This is a guide to using VirtualDub to pre-process your video files before converting them to AMV. It will give you some knowledge of how to select and set various filters to adjust your video. By changing color saturation, resizing, cropping, de-interlacing etc. you can improve the quality and size of your AMV video files. VirtualDub can be used on a limited number of file formats so I find it easier to convert DVD's, rmbv, mp4 etc to AVI format prior to using VirtualDub.
You can download VirtualDub from
HERE
You will need about 10GB free space on your PC for a full lenght movie.
Load your AVI into VirtualDub.
Press CTRL-F to open the Filters window or select filters from the Video menu.
Pressing the ADD button will present you with the filters available.
Firstly select the Resize filter,and enter your players screen size.
I use 160x120 for full screen 1.8 LC, 128x128 or 128x96 for 1.5 LCD.
Select "Precise bicubic (A=-1.00) Filter Mode.Then OK.
Press the Cropping button you can now remove unwanted areas like the black lines from the top and bottom of movies. In most cases what ever I crop from top and bottom I also crop the same amount from the sides so as to keep roughly a 4x3 aspect ratio. If the picture is to wide it will be compressed and everything will appear stretched and thin. For this example no top and bottom cropping is needed but I will still crop the sides by 40PX. press Ok and exit.
Now ADD the De-interlace filter and select the "Blend fields together" option.
ADD the Brightness and Contrast filter, I adjust Brightness down one increment and Contrast up one increment. You may need to adjust depending on your players Brightness setting.
ADD the HSV Adjust filter and adjust Saturation 10-15 percent. This will make the colours a little more vivid on the small screen.
Finally ADD the sharpness filter, a setting of 15 works for me and makes the picture crisper and more defined.
That is all the filters I use but if you want to flip or rotate etc just add the filters you want.
If you press the output preview button the video will play and you can see the adjustments you have made.
Now to reduce the size of your video you can set the start and finish points and remove credits and branding from the video.
Move the slider to the where you want the video to start and press the (Mark In) arrow
Move the slider to where you want the video to finish and press the (Mark Out) arrow. You will now see your selection highlighted
Select Video>Full Processing Mode (To use all the filters you have selected) and Audio>Full Processing Mode (To keep audio\video syncronized)
Finally select File>Save As AVI or Save As>Segmented AVI ( I use this when saving full lenght movies and split it into 4 or 5 pieces. Then if I want to resume viewing say in the middle of the movie I can just select the 3rd piece rather than have to Fast Forward the the first half of the movie).
This example is about 45 minutes of Video , will take just over 8 minute to process and the output file will be almost 4GB
You can then convert the finished file to AMV.
SAMPLE: The image on the left is a direct to AMV conversion
Enlarged 2X
The settings can then be saved to file and loaded again for your next project.
The settings I have used here work for me but do not cover all that are available. Experiment with the settings till you find the ones that work best for you.
28-7-06 If your AMV conversions are skipping every few seconds you can fix this by setting the frame rate in VirtualDub to the same as your AMV conversions. To find out what speed your AMV are running at play one on your PC with the AMVPlayer. While it is running right click on the picture and select properties which will show you the FPS. To set the same Frames Per Second in VirtualDub pressing CTRL+R will open the frame rate setting. In the Frame Rate Conversion box select Convert to fps and then enter your desired frame rate 10, 12 ,16 what ever your AMV were running at.
If you find your sound is out of sync on your AMV conversions you can adjust that in VirtualDub as well. Press CTRL+I to bring up the Audio Interleaving settings and set Audio Scew Correction to + settings if your audio is early or - settings if your audio is late. (eg. +300 or -300) Settings are in milliseconds and you will have to experiment to find the right settings for you.