save as AVI from the file menu. That’s it!
In spite of this limitation, I’d still not trade Vegas for any other NLE.
Update… see the comment post by jellad.tarek. He’s apparently found a way to get the Lame codec to work correctly with Vegas.
Update2….Jeff Details a different solution in his comment on 1-8-12
Sony Vegas Pro
I’ve used Vegas 8 for some time now, and I’ve been quite pleased with it. It’s pretty rock solid, and does almost everything I need. After an upgrade late last year to a quad core Intel 9550 based system, performance took another jump.
I was looking at a copy of a video industry magazine, and saw an add for an accelerator card that bragged, “Render faster than realtime!” No only have I long been rendering faster than realtime in most formats, I’m now often in the 2X to 4X range. I just rendered an mpeg4 of about two and a half hours, and it was done in 30 minutes. Mind you, there wasn’t much filtering or fancy stuff on the timeline, but that’s still pretty hard to beat.
The exception however is definitely Windows Media. For whatever reason, it will only render at less than realtime. Fortunately, there’s less and less of a use for it. I avoid unless a client asks for it. Especially now that Adobe flash player can play H.264 files directly, there’s almost no need at all for wmv.
I think it would be interesting to see how the rendering engines perform in other NLEs on similar hardware. It might be tricky to do an apples to apples (no pun here) comparison, as project file formats would not be compatible.
