DGIndex / AVS Scripting

DGIndex Installs with AMVApp, it will be found at Start > Programs > AMVApp > DGIndex

When you run the program this is what it will look like. Lets begin by opening a file. File > Open (F2)

The File list should pop up. Now lets Add the VOB files that you ripped from your DVD. Once you click Add and locate your files, you can move them Up or Down and/or delete them. When you have them how you want them click OK.

Now that the files are opened, you need to change a few settings. Lets begin by Disabling all audio. I do this to save some time and space. Lets go to Audio > Output Method > Disable and then go down to the 48 > 44.1Khz and turn it Off. Once this is done you may or may not want to change a few other settings. I currently have my Video settings to iDCT Algorithm > 32-bit SSE2 MMX, Field Operations > Raw Encoded Frames, and YUV -> RBG > PC Scale. You can also crop your footage and mess with the luma settings, but I prefer to do this in Premiere or with AVS scripting.

Now lets learn about the Buttons in the Bottom Right corner. The " [ " and " ] " symbols on the right and left are there to set In Points and Outpoints with. You can use both of the middle buttons " < " and " > " to move from frame to frame to get to a more precise in and out point.

This is where the In and Out Points are shown. With the arrow on this bar you can scroll thru your footage and locate the scenes you want and the scenes you dont want. Everything within the blue box will be output to a D2V file.

Lets go ahead and output our file. File > Save Project (F4)

This menu will pop up and tell you how long you have left, and also tell you what it is doing.

When the files have finished saving, they will make 2 files, A D2V file and an AVS file. You will be using both so take good care of them. First im going to give you a Pro Tip on the D2V file.

If you're like me, and you have a bad habbit of moving things and renaming or deleting files/folders, then here is a good tip. Open up your D2V file with Notepad.

This is roughly what it will look like. You can do Minor changes to this file. If your VOB files have been moved, you can replace the new destination with the old one, but I Must warn you about something.

WARNING! Do NOT change anything else other then the "K:\Oh My Goddess\VIDEO_TS\" part of this file or you WILL have to re-save your D2V file. Keeping this file and changing the extension will save quite a bit of time in the long run. This is why I always save every dvd to its own D2V file.

Now, lets go ahead and open the AVS file.

This is the hardest part of preparing your footage. When your AVS Script is created it will only contain 1 line.

mpeg2source("C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\NETWORK d2vz\Oh My Goddess.d2v")

This line basically tells the script that you will be using the D2V file to link to the VOB files so that you can edit with them. Sometimes you can accually edit with just this one line, but some footage needs to be cleaned up. The Next Lines are

Telecide(order=1,post=2,blend=true,vthresh=30,back=1)
Decimate(cycle=5,mode=3,quality=3)
assumefps(24)

These basically take out the De-Interlacing issues with this dvd, I would STRONGLY recommend that you read this to determine exactly what you need to de-interlace and also to tell you exactly what de-interlacing is. The AssumeFPS(24) basically means that my footage is going to be changed from 29.97 fps to 24 fps. If you add this line to your avs script during editing it will change timing on your video and possibly mess the whole video up.

#temporalcleaner()
#msmooth(threshold=6,strength=4)
#tweak(sat=1.2)
#mftoon()

This is used to clean up the quality issues I had with the original Oh My Goddess dvds. It dosn't completely clean them up but it does a good job. The " # " symbols are there to temorarily disable these lines. Why would I want to do this?? Well, I'm not on a super fast computer and so rendering all of these filters in real time would KILL my computer. So I leave the " # " infront of the line until I am finished with editing my videos. I remove the " # " before I export my videos from Premiere, and they get cleaned up.

For More Information on Cleaning up footage Please Check This Guide.

One thing I didn't add into my script (because this DVD didn't need it) Resizing your footage. Now I know that there are a lot of DVDs that are Widescreen. When you Save your D2V file though it assumes that your footage is 720 x 480. So lets resize the footage to Widescreen.

Lanczos4Resize(768,432)

This would be the code I would use to make my footage widescreen (16:9). Some people prefer...

BicubicResize(768,432)

But I have found that Lancsoz, even tho it may take longer, looks a little better.

If you are looking to Resize your footage, I would suggest that you Read this topic on the amv.org forums.

Now that we have finished creating our D2V file and writing our AVS scripts, lets Move into creating a Fake Avi file.