The Don's Craptastic World » plugin

VirtualDub: How to use mkv, mp4, flv, mov and other file formats with VirtualDub

Don Salva — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 13:35:19 +0000

A lot of people keep asking me how to use VirtualDub with other files formats besides .avi. Like mkv, flv, mp4 or even .mov.

VirtualDub, as stand-alone, cannot handle mkv, mp4, flv, mov or any other files besides avi. You need a plugin or plugins to load anything else besides avi. Mind you, VirtualDub still only can and will save in avi!

There are a couple plugins that can handle loading different files formats. For me personally only 2 come to mind:

There's my personal favorite: Ffmpeg Input Driver which can handle 31 different file formats according to the plugin developer. Among them are the popular mkv, mp4, flv, mov, rm, rvmb, wmv and ts. The plugin is based, as the name may suggest, of the ffmpeg libraries. And if something doesn't work, remember, this is a plugin still in early development stage as of 03.07.2011.

Then there's fccHandler, which can handle mpeg-2, flv, wmv, fli, flc, mkv. However fccHandler also offers the AC-3 ACM codec, which I use for sound in my videos.

Download whichever plugin you prefer, and unpack it into your VirtualDub plugin folder.

Remember however that those plugins only allow you to load said file formats. You cannot save those loaded files in mp4, mov, flv, only in avi.

VirtualDub: Use ffdshow filters (resize, sharpen, wartermark) in VirtualDub

Don Salva — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:05:25 +0000

In the guides here and here I talk about using the VirtualDub internal filters, namely the resize and sharpen filters. But you can also use external filters. I use the ffdshow filters.

What is ffdshow, you ask? Here's the quote from the ffdshow sourceforge page

ffdshow tryouts is a DirectShow and Video for Windows codec with support for a wide range of audio and video formats, such as Xvid, DivX, and H.264. It includes a powerful filter set that can enhance the video quality - with filters for resizing, deinterlacing, and displaying subtitles - as well as audio quality through normalization, down-/upmixing, and resampling.

First of all, you'll need to download the latest ffdshow codec. Although it's "safer" to always use the latest stable builds, in this case however I'd recommend always using the latest SVN builds. Because they are updated way more often including the filters. The latest SVN build, as of the time writing this article was 2011-01-19.

Even the SVN builds are subdivided in 3 areas:

Start installing the ffdshow codec now. You'll be asked what you want to install. This is your choice:

After that leave the rest of the settings as they are and continue finishing the codec installation. After the installation a file named ffvdub.vdf should be inside your VirtualDub/Plugins folder:

Now we can start using the ffdshow filter in VirtualDub. Start up VirtualDub, open a video file, then add the filter:

Now the important part: VirtualDub processes the selected filters in their order. Meaning concurrent. This is very important because it affects your quality especially in connection with watermarks.

Say such as if we were using the filters in this order: 1) waterwark, 2) sharpen, 3) resize. What happens is this: First a watermark is slapped on a frame, then this frame including the watermark is sharpened and after that the sharpened frame including the watermark is resized. Now this is not an idea. Why?

Imagine you have a watermark 100*100 pixel. This image is first slapped on each frame, then it is sharpened and then it is resized. You don't want that. You want the watermark to maintain its original quality and size. So the ideal filter order would be:

Resize the frame, sharpen the frame and insert original, unedited watermark. Let's take a look at the selected filters.

ffdshow filter: Resize

It's pretty much straightforward. Enable resize, choose "Specify horizontal and vertical size" and enter the numbers you want to resize it to. It's 1280*720 for 720p HD and 1920*1080 for 1080p HD.

If you're resizing down or up from a 4:3 resolution, remember to enable "Keep original aspect ratio" under Aspect ratio. Otherwise the end-result will look over-stretched/-squeezed.

If you're resizing down or up from a 16:10 resolution, you could ignore this option. The end-result won't look too bad. But check it out yourself to make sure!

ffdshow filter: Sharpen

Sharpen is a bit trickier, and a lot different from VirtualDub's internal one. In fact there are 5 different sharpening algorithms, I haven't experience with them all, but I've made best experiences with "msharpen". Enable "high quality".

Sadly I can't give you ballpark figures like in the previous guides because this filter works very different. I'll do my best to try to explain how it works.

There are 2 sliders: Strength (1-127) and Threshold (0-255). Strength dictates how strong it should sharpen. Threshold dictates how much of the frame should be sharpened. A Threshold of 0 means everything (every pixel) in the frame will be sharpened, a Threshold of 255 sharpens nothing in the frame.

In order for you to see how much of a frame is sharpened enable "only mask" and press "Preview", play with the slider "Threshold" and set it to your liking. All that "white" in your Preview will be sharpened. Once you've set your Threshold to your liking don't forget to turn off "only mask"! Now play with the slider Strength and set to your liking. Each video needs a different setting I've concluded so far.

This is how the different msharp settings look like: Sharpen filter off, Sharpen Strength 127/Threshold 255, Sharpen Strength 127/Threshold 0, Sharpen Strength 35/Threshold 20, Sharpen Strength 30/Threshold 3.

Sharpen filter with "only mask" activated: Threshold 255, Threshold 0, Threshold 30, Threshold 15, Threshold 7, Threshold 3, Threshold 1.

ffdshow filter: Bitmap overlay (Watermark)

First thing fist: The watermark image needs to be a bitmap (.bmp). Everything else is pretty straightforward. Position your watermark with the sliders "Horizontal/Vertical position". Choose the mode of watermark inclusion and its Opacity. Preview your settings.

VirtualDub: How to watermark your videos

Don Salva — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 09:07:48 +0000

There are many folks out there who like to watermark their videos in all possible kind of ways. Some like to use huge introductions and others, like me, are satisfied with small but noninvasive logos.

Before we start, you'll obviously need VirtualDub, and in this case for the watermark to work, the ffdshow codec. Yes, I'm afraid, yet another codec. You need this codec, because it provides filters we need, such as implanting the logo into a video. The ffdshow codec installs a plugin called "ffvdub.vdf" into your VirtualDub plugin directory. This plugin allows the access to ffdshows filters via VirtualDub.

VirtualDub has it's own internal logo filter, but the problem with this filter is it leaves a mess after encoding. The logo is barely readable, it's pixellated and all other sort of issues. Whereas the ffdshow filter leave a clear, readable logo instead.

Open your video, set your VirtualDub up to do whatever encoding your need. Here are two ideas. Now comes the logo part.

Adding a logo to a video

Open up Video -> Filters and add the filter "ffvdub" from Milan Cutka:

Now a new window will appear where all the available ffdshow filters are listed:

You're looking for the filter "Bitmap overlay". Enable it. Now select your *.bmp logo, place it to your liking via horizontal/vertical position and "Alignment". Experiment with "Mode" and "Opacity". Don't forget to enable preview it.

If you don't have a *.bmp logo or don't want to waste a lot of time, you can use the logo template I made a while back.

It's very important in what order the filters are listed! For example in the screenshot you see "Resize & aspect" followed by "Sharpen" followed by "Bitmap overlay". Although Resize and Sharpen are deactivated, if they were all enabled then the video FIRST is resized, THEN sharpened, THEN the logo is applied in this order.

This way the logo remains unaffected by Resize and Sharpen and retains its original quality (but in the end will ultimately be affected on how you set up your compression settings).

Here's how my logo looks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFBM5q98mwc (in the bottom right corner)

The Don’s WordPress Plugins Round-Up!

Don Salva — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:00:55 +0000

I've got a few emails lately asking me what kind of plug-ins I use with my WordPress blog! I confess, I'm a lazy baastich, I use a lot of plugins which make writing posts and managing the blog easier. Why should I not?

In its raw form, WordPress provides everything one needs to start blogging immediately. That's the biggest plus! I've tested a few blog and CMSs and a lot of them were either very bloated or had almost no customization available.

Check out the 22 plugins I'm using...

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button (download):

Social media becomes increasingly popular and readers like to share what they read with their friends. To make it convenient for the reader, Add to Any provides a button with many popular social media sites. Sharing was never easier.

After The Deadline (download):

After The Deadline is an integrated spell/grammar/style-checker which operates externally. It uses a database with thousand of users linked to it. Think cloud and spell/grammar/style-checking.

All in One SEO Pack (download):

Optimizes your blog for Search Engines.

Configurable Tag Cloud (download):

The standard tag cloud provided by WordPress.org was not satisfactory and I was too lazy fiddling in the PHP files to style and configure it to my liking. Configurable Tag Cloud is what I wanted. A customizable widget!

Contact Form 7 (download):

A highly customizable contact form. Check "contact" in the navigation bar to see it in action!

Cute Profiles (download):

I ran out of space when I was linking my social profiles in the navigation bar. Cute Profiles adds all your Social Profile icons vertically on left or right side of your pages, which will remain visible all the time though the page is scrolled and without consuming the sidebar space.

FancyBox for WordPress (download):

A fancy way to display images on your blog. Using jQuery it enables you to use animations for resized images. From thumbnail to full-image and back to thumbnail.

Fast Tube (download):

A fast and very easy way to embed YouTube videos into your blog.

GD Star Rating (download):

Giving the reader the ability to rate your posts, pages and/or comments via a very complex star-rating system. It takes some time to properly configure it. But default settings are good and ready to go.

Google XML Sitemaps (download):

Having XML Sitemaps is a must if you want your blog to be SOE friendly. Though the add-on says Google XML, it actually creates the XML Sitemaps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com

Ozh' Admin Drop Down Menu (download):

I didn't like how all the admin menu links were left in a bar, so I got this one. The admin menu links are organized in a neat horizontal CSS driven drop down menu this way.

Quotes Collection (download):

A widget displaying your collected/favourite quotes.

Revision Control (download):

By default WordPress saves each post/page's content each time you save as a revision, so you can go back to a specific revision. I don't need it since I use external editors for that. Besides that it's a waste of database space.

Search Everything (download):

WordPress default search is very limited, and I wanted to be able to search a lot more. Search Everything provides just that. I can search posts, tags, links, pages, comments, drafts, category names, and a lot more.

TinyMCE Advanced (download):

WordPress' default editor has too few options for me, and I often had to manually enter my desired HTML-tag via the "HTML" editor. TinyMCE Advanced take care of that by providing you more options.

WordPress.com Stats (download):

Statistics, statistics and more statistics. If you want a lot of statistics, this is the plug-in for you. Though there are better statistics tools, like Piwik.

WP-DBManager (download):

Manage your WordPress database. Optimize, repair, back-up and more.

WP-PageNavi (download):

A fancier way to display page navigation. See at the bottom of the blog. Highly customizable via CSS.

WP-PostViews (download):

Providing a way to show the count of post-views. You can exclude bots, and restrict the counting to everybody, registered users, or guests only.

WP-SpamFree (download):

Comment-Spam is a problem! And WP-SpamFree takes care of that, I mean REALLY takes care of that!

WP Security Scan (download):

Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (download):

I wanted to be able to link my posts to other related posts. This plug-in uses, in my opinion, a very good algorithm linking related posts and showing them at the end of each post. Algorithm is to some extend customizable by allowing, excluding, adding extras, considering with extra weight, etc.

The Don's Craptastic World » plugin

VirtualDub: How to use mkv, mp4, flv, mov and other file formats with VirtualDub

Related posts:

VirtualDub: Use ffdshow filters (resize, sharpen, wartermark) in VirtualDub

Related posts:

VirtualDub: How to watermark your videos

Related posts:

The Don’s WordPress Plugins Round-Up!

Related posts: