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Unofficial VirtualDub Support Forums > VirtualDub Development Forum > How To Legal Itegrate Many Features Of Vdub-mods

Posted by: S_O Nov 12 2002, 10:08 PM

There are several modified versions of VirtualDub around the in the internet:
nandub, virtualdub-ac3, virtualdub-mp3vbr, virtualdub-ogm, virtualdub-avs, virtualdub-mpeg2, virtualdub-vcr...
and I think there are even more.
Some of these versions have illegal/stupid/licensed features (nandub, virtualdub-mp3vbr, virtualdub-mpeg2), but others really make virtualdub really better. Why are none of these features implemeted into the the original VirtualDub? There is now the VirtualDubMod-Project which conatins ogm/mpeg-2 and avs, but I don´t think that´s the best solution.
Of course I don´t want to become VirtualDub an illegal tool, but some features with patent-issues like mpeg-2 or asf could be implemented in the source only and get enabled like b-frames in xvid with something like "#define ASF_SUPPORT" and "#define MPEG2_SUPPORT". The builds on the official site wouldn´t contain these features, but other people could download the source and compile it with these options. An alternative to that would be plug-ins, that VirtualDub can read read/write all formats/codecs with plug-ins.
I would like to have only 1 virtualdub-version on my PC, but I have 4:
VirtualDub 1.3c (asf-support), NanDub, VirtualDubMod (AVS&OGM&MPEG-2) and 1.4.11. This would make VirtualDub to the best and complete Video-editing-tool not the best starting-point for several very special versions.

Also I thought about the problem how to handle all these features (muxing OGM etc...) and make virtualdub still easy to use.
Instead of the menu "OGM" in the ogm-versions there is an container-menu, where you can select the coantiner (avi, ogm, mpeg-1, mcf and with plug-in/special compile mpeg-2, asf, mpeg-4...). the conainers should know what they are able to do, that you cannot mux DivX in mpeg-1 etc.
Similar like in Flask (these old dvd-ripping tool), just here are audio, video and container segregated.
Same for filters, filtrers are not forced to RGB24, they should know what they can accept, maybe RGB, YUV2 and YV12, but it should also be possible that they just support DIV3 as input. VirtualDub should be very flexible with this filters, so with this the best thing is to give the decoder and the video-encoder codec also an item in the filter-configurator, that you can have maybe:

pvastrumento(MPG2)
MPEG2-Decoder(YUV2)
TemporalSmoother(YUV2)
VideoCompression[DivX 3.11](DIV3)
ISO-Mpeg4-Converter(DIVX).

That would mean the mpeg-2-stream is first corrected by pvastrumento (a filter-version of this great tool correcting mpeg2-streams from from DVB), then decoded to YUV2, filtered with TemporalSmoother, compressed with DivX 3 and finally converted from M$-MPEG4 to ISO-MPEG4 (I know that kind of tool doesn´t exsist, but I´ve read it should be possible). It would also be possible to use special decoder/encoder-plug-ins which are not avaible/possible with vfw (maybe later with UCI).
This is just an example, of course you should use XviD instead of DivX 3.
With dircet stream copy there is no filter possible, with full processing mode first only decoder and encoder. The other modes will be just replaced with this system. VirtualDub should automtically choose, maybe YUV2 for MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 when both codecs accept it. But in this filter-configurator you can change the format.
The same thing should be there for Audio. Audio Filters would be great like resampling, normalizeing, volume, downmix, soundtouch (change tempo, speed and pitch),....

In short:
-Special features with other compiles or plug-in support,
that not so many special versions are needed.
-Special options for container (avi, ogm, mcf etc.)
-Better video filters (allow any format, not just RGB)
-Audio filters

I know it´s very hard to code something and VirtualDub is already the best video-tool, but nothing is perfect. Maybe some of these ideas could be implemented, I would really like to help, but unfortunately my programming-knowledge is very limited.

Posted by: ChristianHJW Nov 13 2002, 11:59 PM

S_O, you are correct about many poins you raise, still there is a big questionmark behind many of the mods you request for Vdub, like MPEG2 support.

Any other opinions on this ? Avery ?

Posted by: Morsa Nov 14 2002, 12:02 AM

I´m really against adding audio filters to vdub, cause there is so many audio tools out there that adding this feature to Vdub would be almost a waste of time.Just an opinion.

Posted by: Sarreq Teryx Nov 14 2002, 07:57 AM

not if you can filter the audio at the same time you're filtering the video and compressing

Posted by: Morsa Nov 14 2002, 08:23 AM

Ok, but does it make sense?
Audio stream isn´t so big!

(not trying to annoy you Sarreq )

Posted by: Sarreq Teryx Nov 14 2002, 10:11 AM

not annoying me.

QUOTE

Ok, but does it make sense?
Audio stream isn´t so big!

but without, you have to load the source file, take the audio out, load it into your seperate audio editor, apply the filtering you want, save from that, load it back into VD, select your vid options, select your audio options, select your vid filtering, then encode.

if you can filter audio in VD it's much quicker, load the source, select you vid options, select your audio options, select your vid filtering, select your audio filtering, then encode. eliminates 4 whole steps.

Posted by: S_O Nov 18 2002, 04:41 PM

QUOTE

if you can filter audio in VD it's much quicker, load the source, select you vid options, select your audio options, select your vid filtering, select your audio filtering, then encode. eliminates 4 whole steps.

That´s exactly what I mean. If video compression would be that difficult you first need to decompress video, save it to an large uncompressed file, then filter it, save it again uncompressed, then resize it, save it, and finally compress it. Gald that VirtualDub can do that all at once! For audio the same would be good, too.

QUOTE

still there is a big questionmark behind many of the mods you request for Vdub, like MPEG2 support

If you do it with plug-ins, MPEG-2 is not a part of VirtualDub, it´s only of the plug-in, so nobody can claim VirtualDub includes licensensed technologie. VirtualDub can also not be closed by M$, just because it is able to compress to DivX 3.11, because the codec is not part of VirtualDub. Also if it´s in teh plug-in, Avery doesn´t need to work on the MPEG-2 Decoder.

Posted by: Morsa Nov 19 2002, 06:24 AM

Well, you can frameserve via avisynth too.
May be using directshowsource or using its mpeg2 decoding dll.

Posted by: Belgabor Nov 24 2002, 09:37 PM

MPEG2 (and MPEG1 to be specific) decoding is only subject to licensing fees if the app is commercial. Neither VDub nor VDubMod are, so its not illegal

Posted by: Neo Neko Nov 25 2002, 07:30 AM

Virtualdub-Mod is fine. Virtualdub is Avery's baby. And he has raised it well. It does what he designed it to and good. And he has left the source open so ofshoot projects like this can exist.

It is kind of annoying having 50 different versions with 50 different features. But alot of those features are outside what Avery had planed for Virtualdub. So far Virtualdub-Mod has incorporated almost every usefull feature from all the other forked versions. As long as this trend continues I see no problem with having plain stable Virtualdub and Virtualdub-Mod as a somewhat less stable melting pot of the most usefull add-ons.

As to incorporating some of those features into Virtualdub itself mods like Virtualdub-mp3VBR stand to undo all of Avery's work. I say leave Virtualdub as is and work to incorporate all those usefull features into Virtualdub-mod. Like the new automated network job manager version.

Let Avery keep working his magic and we will all benefit. Asking him to track down every mod to his software on the net and incorporate it will cause Virtualdub itself to stagnate and become less relevant. The mods are only here because of Avery's hard work in his spare time.