Untitled Document

Virtual Dub Mod (Vdub)

Lets Begin by launching Virtual Dub. Start > Programs > AMVApp > VirtualDubMod

Welcome to Virtual Dub, Lets Begin by Opening a Video File. File > Open Video File. Here you will see 2 windows, the one on the left is the Input and the one on the right is the Output Preview. Any changes/filters you apply to your video will show up here.

If you go to Video > Filters (Ctrl + F) Then you will see the background menu, with nothing on it. If you click on Add then a list of different filters will pop up. You can then choose to do things like blur, invert, resize ect. I have already chosen to resize this video (on the background list) to show you what kind of things you'd be looking at. For the internet you can resize your video down to lower the size of the video. As for me, as long as the video is under 100 megs I usually leave it at whatever its resolution was. Lets go into Compressing your amv.

Video > Compression (Crtl + C)

This is my list of codecs, yours may not be as long, or it may be longer. Mainly i use 3 or 4 Codecs Huffyuv (the one selected), Lagarith Lossless Codec, Xvid, and sometimes FFDShow. Let me go a bit into more detail.

Huffyuv - a Lossless codec, meaning however many times you encode the file, it will keep its quality. BIG file sizes. good for final exports of your amvs from programs like Premiere.

Lagarith - This is my personal favorite Lossless codec. The main differences between this and Huffy are size and rendering time. This codec will save you a lot of space when used opposed to Huffy, but it takes a LOT longer to save videos as.

FFDShow - This is more like a collection of codecs, you can convert to a lot of codecs with this, I rarely use it, but I figured I should mention it.

XviD - This is the codec I prefer to use when saving my videos for the internet. It gives a great size to quality ratio (not as good as MP4, but I still prefer it). For a bit more advanced instructions on how to perfectly set this please read this.

Once you have it perfectly set up, you can change the bitrate to whatever you want and save it. I usually do anything from 1000 - 8000 kbps depending on how good I want the quality and how much action there is.

Now lets cover a step that SOOOOO many people forget to do. A key element in cutting down your amv size is compressing the audio! lets go to Streams > Stream List

A menu like this should pop up with one file on the left menu. Make sure you right click it and click Full Processing Mode. Then you'll have to right click it again and choose Compresssion!

This menu should now pop up. On the left is a list of all of the Audio Codecs. Lets use Lame MP3 (the only one I use) and on the right you will have a list of Preset formats. I usually pick something between 320 kbps and 128 kbps, it all depends on the quality of your source audio and how high of quality you want the final product to be.

CBR = Constant Bit Rate and ABR = Average Bit Rate

Now that we have that covered, lets take the time to play with Virtual Dub.

This is the bottom bar in VDub. I'm going to give a quick description of each button from left to right.

First button is stop. Next we have Play Input (left screen), and then it's Play Output (right screen).

Then we have Move to Start Frame, If you have a start frame set it will skip to that. Next is Backwards, Back up by one frame. Third we have Forward, more forward by one frame, then we have Move To Last Frame, it basically does just that.

Now we move to the Keys, The Left arrow Moves to the last Key frame or I-Frame, and the Right arrow Moves to the next Key frame or I-Frame. Then we have the Scene Backwards and Forwards. They find the next/last scene and get to them the best they can.

Now we have the In point and Outpoints. Click the left one and it makes an In Point at said location. Click the right one and it makes an Out Point at that location.

You then have the information about which frame your on and at what point in time. And on the top is your scroll bar, you can move thru this and choose your in and out points.

Now that you have a basic understanding of all of these programs, we hope that you create better quality amvs, or atleast now you know more then you did before.

Any questions, E-mail me BullseyeSSJ4000@hotmail.com