the g00z capture bible

8/3/2019 The G00z Capture Bible

1/34

THE VIDEO CAPTURE BIBLEWritten by g00z

REVISED: 5.19.2002


2/34

PAGE 2

The Video Capture Bible

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this guide

Ive written this primarily not due to a lack of adequate guides

around (Check www.divx-digest.com -- there are at least 30

Cap guides on there!), but because I think a lot of cappers aremissing the point of the craft. That point is, above all else,quality. There are so many bad, lazy, shifty encodes oating

around IRC it makes my stomach churn. Nothing is more dis-appointing than waiting all night for your DCC to complete

to nd the episode youve gotten is total crap and completelyunwatchable. Ive written this in hopes that people that arecurrently capping can get some pointers on how to improve

their encodes, and for new encoders to get off on the rightfoot and avoid common pitfalls involved in capturing and

encoding. Also this guide should be an entertaining read.I think Im a pretty funny and quasi-intelligent guy. I make

myself laugh. I hope you have fun reading this.

This guide is meant to be as detailed and understandable as

possible. There are screen shots of every stepyou need to take, in-depth explanations of each step, and

FAQs in case you get stuck.

Video capture is an art -- it is not a science. There is noRight way to do it. Wonderful encodes can be done usingcompletely different methods. Much like painting, there is

no wrong or right way, but simply an aesthetic that must beused to judge what the encoder was trying to accomplish.

But remember one thing: If it doesnt look as good as thesource material or better, its done wrong. That is your only

guideline to follow. Do no harm.

This guide is the way I do things. There are other methods but

they wont be covered here. This is just what I have found towork the best as a speed/quality trade off, and is also depen-

dent upon my particular setup (Hardware wise). A lot of thisknowledge comes from pure experimentation, trial and error,

and good old fashion common sense. Ive also gotten a lotof help from the countless guides out there (Ive read themall, I assure you) as well as the biggest guide to rock my world

(And the most useful in my opinion):JWAs Capture Guide.

Legal Stuff

The dont sue me clause

I am not your mother. I dont even know who you are. If you

mess anything up, fry your computer, loose your term paperslip in the bathroom on a wet spot, Im not goddamn responsible. In other words, by reading this guide you agree you

cant sue me. Grow up lawsuit types. The world isnt responsible for you being an idiot.

Fair Use VS the MPAA hatred for consumer control

A lot of guides start off saying Dont capture/encode any-thing you do not legally own or something along those

lines. Let me make something clear: there is *NO* differencebetween caping an episode with your computer than there ismom time recording her soap operas while shes not home

The MPAA would like you to believe you are a criminal unlessyou pay them every time you even *THINK* about any of thei

intellectual property. The only thing that is Illegal is whenyou give copies of your captured material to random dudes

on IRC, USENET, etc. Even this is technically disputable as faiuse in my opinion. Does the FBI think that Mary-Jane-So andSo should go to jail if she lends her buddy Jennifer-So and

So a copy of the latest episode of Days of our lives she timerecorded because Jennifer missed the show? Common. This

pure crap. There is little difference between lending a frienda VHS tape and sending somebody an episode on IRC. The

MPAA has done a good job at criminalizeing what shouldbe, for all intensive purposes, legal. But since I have to say

it, dont indiscriminately distribute your caps. I should alsomention I am not a lawyer, so all of this is just my opinionanyway.

Copyright (Or lack there-of)

This guide isnt copyrighted. Go nuts and distribute this thing

everywhere. Make 2 Million copies. Send it as chain mail toyour friends and enemies. Sell it on Canal street next to the

Vietnamese bootleg videos. But by no means take credit foit. Dont change the By name. If you do, Ill hunt you down

and kill you. Ill cut you to pieces and feed you to live perhanas. Ill put you out of business like Enron. Ill creep into you

house and shoot poison arrows into your neck. Ill tell all youfriends you like the Extreme Ghostbusters and thought the3D version of Voltron was Cool. In other words, dont do it

Oh one more thing -- You can quote me or use parts of thisguide for whatever twisted purposes you may have as long as

you give me credit like a normal curtious human being.


3/34

PAGE 3


THE DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS

What we are doing here is more important than you can pos-sibly imagine. Sure its fun and gives you pride at what youvecreated, but most importantly here we are preserving the

past. Many of the shows and cartoons weve come to know

and love are on the verge of complete extinction, dinosaurstyle.

Due to the severely screwed up copyright laws in America,and other parts of the world, most copyrighted materials

dont release control into the public domain for over 150years. Thanks Sonny Bono. Thanks Disney. Glad your god-damn mouse is still a protected work of art. Wouldnt it be

awesome if some Austrian guy owned the copyright to all thegreat works of art from the 15th century. That would rock if

we had to pay 50 bucks to look at the Mona Lisa, or listen to asymphony by Beethoven.

The problem with this whole copyright thing is what hap-pens when a controlling parent company looses interest in

a copyrighted item, or worse yet goes out of business. TakeHeckle and Jeckle for example (Fantastic and witty cartoon

that came from Terrytoons studios and aired on CBS/Viacomin the early 70s). No airings, or videotapes of this cartoon

have seen the light of day since 1984. Im not kidding. Allthe original reels of this have been sitting in a vault in Viacomwold headquarters collecting dust and slowly deteriorating

from lm rot for nearly 20 years. Viacom doesnt give a damn.So, since Viacoms copyright doesnt expire for oh say, another

100 years, and they dont care that people want to see thiscartoon again, these original works will most likely be dam-

aged beyond view ability within the 100 years it will take tolegally obtain a copy of these lms.

This is where we step in. We get our hands on the best sourcematerial we can nd. We make digital copies of these shows.

We spread them to IRC, USENET, FTP sites, Kazza. We makesure its immortalized. We make sure in 100 years there will

be SOMEBODY on the planet that has a copy. Dont take thislightly. We are seriously saving history from being forgotten.And you know what they say about history. Those that dont

know history are doomed to repeat it.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Before we start there are a couple things we need to check:

1. You have used a computer for more than 2 days.

2. Processor is at least 600 MHz or better.

3. Have a capture card (Duh)4. Your capture card has VFW drivers (More on this later)5. You have a lot of free Hard Drive space

6. You have DMA enabled on your Hard Drive.7. You are running some version of Windows.

8. You have a brain and can follow simple instructions.9. Deductive reasoning is a plus too.


4/34

PAGE 4


SOFTWARE & CODECS

Needed Tools:

You dont need to be a millionaire. Hell, you dont need 50

Cents. All you need is a decent net connect and these FREE

applications an codecs. Pay software sucks -- really. For someweird reason, some of the best tools I use are totally free.Why cant Abode seem to make Aftereffects (A $900 software

package) as burley and fast as VirtualDub? I dont know.. ButIm not complaining. After Effects and Premiere are for suck-

ers.

VirtualDub

http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/

The swiss army-knife of video tools. Avery Lee is pure genius

and has created the best dream tool for any serious capper,ripper, or video hobbyist. Besides being a completely amaz-

ing application, its free and its GPLed so you can pokearound the source or modify things if you want. With this

application you can capture video (Custom sizes - segmentedavi control), edit (Chop, Join, without the need to re-com-

press), clean (Around 200 lters created for this application),and compress. Ten goddamn stars.

AVIUtil

http://ruriruri.zone.ne.jp/AVIUtil/

Think of AVIUtil is a bizzaro world version of VirtualDub. Ithas most of the same features as VirtualDub does, but as anadded bonus it seems to handle automatic inverse telecine

with grace and intelligence. I wouldnt recommend doingeverything in AVIUtil, but you could if you wanted to. A little

slower than VirtualDub, but a god send when it comes timeto de-interlace your video and shift the frame rate back down

to the original format (More on this later.) Oh yah.. Its freetoo.

Divx 3.11 Alpha

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec.html

This is what started it all. While in a legal gray area (This codecis actually a stolen Microsoft implementation of Mpeg-4), Its

still the most popular format for encoding video for distri-

bution on the net. Its small size, reasonable CPU overheadand high quality make it a prime choice for compressing youvideo les. It really is the MP3 format of video. MPAA presi

dent Jack Valenti wakes up in a cold sweat screaming everynight because of it.

There is a legal version (All From Scratch code) known aDivx 4.0/Divx 5.0 (Under the name Project Mayo as well)

These new versions are quite legal and open, and pack morefeatures (Better control and multi-pass VBR encoding). The

reason I choose to use Divx 3.11 Alpha instead is because 3.11is more wide spread, has less CPU overhead, doesnt interfere with other versions of Divx (4.0 and 5.0 will Overwrite

older versions of the codec making things screwball at times)and comes free of Ad Support. The 5.0 Version has a Pro

release that comes with ads. This scares me as I think in thefuture these new versions of Divx will come with spy ware

and all kinds of crap. Better stick the old standby. If it ainbroke, dont x it is my motto.

Huffyuv

http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html

If you want to capture with the best possible quality possi-

ble, but dont want the disk access/space overhead of cap-ping directly to raw YUV2, this is the answer. Basically, thisis a Lossless codec that stores data using a compression

method similar to the ZIP le format. Its fast as hell (Little tono CPU overhead), makes your les 1/2 the size they would

be with YUV2, and its GPLed. You can cap without usingthis, but I wouldnt recommend it. Anyone serious about capping uses this and you should too.


5/34

PAGE 5


Optional Tools:

ATI MMC 6.3

http://www.pcphotovideo.com/favorite.htm

Got an ATI Card like an All-In-Wonder Pro? Go download this

NOW. ATIs new drivers for all of its products (Known as theMMC 7.1 Release) are WDM drivers, while this older release(No longer available from ATI) uses both WDM and VFW driv-

ers. What does this mean? It means that without the olderdriver that has VFW support, you wont be able to capture inVirtualDub, and thus be cursed to use ATIs software with less

features and a clunky interface. ATI, in typical corporate fash-ion, has screwed all the users of its hardware and has totally

removed this old driver set from existence.. Lucky for us withATI cards, some very cool guy has posted the old drivers on

his site for those of us that dont want to be stuck using ATIshorrible capture application.

Virtualdub Filters

http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/

Besides the wonderful and adequate lters that come withVirtualDub, Donald Graft has an impressive set of useful l-ters on his site, as well as links to a bunch of other sites that

have great lters on them as well. Such lters l ike the CartoonTool, VHS Cleaner, and many others make great additions to

your lter library.

TMPGenc

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

Are you hardcore? Do you have future vision? Want to docaps that will stand the test of time? Then dont fool around

with just making Divx versions of your caps - Go SVCD! Thewave of the future is here. The Mpeg-2 Format (Same that

is used for DVDs, HDTV Digital Streams, Digital Cable, andDigital Satellite Streams) is not only a recognized standard(As opposed to Divx and other weird implementations of

Mpeg-4), but unlike Divx this format will play natively onmany Home DVD players. When I do caps, I make a Divx ver-

sion (For distribution on IRC and Usenet), and a SVCD versionfor myself and archival purposes. SVCD can look just as good

as DVD if you know what your doing, and a typical 44 MinuteEpisode will take up only one CD. If your serious about cap-

ping and want to think about the future, you should makeSVCD versions of all your caps, so in say 3 years when Divx isno longer important, and our internet connections are all 10

Mb Down, youll be ready with perfect copies of your videos.

TMPGenc is the best tool for making SVCDs and VCDs. Itsfree. Its amazing. Go get it.

Good Reference Sites:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/

An all around good place to be. Especially if you want more

information on SVCD, what DVD players currently support the

SVCD and VCD formats, as well as some decent cap guidesof their own.. You should have this put in your favorites/bookmarked or you are going to hell.

http://www.divx-digest.com/

The mother of all sites concerning Divx, DVD ripping, and alsosome decent cap guides. Nicki Pages tutorials are well writ

ten and can be a lot of help if you have questions. A goodsection with links to every piece of software you ever need is

on this site as well.

http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/Once again, Donald Grafts home page. If you have to ask

why, then you are a total n00b.


6/34

PAGE 6


METHODS AND MADNESS

The Target Codec Question

So whats the best nal format to encode your caps as? The

best format IMHO is SVCD. SVCD (Really just MPEG-2) is the

most open, best looking, most compatible, most bang for thebuck format you can choose. The stuff looks as good as it canwith little artifacts or distortion of source. But seeing as how

most of the world isnt ready for SVCD, Divx will do nicely fornow. Divx is small, lightweight, and looks pretty darn good

when done right.

For those that want the lowdown of all the big formats out

there and why to use them or loose them, here is my take onthem all (In order of quality):

Raw YUV2 Avi:

Pros:Lossless Quality.

Cons:

Huge -- Im Talking 1 Gig a minute huge. Unacceptable.

Huffyuv Avi:

Pros:Lossless Quality. 1/2 the size of raw YUV2

Cons:

Still way big. About 300 Megs per minute of video. Sorry, tryagain.

SVCD (Or MPEG-2):

Pros:

Near to perfect quality. Decent size (About 20 Megs perminute). Good compatibility (Any computer with a softwareDVD player can play these, as well as quite a few consumer

DVD players). Good for archiving. In the near future, allreleases on the NET will be SVCD -- take a look at usenet

where 50% of all posts are now SVCDs

Cons:Still a little too big for you typical net guy with a halfwaydecent net connect. Confusing to most people that dont

understand that you cant just open it up with media playerlike normal .mpgs.

Divx Avi (Choose your variety)

Pros:Small size (about 5-10 Megs per minute). Very watchablequality. Somewhat good compatibility (Most people have

divx installed now if they are into TV via the net). Not too bad

on the CPU. De facto standard for IRC releases these days.Also popular with the DVD ripping kiddies.

Cons:Legally gray (For the 3.11 release, this codec is illegal. Microsoft sues school districts. They can put this codec down any

time they feel like it). Quality varies from encoder to encoderNew version while legal has the ability to become proprietary

at any time. Not compatible with ANY DVD players, and someOSs dont play them so well (Divx on anything but a windows

machine can be sketchy at best -- ask any Mac or Linux user)

VCD (Or Mpeg-1)

Pros:Decent size (about 10 Megs per minute). Highest compatibil

ity rate of ANY format (There are no computers and very fewDVD players that cant handle this format). Watchable quality.

Cons:

Cant go beyond a rez of 388x248 -- so some quality in imagedenition is lost. A little bit to big for the bang per buck

factor.

ASF/WMF/Microsofts idea of the future of video.

Pros:Looks alright and can be very small size wise.

Cons:Dude, its Microsoft -- Duh. Screwball seek time (Try sliding

the seek bar -- takes 2 minutes for the video and audio to resynch). Proprietary. Cant be played on anything but a win

dows machine. Just plain evil when it comes down to it.

Quicktime (AKA Sorenson)

Pros:Good Image quality with a small le size.

Cons:

Proprietary. Screwed up player. Player nags you about getting the pro version every 2 seconds. Doesnt full screen cor

rectly. Ugly interface.


7/34

PAGE 7


Real Media

Pros:None.

Cons:

Please, delete all your RM les. Stop distributing les in thisformat. At the end of this tutorial I go off on a rant about howbad this format is in all things holy and human. Worst look-

ing format you could possibly choose.. I think Intel Indeo orCinapack looks better than this joke of a codec.


8/34

PAGE 8


The Target Resolution Question

So whats the best nal resolution? Much of the answerdepends on the nal le format used, as most formats arelocked into specic resolutions. For instance all SVCDs are

480x480, and all VCDs are typically 352x288 (Or 352x240 for

NTSC). Well skip the other formats and just ask this questionfor Divx, since that is what this guide mainly covers as wellas being the one format that is unincumbered by size restric-

tions for the most part.

First off, there are specic sizes that a Divx AVI should be at.

Those sizes are:

720x480, 640x480, 608x456, 572x432, 512x384, 480x360,

384x288, 352x264, 320x240, 160x120

You will notice that all of these sizes have one importantthing in common, and that is that all of these numbers are

divisible by 16 -- In other words, you can take any of the num-bers here, divide them by 16, and have no remainder (Or with

oating point math, all numbers are integers). The reasonthis is important has to do with the way that Divx, or MPEG-4,

compresses video data. Divx uses a block matrix of 16x16pixels to store its data. If you have ever seen an over com-pressed Divx le, and notice that it gets blocky at times,

you will see that these blocks are exactly 16 pixels wide by 16pixels high. I could go into detail about why MPEG-4 works

this way, but sufce it to say that your resolution MUST bedivisible by 16!

Another important item regarding size is that you must also

account for is the aspect ratio you wish to use. Aspect Ratiois simply a fancy way for describing the ratio between thewidth and height in a rectangle. There are all sorts of stan-

dard aspect ratios used in video. For example, in theaters theaspect ratio is much wider than it is tall (As in Wide-screen)

and thusly when you watch a movie on a television you getblack bars on the top and bottom (Called Letter boxing) sothe image doesnt get stretched and distorted since your TV

is not even remotely as wide as a theater screen. Since ourobvious nal target is either a computer monitor or a televi-

sion screen, we must nd out what the aspect ratio for thatis. As you can see from your resolution settings, the lowest

setting is 640x480, and from there you can derive the aspectratio of 4:3. As a side note, American television sets share this

aspect ratio, while most European televisions do not. MostEuropean countries use a different standard known as PAL(The American standard is known as NTSC) that uses a slightly

taller aspect ratio. So the real question is do you want to use4:3, or is your target a PAL television set? Most people would

agree that it is better to shoot for 4:3 as you are more likely towatch a Divx le on your monitor than you would your televi

sion if you are in a country that uses the PAL standard.

Now lets talk a little bit about your source material. Are you

capturing from Cable/Antenna, VHS or Digital Satellite? Al

of these sources have their own limitations that must be considered. Now keep in mind, analog video signals dont quitefollow the standard set of rules here, in that there really is no

such thing as Resolution in the typical width by height fashion we have been pondering here. Analog video signals are alittle weird and it involves some serious science and math to

properly describe the nature of a signals size, so we will skipall that math and just present the rough numbers that each

source has:

VHS:

Anywhere around 320x240 -- Basically depending on therecording speed, head alignment, and many other factors the

signals resolution can very. As a safe bet, assume the besand think of VHS in terms of 320x240.

Cable/Antenna (Broadcast Video)

480x360

Digital Satellite/Digital Cable & DVD

From 720x480 to 640x480.

Now, as stated earlier, our real goal here is to do no harmand try to get our resulting digital transcription to look as

good, if not better than our source. So depending on sourceyour nal le should be at least 320x240 for VHS, 480x360for Broadcast Video, and 640x480 for Digital Satellite. This is

because if you are scaling down from the original signal sizeyour resulting product wont be as sharp and detailed as the

original.

Now there is one last thing to consider here.. That is the CPUusage and compression. While it seems the most logical to

simply have all your resulting encodes at 720x480 or biggerthis is not practical for two reasons.


9/34

PAGE 9


Number one is that the bigger the resolution is, the hardera CPU has to work to render the video from the compressed

le. Keep in mind that your CPU is already doing a lot ofwork -- Its reading the le from the disc, decompressing theMPEG-4 and MP3 streams, sending data to the audio card,

etc. While you may have a 40000 Ghz super duper new Pen-

tium 8 chip, you must keep in mind you are also doing this forothers and other folk may not be as fortunate as you to put 3Grand down on a new computer.. Most likely they fall into the

middle range (At this time, most likely a 500 MHz computeror so). From my experience, a 500 MHz machine can barelykeep up with 640x480, and anything higher than that it will

start to choke and drop frames.

Number two is compression. Keep in mind that the bigger avideo le is, the more data that must be compressed to keep

the le at a reasonable size -- so there is a tradeoff betweenresolution, le size, and amount of compression. In mostinstances, 2 les of the same le size, with one being 640x480

and the other being 480x360, the 480x360 le will look betterthan the larger version simply because there is less data to

compress, thus less compression artifacts and loss of claritydue to over compressed video. This is a common mistake

among folks who rip DVDs -- I keep seeing these DVD ripsdone at 720x480 (The native DVD resolution) that t on oneCD. Let me tell you, these rips look very bad. While it may

seem like the best thing to do to get the maximum resolutionthe DVD has to offer, the resulting over compression makes

the rip look way worse than one done at a smaller resolution.

After weighing in all these factors and much experimentingwith different resolutions, I can say without a doubt in my

mind your target resolution should be.... (drum roll please)

480x360

This resolution has the best tradeoff between CPU usage,compression, and clarity for all source materials. Its themiddle of the road and its where you want to be.

Keep in mind, if you are capturing from a VHS tape that isnt

in such hot shape this could be overkill. You may be betteroff making the target resolution only 320x240 as your adding

nothing but compression artifacts since VHSs resolution isno bigger than this anyway.


10/34

PAGE 10


The target frame rate question

Now we get into the most misunderstood part of video cap-turing and encoding. So many people have zero concept ofFPS that its simply staggering. It isnt without reason how-

ever, as there is a little bit of voodoo involved in the subject.

First thing is rst -- NO ANALOG VIDEO SOURCE ON THEPLANET IS HIGHER THAN 30 FPS! If you are capturing at 60

FPS, your stuff wont look any better than it does at 30 FPS.As a matter of fact it will most likely look worse than 30 FPSsince you would be dropping crazy frames from pushing your

hardware way too hard.

Second thing is second -- YOU MUST CAPTURE AT YOURSOURCE VIDEOS FRAME RATE! This means that if you are

capturing an NTSC source (American/Japanese TV) your FPSmust be 29.97 and if you are capturing a PAL source (MostEuropean countries) your FPS must be 25. If you capture at

a higher rate or a lower rate than your source, you will getvideo that looks choppy and staggering. This is my number

one pet peave, so dont take this lightly. There is nothingworse that encodes that arent the correct FPS. They are just

painful to watch.. I delete encodes with the wrong FPS at rstviewing.

Third thing is Third -- Most, if not all, video that airs on televi-sion was shot on reel lm -- whos frame rate (For NTSC) is

23.976. Now if you are smart you should be asking yourself,I thought you said all NTSC video is 29.97 But its shot at

23.976? What the hell? How does the frame rate go from23.976 tp 20.97?? This is where the mystical stuff comes into

play.

Video that is projected is known as Progressive video. This

is also the same format that your computer monitor displaysvideo -- in a nice logical fashion -- one frame after another.

Now, Television on the other hand, and the signal that is fedinto it is known as Interlaced video and it some seriousvoodoo. Essentially, a television displays half frames where

it only draws half of the vertical lines in the rst pass, thenthe other half of the lines in the second pass. Its much more

complicated than this, but it is an adequate description forour purposes. So how does video that was originally progres-

sive get changed into a interlaced source? Through a processknown as a Telecine (The word itself describes the process).

Half frames are stuck in-between full frames so the televisioncan draw them, and consequently, raises the frame rate, andthat is where you get your conversion from 23.976 to 29.97.

This is a terrible description, but this is all you really need toknow about the process.

Another thing to consider here is that the amount of com-pression artifacts is relational to the FPS -- and this is pure

logic here. If a video is 23.976 FPS, every second of video has23.976 frames in it; If a video is 29.97 FPS, every second ovideo has 29.97 frames in it. This means that the higher the

frame rate, the more frames Divx has to compress, and thus

the less quality in each resulting frame. So the wise choice isto go with a lower frame rate to achieve better compression

Now, you understand that you need to capture at 29.97 FPS(NTSC) and your resulting le should have a frame rate o23.976, but how do you get from point A to point B? The

answer is a process known as an Inverse Telecine. This process basically combines half frames of interlaced video to

create a progressive video stream that is at a lower frame rate(Since youve combined the half frames you have less frames

in the end). A lot of programs have the ability to do this withdifferent results. From my experience the program that handles this the best is AVIUtil. Virtualdub can do this as well, bu

Ive never gotten good results.


11/34

PAGE 11


The Target Bitrate question

Now that we have decided on using Divx at 480x360 and23.976 FPS, what bitrate should we use for Divx. The answerto this question is purely aesthetic -- For the most part, your

bitrate should be the lowest you can use (For a small le size)

with little to no compression artifacts so you keep in line withthe Do no Harm motto. This is purely subjective, but in myexperience a bitrate of about 900 will yield decent results --

there is hardly any visible compression artifacts, and the lesize isnt too monstrous. A video about 22 minutes long willbe about 175 Megs if you have a good clean source. Some

people may think this is a little large, but let me assure you,connections get faster every day so you may as well shoot for

the future instead of the here and now. After all, whats thepoint in over compressing something so it looks bad if in 10

months you will want to re-encoded your stuff because yourpipe is fatter? Might as well go for the gold I say. Also, I didntcome at this bitrate arbitrarily -- You will notice that if each 22

minute episode is 175 Megs, you will snugly t 4 episodes onone CD, or 2 episode if they are 44 minutes long. Sounds a

whole lot like 2 Hour SP speed VHS to me.

Wrapping everything up in a neat package

So we know our target specs:

Divx 3.11 AVI (900 bitrate) File @ 480x360, 23.976 FPS

Now to get from capturing to our nal product we should

remember a few things:

1. We have to capture at 29.97 FPS and somehow get to

23.976 FPS

2. We will need to De-Interlace the video (When you cap-ture at a resolution higher than 320x240 the video will beinterlaced)

3. We will want to clean up the video a little bit -- Broadcast

video is laden with static that will inhibit the compressionprocess and VHS video has lots of tape squelches and discol-

oration.

In a nut shell, we will need to capture the video at a size aslarge or larger than our target 480x360, run lters over it to

clean up the video as well as de-interlace and change theframe rate via an inverse telecine. To do this, it is best to capture this video LOSSLESSLY, because if we capture the video

in a compressed state, we will have to compress the video

again after processing that will lead to compression artifactsand all kinds of other nasties. Another reason we want tocapture it losslessly is because compressing video on the y

eats up all kinds of CPU, and our CPU is already trying its bestto keep up with capturing the video in the rst place. Wecant make the processor work harder than it can, so its best

to capture video without compression so the CPU can keepup and not drop frames. Dropping frames is bad. Very, very

bad.

Now, it should be noted not everyone has a 200 Gig hardriveAnd furthermore, not everyones HD is fast enough to keepup with capturing raw video. Raw video takes up A LOT o

space per each second. So we need a good in-between fromcapturing completely raw (YUV2) to capturing compressed

(DIVX). This is where Huffyuv comes into play. It is a losslesscompressor (No quality loss), its the fastest thing around

(Low CPU usage), and it makes les about 1/2 the size of rawYUV2 (Perfect for saving space and taking it easier on slowerhardrives).

Once you have captured your le, you can then do all you

processing and create the nal product. As an added bonufor caturing raw, you can make more than one version of the

same cap (A SVCD version, A high-bandwidth Divx version, aswell as a smaller low-bandwidth version for the bandwidth

challenged).


12/34

PAGE 12


The Step By Step GuideAKA the Capture Bible

Now that you understand what we want to accompish, and understand what we need to do to get the best results, lets go to work

CHECKING YOUR SYSTEM

First, lets check to make sure you can actually capture videowith my video capture tool of choice, VirtualDub. Open up

your Control Panel and go to Multimedia Properties. Insideyou will see a Devices tab the shows you all the MultimediaDevice drivers on your system. Make sure you have a device

inside the Video Capture Devices section. If you dont, youeither dont have a capture card correctly installed, or your

capture card does not come with VFW drivers.

If the second is the case, then you will be forced to capture

video with whatever capture utility came with your capturecard. This is bad ju-ju, because most capture applications

bundled with hardware suck very very badly. You may not beable to select Huffyuv as your codec. You may not be able to

capture at a decent resolution. You might even be unable tocapture to AVI (But instead only to MPEG or MPEG-2)


13/34

PAGE 13


CAPTURING THE VIDEO

Assuming all is well so far, go ahead and open up VirtualDub-- your new best friend. The rst time you run VirtualDub itmight complain about having Hacked Illegal video codecs

on your machine (Divx 3.11). Ignore this -- it means nothing --

its just a legal thing Avery had to do since Microsoft has beena real pain in the ass to him in the past.

From the le menu, select Capture AVI and cross your ngers.If all is well you will see a source video frame appear and a

new set of options at your disposal as illustrated below:


14/34

PAGE 14


From here, rst check to make sure your audio is set up cor-rectly. You can easily check this by selecting the volume

meter from the Audio pull down that will display a neat littlemeter for the incoming audio signal.

If none of the meters are moving, your audio input is not

selected correctly. To remedy this, double-click the littlespeaker in the bottom right hand corner of the screen (Win-dows Mixer) and re-select your audio input as shown below:


15/34

PAGE 15


Once your audio is correctly set-up, next go to the videomenu.

From here, rst select the Source for your video. You shouldget a dialog box similar to this:

From here you can select your connector (Cable/75 Ohm

Coax, Composite, or S-Video). A little explanation on thewhole connector thing:

The quality of video you get per connector is as follows:

S-Video (Best), Composite (Good), and Cable (Worse). Manydont have the luxury of an S-video connection to their VCR/Cable Box/Digital Satellite Receiver. A few others (like myself)

cant use a composite connector. So basically, whatever isthe best connector you can use, use that.

Also here you can set your Brightness/Contrast/Color/Tint -Its best leave these settings at their default, but some sig-

nals may require a little help. My cable for instance (SinceIm using a 75 Ohm Coax connection) is a little desaturatedand dull, so I bump up my contrast, color, and shift the tint

a little towards the blue spectrum. Use your best judgmen

here and remember, DO NO HARM.

If you are connecting with a 75 Ohm coax cable, you can set

your channel and video type here as well. Once you haveeverything set the way you want it, click OK to move on.

Next, select your video compression. As stated earlier, wewant the best possible source to process upon, so choose

Huffyuv. If you are having problems with high-CPU usage odropped frames, try conguring Huffyuv to use a faster com

pression algorithm.

Once you have your compression set, move on to the actuavideo format. As seen in the screen shot below, choose youwidth and height, and leave the data format on YUV2 -- Thisdata format is needed for Huffyuv to work correctly.


16/34

PAGE 16


On the dimensions issue:

We want to capture at a format that is as good if not better than our nal output (480x360). You can see here I cap at 480x480. I dothis for two reasons. Number one, I also make SVCD out of my caps, and as 480x480 is the resolution of an SVCD, its a logical choiceNumber two is that capturing at 480 pixels tall will give better de-interlacing results -- something we will cover later on.

From the Capture menu, we want to check two things here:

One is Enable multi segment capture. The video we will be capturing here isHUGE -- 44 minutes of video will easily consume about 18 Gigs of drive space.

But there is one hitch here -- Windows, being a Microsoft product after all, hasa built in limitation with le sizes -- It can not make les larger than 4 Gigs. Asour video will be about 18 gigs, this presents a serious problem, but one that Vir-

tualDub fortunately solves for us. With this option selected, every time the videole reaches the 4 Gig limit, VirtualDub will create a new video le and continue

capturing on the y.

Another thing we need to do to allow for multi-segment capturing is set up Spill

Drives. In here we set up our primary capture drive (Mine is D) and a secondarydrive in case the rst one is lled up (My C Drive). Also we ll in the maximum

size for AVI les in the bottom most eld. I set mine to 1900, so my les are easierto manage and I have less audio synch problems as well.

The second thing we want to check is Auto increment lename after capture. This means the every time you begin to capture

video, VirtualDub will name its capture le Capture and then a number that starts at Zero and increments every time a capturetakes place. This assure that no capture les will be overwritten with new ones.


17/34

PAGE 17


The last bit of setting you need to make here are the most important: Audio Format and Frame Rate. Click the boxes on the bottomright of VirtualDub to set these to our desired settings: 44K/15Bit/Stereo for the audio, and 29.97 FPS for the frame rate.

Now, to make sure the next time we open up VirtualDub tocapture something, we want to make sure VD remembers

all of our settings so we dont have to go through all of thisagain. To do this, open up the Capture Preferences and check

all the boxes that Say Save next to them. After words, hitOK and VD will remember all of the previous settings we haveentered into it.


18/34

PAGE 18


We are all set, so lets capture! To begin capturing in VirtualDub you can either selectCapture Video from the drop down menu, or more elegantly press F6 to begin.

Once the capture starts, your information pane on the left should look something likethe panel to the right:

There is some important information here you should be aware of:

1. Time Left/Disk Space Free - Make sure you have enough time and space to do yourcap! If not, its time for a new hard drive.

2. CPU Usage - Make sure this stays bellow 100% -- if it gets stuck on 100% you willstart dropping frames. If your CPU usage is too high, you can either capture at a

smaller size (320x240), or you may be able to ddle with some settings in your com-puter to make sure things are running smoothly.

3. Frames Dropped - Its quite ordinary to drop a few frames here and there. Dont

panic if you see that a frame is dropped. However, if you are dropping A LOT of frames(More than one frame per second gets dropped) you should stop capturing and per-haps lower the size of your video to compensate. Its a bad trade off, but the alterna-

tive is to get a faster hard drive or faster CPU, and that costs money. You can alsoplay with the size and number of IO buffers so that you dont drop any frames. Also

in VirtualDub, you can switch between overlay and preview mode, which may help tokeep from dropping frames.

When done capturing the video, press Escape to stop capturing. Everything is good, and you just captured your rst high-qualityvideo!


19/34

PAGE 19


PERFORMING THE INVERSE-TELECINE AND DE-INTERLACING

If all has gone well and you could capture video at 480x480, you now need to change the frame rate back to its original 23.976,and also de-interlace the video to turn it back into a progressive video stream. If you couldnt capture at a resolution higher than320 Pixels tall, you can skip this section as your video has been made naturally progressive due to only capturing half of the vertica

resolution.

Open up AVIUtil and load your rst video segment. You will need to repeat this cycle for each segment that VirtualDub createdwhile capturing unless you set up a batch job, or append all the sections together and compress the le as it re-renders. For the

sake of being brief, Ill cover the method of doing this for each segment you have captured.


20/34

PAGE 20


First, go to Setting and chooseFrame rate Conversion. In

the sub menu here you wantto select 24fps 24FPS invoke auto-

matic inverse telecine. Dont

let the numbers here fool you-- it really means 23.976 FPSfrom 29.97 FPS, but for the sake

of saving space in the menuit is rounded up to 24FPS and30FPS.


21/34

PAGE 21


Next from the Settings menu select De interlace and in the sub menu choose Auto-matic inverse telecine in the rst half. This will blend your half frames (Known as

elds) into whole frames that coincide with the frame rate change you set up onestep back.

Now take a look at the preview pane -- Your video that looked jaggy with interlacing

artifacts should be clean as a wistle now, looking like normal video. You may have toslide the seek bar around in the AVIUtil to get it to re-render the preview.

Next, you can chop out the bits of the le you dont need. This includes VHS leaders,commercials, station identications, etc. To do this move the seek bar to the startpoint of the bit you want to cut out. The click the second to farthest right button on

the bottom right of AVIUtil to select your start point. Then move the seek bar to theend of the bit you want to cut out and click the button in the very bottom right hand of

AVIUtil to set the end point. Now you should see your area to be deleted highlightedin blue and can proceed to delete it by selecting Edit-->Delete selection range.


22/34

PAGE 22


After your happy with your edits go to renderout the le. Do this by going to File-->Save

AVI. This will bring up the following dialogbox (To the right)

Here you need to choose a lename (Some-

thing logical), set your video codec (Huffyuvagain) and click save. If you are totally crampedfor drive space, you can get away with com-

pressing it as a Divx le (with a very high bitratelike 3000), but if you want to do the best jobyou can, it is best to stick with Huffyuv to make

sure the source stays as clean as possible.

Once rendering, AVIUtil will display informa-tion similar to this in the title bar:

This tells you how much longer it will take torender the le, and what frame its on (out of

how many frames there are total).

When done, we can move on to step two,now that we have a our captured video thathas been de-interlaced and had its frame rate

changed back to 23.976.


23/34

PAGE 23


CLEANING THE VIDEO AND PREPARING FOR ENCODING

Next thing we want to do is remove any extra noise or signal degradation from our source video so it will look better, and alsocompress better. The more noise in a source video, the more Divx will have to compress -- and thus more artifacts and a worselooking encode.

Open up VirtualDub once again, and from there open up the rst video segment. Since we are on our last leg of the process, we canmerge all of our parts together in VirtualDub to make one big nal video stream. To do this, go to File-->Append Video.

This will allow you to consecutively tack on all the segments of video to create one single video le out of all of your parts. Continueappending segments until you have them all loaded.

Next, go to the Video menu and make sure Full processing mode is selected.

VirtualDub has 4 Different options for processing video:

1. Direct stream copy -- This is used for doing simple edits (Like deleting com-mercials) and for only editing the audio portion of a AVI. It just makes an exact

copy of the video stream and does not re-compress it. This is the fastest.

2. Fast Re compress -- VirtualDub will re-compress the video stream to theformat you have selected in compression, but does it in Fast mode. This yieldsless quality, but processes much faster than Normal Re compress mode.

3. Normal Re compress -- Same as Fast Re compress, except it will take its time

compressing the video to yield the best results.

4. Full processing mode -- Any time you are using lters, changing the colordepth/frame rate you must use this option. This makes VirtualDub process thevideo and then re-compress the effected stream.

Set up your lters

From the Video menu, select Filters. From here, the lter dialog box will appear where you can add lters, congure them, andselect cropping options. Click the ADD button to add our rst lter:


24/34

PAGE 24


Choose temporal smoother from youmenu and double click it to congure the

lter.

The Temporal smoother is what will clean

up the bulk of your noise, jitter, and VHS

de saturation bands. What this lter doeis quite intelligent -- It reads frames aheadof the current frame, and compares a

group of frames to each other. Then, ilooks for small changes in the image andreplaces these small changes with a com

bination of all the frames. What this doesis remove static by discovering that the

static is, and bits that are not a part of theoriginal video. It sounds like magic, bu

it really works well. One word of warningabout this lter is that if it is set too high, itwill start to blend video frames togethe

resulting in ghosting and other undesirable effects. I usually set this lter some

what in the middle. Any higher than thiand it will start to look bad.Next choose Static Noise Reduction (By Steve Don) from the

lter menu and congure it.

Static Noise Reduction is a somewhat optional step. If your video signal was clean enough you shouldnt need to use this. Frommy experience, however, sometimes its necessary to clean your video a little bit more than the Temporal Smoother does. If you

were capping from an S-video source or a digital satellite source you shouldnt need to do this. Another thing to keep in mind isthat this lter will slow down your render time, so if your impatient or have a slower computer you can skip this step to save yoursel

some time. However, if you want the best looking encode you can do, you should run this lter to make your encode look the besit can.

I usually set this lter at about 12. The lower the number, the less cleaning will take place, and the higher setting, the more blurred

your video will before. Remember the Do no harm motto here.


25/34

PAGE 25


From here on out, you have to make a decision. If you wantto only make a Divx version of your cap, you can skip ahead to

re sizing and compressing the nal video -- but if you wish tomake another version of your cap (Such as a SVCD) its betterto just process the video and compress it/resize it to a Divx

le later in a separate step.

Now assuming you want to just process the video to makemultiple versions of your cap, you should congure your

video compression (From the video menu) to use Divx LowMotion at a very high bitrate. We do this so our nal one partAVI is small enough that it doesnt go over the maximum le

size in windows (4 Gigs) and set the bitrate high so no com-pression artifacting occurs for our cleaned video. I usually set

my bitrate for this step at about 3000 or so.

After selecting our compression method, go to File-->Save asAVI to render out our le. Choose a lename, click save, and

watch the render go (Slowly).

The VirtualDub Status window will tell you the time elapsed,

total estimated time to completion of the render, as well asthe projected size and video rendering rate. The video ren-dering rate is how fast VirtualDub is processing the video. On

my modest 700 MHz computer with all of these lters set up,my rendering rate is about 3.7 FPS here. Dont confuse this

with your le frame rate (23.976) -- this is just how fast Virtu-alDub is processing the video.

Once done, we can move on to the last step.


26/34

PAGE 26


RE SIZING AND COMPRESSING THE FINAL

PRODUCT

Close and re-open Virtual Dub to clear out the lter list (If you didnt

skip ahead to this point) and open up your cleaned 1-le AVI you havejust created and open the lter dialog box again.

From here, we select resize from the lter menu and congure it.

Our source video le is 480x480 and may have black borders or VHSnoise at the bottom. Here is where we x all of that:

Set your new width to 480 and your new height to 360. Then,

select Precise bilinear from the lter mode. You will see there are alot of options here, but Precise bilinear will give the best results for the

type of re sizing we will be doing here. Basically, Nearest Neighboris the fastest resize, but it looks very jaggy and isnt anti-aliased cor-rectly. Bicubic is the best option for making the video size larger, and

Bilinear is the best option for shrinking an image size. Since we arescaling down from 480 to 360, Bilinear is the option we want, and we

want to use Precise to make the results as good as they can be.

Back in the lter dialog, select your resize lter in the lter list and click the Crop button to set up cropping options. You want toremove any unnecessary image information such as black bars and VHS end frame noise. Here is a typical setting I use:

You will see that the cropping conguration takes place before the re sizing does -- In other words, it crops the video, then will resize

it, so no matter what your cropping options were, your nal video will be 480x360 -- The size weve been wanting all along.


27/34

PAGE 27


NOTE: If you skipped ahead from the last section and just wanted

to make a single divx le from your cap, you will need to move

your resize lter to the top of the lter processing list to make sure

it processes rst before the other lters (Temporal Smoother/

Static Noise Reduction). This will make the temporal smoother

do less work (Since their is less image to clean) and will make

your render go a little faster.

Now take a look at your output video. It should look some-

thing like this:

Clean, hardly any static, correct aspect ratio and size, and no

interlacing artifacts.

Next, select Divx as your compression codec and set it at

about 900 kps (As decided earlier in the guide).

The very last thing we need to do is compress our audio track.In so far, our audio track has been raw uncompressed PCM

data. To get the le much smaller, we need to change this tothe ever so popular MP3 format. We do this by rst selectingFull Processing Mode from the Audio menu:

Then we select our audio compression (MPEG Layer-3) fromthe compression menu. I usually compress my audio to 96

kBit/s @ 44k Stereo. You can compress it more (64) if youwant to save space, or if your an audiophile you can go with ahigher bitrate (192/160). Personally, I cant tell much of a dif

ference from 96 to 192 when it comes to television audio. I

pretty much sounds how it sounds -- but I will leave this up toyou.

NOTE: Sometimes your MPEG Layer-3 codec wont show up cor

rectly in the compression menu. This is either because you don

have a MP3 compressor installed on your system, or some other

compressor screwed up the Radium codec. If this is the case you

can use Divx :-) Audio, although the results wont be as good.

Now save out your nal video and let it render.

Thats it! You should now have a wonderful looking encode

That wasnt so bad, was it?


28/34

PAGE 28


MAKING AN SVCD OUT OF YOUR CAP

If you wish to make an SVCD out of your cap (As I do) here is a brief description on the easiest way to do this.

Start TMPGenc, and load your video le (The 480x480 version that you created before you resized and compressed the divx version

- Do this by clicking the browse button next to the Video Source pane at the bottom of TMPGenc. Dont worry about the audio

source portion, TMPGenc will ll that in for you:

The click load on the bottom right hand corner to load up the SVCD template. Open up the SuperVideoCD (NTSCFilm).mcf in

TMPGencs template directory. This will set everything correctly for an SVCD encode of your capture.

Now, all you need to do is Hit Start to render the SVCD. Its that easy. If you have a bunch of caps you want to convert to SVCDsyou can add this to a batch job by hitting Control-M and adding it to the Job Control List.


29/34

PAGE 29


THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD ENCODE AND A BAD ENCODE

Now just to make sure we are clear on why we go through all the work to do a simple video encode, Im going to demonstrate thedifferences between a bad encode, and a good one (Using my methods). Below is Exhibit A (The Bad Encode) and Exhibit B (The

good encode). Both encodes are the same le size (About 80 Megs) and the same length (About 11 Minutes). Both are frames from

a smurfs episode to simplify things a bit.

The Bad Encode:

1. Inadequate Video Size

This encodes video size is 320x240. As you can see, a lot of ne details are lost because of this small size that makes the videoblurry, pixelated when full screened, and makes most of the text unreadable. While it can make for a smaller le size if done cor

rectly, it makes the video looks worse than standard VHS for the most part.

2. Too much noise and VHS banding

There is a lot of static and junk noise in this frame that makes the overall video look very bad, especially when full screened. If the

author had simply run a temporal smoother over the captured le, it could have been much clearer and clean looking.

3. Discoloration/Wrong Hue

If you compare A to B, you will see that A is overly green amd color shifted. I assure you, the actual source video for this had a much

more brown tone as seen in Exhibit B

Exhibit A: The Bad Encode

Exhibit B: The Good Encode


30/34

PAGE 30


4. Overcompression/Artifacting

The bad encodes source suffers (Though not as badly as Ihave seen in other encodes) from compression artifacts thatmake the video a little blocky and noisy. This looks a lot like

an over compressed JPG you would see on a web page.

The Good Encode:

1. Good Video Size

This encodes size allows for all the ne details to shine

through. You can even read the tiny text on the bottom ofthe Title Card! This is the most desirable and makes all the

glory of the original shine through.

2. Low noise, Clean Image

All the shapes and colors here are nice and sold and the lines

are well dened.

3. Correct Hue and Saturation

The colors are vibrant and correctly adjusted, as true to the

source

5. Good Balance of compression vs. Size.

The kicker to this whole comparison is the fact the Both Aand B are the exact same size! Thats right. Same size, same

length, but encode B looks 10 Times better than encode A.Amazing.


31/34

PAGE 31


GENERAL FAQ

Q:

Your guide is stupid and so are you. Thats too much work.

A:

Thats not a question. It doesnt justify an answer.

Q:

My video card doesnt have VFW drivers, only WDM drivers. What

do I do!?

A:

Either get a different capture card (I would recommend acheap Hauppage), Wait for VirtualDub to support WDM driv-

ers (Avery, are you listening?) or use a different capture pro-gram, like the one that came with your capture card. There

are gobs and gobs of different capture applications out these,

but most of the good ones use VFW, so your selection will bepretty limited. VirtualDub is just what I happen to use and

feel is the best for the job, although some people swear byAVI I/O (A pay application, BTW). Do what you need to do to

capture the video. If you can only capture at 320x240, that isunfortunate, but you need to do what you need to do.

Q:

I cant seem to capture at 480x480 or bigger without dropping a

whole bunch of frames. Is there anything I can do?

A:

Well, there is a lot you can do, but none of it is guaranteed

to help you out. First, you can make sure DMA is selected foryour capturing hardrive. Secondly, you can ddle about withthe IO buffer sizes in VirtualDub to try to help out. If all else

fails, capture at a somewhat smaller size, upgrade your CPU,or upgrade your harddrive.

Q:

I dont have a lot of harddrive space. Is it OK if I capture straigh

to Divx?

A:

Yes and No. If you capture straight to Divx, you will need a

faster CPU to process the video on the y. Secondly, youvideo source will look worse (Especially when compressingon the y). Keep in mind that if you want to do the best cap

you can, you really should capture to Huffyuv or raw YUV2Some people capture to a codec known as MJPEG that seemsto compress fast, and doesnt use up much drive space. The

downside to this method is that the video will look worsethan Huffyuv, and there are no free versions of MJPEG that

know of. So youll need to throw down some money if youwant to go this route.

Q:

Umm, where the hell is VirtualDub storing my video captures???

A:

If you havent congured the location for your captures in Vir

tualDub, the default setting is to store the capture les in theroot of your capture drive, in other words C: (Or D:) under thename CAPTURE.AVI.

Q:

Shouldnt I capture my Audio at 48K/96K, etc? Isnt that bette

than 44K?

A:Well, that is certainly your prerogative. But keep in mind thamost peoples soundcards cant play audio at a higher sample

rate than 44K (At least correctly). Also, were talking abouan audio signal that was most likely broadcasted/recorded

at like 32K max, so what you are capturing is quite wastefulIts much like capping at 60 FPS -- its a total waste of space/time.

Q:

I cant get multi-segment capture to work correctly. What am

doing wrong?

A:

Make SURE you have your spill drive settings correct. Thismeans having a drive set up in the dialog, as well as Maxi

mum Avi Size set correctly (Less than 4 Gigs).


32/34

PAGE 32


Q:

Cant I join all my les together in AVIUtil or set up a batch job to

make the process of inverse telecine a little less tedious?

A:

You can join all your segements together in AVIUtil, but if you

are saving out your video as Huffyuv, keep in mind this lewill be bigger than the 4 Gig barrier in windows. If you arecompressing it to a high bitrate Divx le here, you can do this

no problem and save yourself some trouble down the road.

Concerning batch jobs in AVIUtil, I havent gotten this to work

right. Perhaps I have a buggy version of AVIUtil or just plaindont know what Im doing, but I havent gured this out yet.

Youre welcome to play with it though.. Just be prepared towaste some time.

Q:

After doing the inverse-telecine, my video looks jerky. Whats thedeal?

A:

In some rare instances, the source was NOT shot originally at23.976 FPS, and most likely shot at either 29.97 FPS (HomeMovies/Video Camera) or 15 FPS (Some cartoons -- But very

rare). If this is the case, just skip the AVIUtil part and gostraight to VirtualDub. From there you can either try out the

De interlace lter in VirtualDub (Sometimes looks OK, othertimes looks bad) or just drop the resolution to 320x240 to

take out the interlaced lines at the cost of clarity.

Q:

Man. It takes a looooong time to process my video in Virtual-

Dub.. Is all this necessary?

A:

If you dont have the patience to do it right, you reallyshouldnt be doing it all. But if you really want to make a cap,

but dont have the CPU power and have to wait 2 days to pro-cess 22 minutes of video, just skip the Static Noise Reduction

and as a last resort go straight to the resize/recompress.

Q:

What about watermarks/logos/into screens? How do I do that

I want people to know I did the encode!

A:

You can easily make a watermark/logo in photoshop and

overlay into your video using various VirtualDub lters outthere, but let me make this clear: Logos/Watermarks suckNobody likes them. Nobody cares that WeedTV did the

encode for the most part, and they are just annoying. I donuse them, and you shouldnt either. Just tack on your handleto the lename (Such as Show - Episode XXX - Title [YOUR

HANDLE].avi). A lot of ungrateful folks remove your namefrom the lename once they have downloaded the le, so i

your worried you can always make an intro screen. Just makeit short, sweet, and above all else, please dont make it annoy-

ing. Mixing a Korn/Dr.Dre song with an episode of say, MyLittle Pony is pretty retarded if you ask me. Keep it classy kidsDont abuse your photoshop lters or limited knowledge of

3D Studio max.

As far as REMOVING logos/watermarks from video (Like theCartoon Network logo) it is possible through the use of the

VirtualDub lter Logo Away. Ive had varying degrees osuccess with this. A lot depends on if the logo is transparenor not. Unfortunately the cartoon network logo is solid, so

the best you can do is but a black box over it. Since this doeslittle good, you may as well leave it in. Its not a big deal.

Q:

Your guide was very helpful. Is there anything I can do to show

my thanks?

A:

Sure. Find me on IRC and send me your caps. Or better yetpost them to Usenet.


33/34

PAGE 33


EPILOUGE

The Story of Real Media

Once upon a time, when the web was new as the morning,

there was a company with the unimaginative name Real

Networks. They made a proprietary video codec that madevideo les very small for distribution on the internet. Theygave out free copies of their player and a free version of their

encoder. At the time, the only other option of bandwidth-light video was Apples Quicktime, witch wasnt that great.

People rejoiced. They encoded southpark episodes in thisformat and put them on their web pages. People down-loaded this stuff in droves. They played nice with everybody

and tried to portray themselves as a real friend to the netcommunity.. They even made a Linux version of their player

-- a move at the time that was unheard of. Their was muchrejoicing.

Then the dark times came. The net grew up. People beganto get fatter connections. They turned in their 28k modems

for T1s are their new internet jobs. Microsoft came out withtheir own competing product known at the time as the ASF

format (Later to be known as WMF when some smart fellowsgured out how to hack their precious le format). Real soon

realized it couldnt make money off of their server softwarealone (Duh).

Real then met the Devil in the desert. Except, he didnt referto himself by his true name, but instead choose the handle

Comet Cursor. The devil said to Real Networks, Hey, youcan make money off of your real player if you bundle your

software with me.. Ill make money stealing peoples demo-graphic information and spying on them, pay you a cut of themoney, and no one will be the wiser! Oh yah, if you join me

now, you will have a throne in my kingdom. (Or something..havent read the bible in a while)

(Getting melodramatic yet?)

Low and behold, shaking hands with the devil is a bad thing.Consumers got pissed. Did real wise up?

They continued to bundle all kinds of pointless crap with their

product.. meanwhile.....

Some smart hackers said Hey.. this new ASF format of Micro-softs.. it uses an MPEG-4 interpretation that isnt too damnbad.. If we just took the codec and put it in an AVI, got rid

of this weak ASF format, this could make net distribution ofvideo kick ass! It will be the next MP3 for the love of Achil-

les!

Then, divx was born.. There was much rejoicing. Video actually looked pretty much like normal TV now, and furthermore

the les were small.. Why, almost as small as Real Mediaexcept you could play it with any player you liked, the over-head was less, and the coup-de-grais was that now with fatte

internet connects, a 33 Meg le for a 22 minute show looked

stupid.

Also meanwhile....

Linux guys, wanting the new G3 fancy implementation ofReal Media began to get impatient waiting for their Linux

version.. now the other shoe was on the wrong foot so tospeak.. Their Linux player didnt play the new format, and

Real wasnt doing anything about it.. Now they, and all ohumanity began to see the error of their ways by trusting one

controlling companies proprietary format to dictate mediaon the web.

Darker times approached.

Real, realizing that people wouldnt download the new version of their players that had even more spy ware, crap, cook

ies, ads, because they would just keep their older versionsmade a second deal with the devil. This time the devil convinced them that their software should Auto-Expire after 60

days, so people would be forced to download the new ver-sion and couldnt continue using the old copies. Meanwhile

in a joint effort, they had lawyers removing all older copies othe real player software off the web to prevent any clever folk

from opting-out of all the ads, spy ware, and shit.

The rejoicing continued, but this time for Divx.

Time passes now and we see the new version of Real Player

The Format still sucks. and the player sucks even worseAnyone with less than a 2 Ghz computer cant run the soft-

ware. Dial home devices are built into new builds that sendinformation Real Networks as soon as a computer boots.. Not

just smart start center is running in the system tray anymore.

Now there are 7 different applications devoted to real run-ning in the windows task manager at boot up.

Real starts loosing lots of money.. The Dot-Com bubble bursts

Layoffs.. Desperate times... Recession.


34/34


Date: 2003 - Location: Unknown.

A fan of digital video takes a CD out of his collection withsouthpark episodes in Real Media.. He puts the disk into hiscomputer and tries to play it. His Real Player has passed expi-

ration date and needs a new version.. The fan now goes to

Reals site.. Its down. Real has been out of business for 3months now. He then searches the web to nd another appli-cation that can play Real Video les. He nds none. He then

searches for a utility to convert Real Video to his new favor-ite format, SVCD.. He nds one! But alas, it requires the realplayer to work, because Real Video is a propriety format..

whos copyright, thanks to Disney and Sony Bono, doesntexpire for 150 years.

The moral of this real life fairy tale? Real Video is for Sucks.

the g00z capture bible

Documents