Steps For Saving H.264 MP4 Videos In VirtualDub2

How I wish that saving my edited video files in VirtualDub2 is as simple as clicking on a single button or option like in Avidemux. Unfortunately, there isn't one.

It took me quite awhile to figure out the parameters and the steps to save my video files in the H.264 format in the MP4 container in VirtualDub2. I use the parameters in the video files that were produced by my cameras as a guide. My uploaded VirtualDub2 post-process videos were accepted by Dreamstime, no rejections based on technicalities. So I assume that what I have done must be correct.

Yes - after a lull of 2 years, I have rekindled my love affair with VirtualDub, albeit with one of its younger siblings VirtualDub2. Not bad considering that I only have a 2GB RAM, Pentium Dual Core 2.7 GHz computer and I could get my video processing done in a reasonable amount of time.

Where Are The Free FM Radio Tuners For Windows?

I find it odd that there are not many free FM Radio tuner software for the Windows platform. FM Tuners for Linux, yes - and with the source code too. But for Windows there is none. The best that I could find is just a plug-in for Winamp called Winamp TV version 1.9Beta8 - the page on this link says version 1.9lite10 but upon installation the Winamp TV documentation says version 1.9Beta8.

V2CRS Does Not Like Windows System Restore

I do not really need a user login account for my Pentium Dual Core computer that I use for TV captures. Security is not a concern as I am practically the only user on this PC. But I have a need to use V2CRS for scheduling my VirtualDub TV recordings. And one of the requirements of V2CRS is that it needs a user login account with a password.

Windows Scheduled Tasks

In the documentation of V2CRS, there is no mention of what the user login account should be. So I just create an account called "user" (with administrative privileges) that requires a password to login. Since I can use V2CRS to schedule and record without any problems, I did not give much thought to this after that. I thought everything was alright. That is until when I did a "Restore my computer to an earlier time" via the Windows System Restore. Some, but not all, of my scheduled V2CRS task will not launch. A look into the Windows Scheduled Tasks window, which V2CRS actually uses to schedule the task, shows a status of "Could Not Start" next to the task.

TV Captures On-Demand - An Easier Way

One Touch Recording or OTR. A function on my old VCR that enables me to record a TV program immediately without delay. And with the ability to set a countdown timer, the VCR will shut off once the countdown reaches zero.

I wanted something similar to OTR on my PC for my TV recordings with VirtualDub. There are times when I wanted to start recording a TV program immediately without scheduling a task in V2CRS. Task scheduling is easy with V2CRS but it takes time keying in the parameters. Consequently, there is an undesirable delay when I want to start recording immediately.

Batch Files To The Rescue

The easiest method that I could think of in creating an OTR like function on my PC is to use Windows batch files, that will in turn call the V2CRS program "Scheduler.exe". VirtualDub capturing will start almost immediately plus I will get a countdown timer, courtesy of V2CRS.

A command for immediately capturing TV1 (channel 6 in my case) into the file name "TV1" in the directory "F:\RecordedTVPrograms" for a length of 30 minutes will look like this:

VirtualDub Post Capturing: Deleting Advertisements

There are two things that I do before I start cutting out commercial breaks from my TV captures:

• I make sure that the audio and video are in sync; and
• I remove all MP3 artifacts.

The Problem With VirtualDub

VirtualDub was the first tool that I used for cutting out these ads found in commercial breaks. But AVI capture files that have been resynced (and MP3 artifacts removed) will gradually go out of sync again after cutting out the ads. No matter what I did, I could not cut out ads correctly with VirtualDub.

Avidemux To The Rescue

So, I now use Avidemux to edit out these advertisements from my TV captures.

Avidemux is a multi-platform video editor and it is free and open-source. The version that I have installed on my PC is version 2.5.4 (r7200). I only use 7 keys on the keyboard to locate, mark and cut out advertisements.

My VirtualDub Capture Mode Settings

Below are the VirtualDub settings that I use in VirtualDub for all my TV captures (my XVid settings can be found in my earlier post).

My captures are encoded in XVid (for video) and MP3 (for audio).

VirtualDub Post Capturing: Removing MP3 Artifacts

Annoying Artifacts

When I do TV capturing with VirtualDub, with the KWorld PCI Analog TV Card Lite (PVR-TV 7134SE) hardware device, the only sampling rate that I could choose for audio compression is 32 KHz, irrespective of the audio compression format. As a consequence, I have to compress my MP3 audio with a sampling rate of 32 KHz - in stereo with a bit rate of 96 Kbps.

I do not get any problems with the audio if I were to view my playbacks on my PC. But for playbacks using a media player that is connected to my TV, I can hear those annoying MP3 artifacts - some funny distortion when someone is talking that is audible at certain parts of the playback. I suppose this is because my TV has better speakers compared with my PC.

VirtualDub Post Capturing: Keeping Audio And Video In Sync

Unless it is less than 20 minutes long, I have a problem with audio and video synchronization in all my VirtualDub TV captures. During playback, the audio and video will start out okay, but after about 20 minutes they will begin to go out of sync. It is only later that I realized that this problem is caused by the audio and video having different length in time. In my case, the length of the audio is always less than the video, causing the audio to be heard first before the corresponding event in the video.

This is what I have to do to bring audio and video back in sync. To recap, I am using the KWorld PCI Analog TV Card Lite (PVR-TV 7134SE) as my capture hardware device. My video captures are encoded into XVid, while audio is encoded into MP3.

Extending V2CRS - Enabling VirtualDub Filters

I have a need to use VirtualDub filters when scheduling TV captures with V2CRS. I always find that with the Sharpen filter enabled at level 17, my playbacks always look better. I also have a need to enable the Denoise filter as for one particular channel where I live, the reception is not that good. But unfortunately, there is no option for enabling VirtualDub filters in V2CRS.

By luck I suppose, instead of selecting with the mouse, I happened to hit the keyboard and realised that I could key in into the field "Path:" when defining the file to execute for launching VirtualDub (under Preferences -> Capture application) from V2CRS. A thought then came to me - instead of using a .EXE executable file, using a Windows batch file ("VD.BAT" in this case) to launch VirtualDub will give me the ability to use VirtualDub scripts (and hence VirtualDub filters) via the VirtualDub command-line options.

V2CRS - A TV Recording Scheduler For VirtualDub

A VCR has a timer that enables the user to set a trigger for recording at a specific date and time. Unfortunately, VirtualDub has none.

Theoretically, we could use the Windows Task Scheduler to schedule a recording. The command to run under Windows Task Scheduler looks something like this:

C:\VirtualDub-1.9.11>C:\VirtualDub-1.9.11\VirtualDub.exe /capture /capchannel 30 /capfile "F:\RecordedTVPrograms\CapFile.avi" /capstart 3600s /x

A bit lengthy, and if we start inserting, deleting and modifying existing scheduled task, pretty soon Murphy's Law will set in and we will miss recording our favourite TV program. Much like writing a computer program, we need to debug our 'code'. Not a very good idea. Definitely not user friendly.

My XVid Configuration For TV Capture Using VirtualDub

Depicted below are the XVid parameter settings that I use for my TV captures with VirtualDub. The XVid parameters have been tuned so that I can capture directly into XVid with reasonable video quality. Capture resolution is set at 720x576 - i.e. a high resolution capture. The frame rate is set at 25 fps. Audio is captured and compressed into MP3 at 96 kbps. I do use the sharpen and dynamic noise reduction filters during capture, but not both at the same time as I do not have enough CPU processing power (see Extending V2CRS - Enabling VirtualDub Filters). CPU usage level is about 90% - 110% on average.

Channel Scanning and Auto Tuning In VirtualDub

With TivMe, the software that came along with the TV card PVR-TV 7134SE from KWorld, channel scanning and tuning is easy. Upon installation of TivMe, a wizard will popup and guides me through the whole process in 4 steps. And if I ever need to do another scan later, I just go to the software setting page and click on the "Scan Setting" button.

Wrong Country Code

When I first started using VirtualDub, I assume that things would be as easy as above. But this is not to be. When I went to the capture window (File -> Capture AVI), and activated the "Properties" dialog box (Video -> Tuner) and click on the "AutoTune" button, all that could be detected was just one local TV station, when there was suppose to be 6.

My PC - My Personal Video Recorder

I have been using my PC as a video recorder ever since my VCR has been producing jumpy recordings. That was about a year and a half ago. At that time I was thinking of getting a new VCR but nobody sell them anymore in Malaysia. Instead retailers were recommending digital video recorders that costs at least RM1000 each. I find that to be very expensive.

Since I already have a media player hooked up to my TV, and it supports AVI files with XVID and MP3 encoding, I decided to get myself a TV capture card to record analog TV programs on my PC itself. On my PC, what I have is an Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.7 GHz CPU with 1 GByte RAM installed in an ASUS P5G41C-M LX motherboard. As everything was experimental, I chose the cheapest TV capture card that I could find - the KWorld PCI Analog TV Card Lite (PVR-TV7134SE). The price RM99.

I did not use the TivMe software that came with the KWorld capture card as the documentation was poor and not much options were given to set the video and audio encoding parameters. With a background in computing, I would like to have as much control as possible in what I am doing. So instead I decided to use the freeware VirtualDub (v1.9.11) by Avery Lee.

All my captures are in high resolution 720x576 - encoded directly into XVID for video and MP3 for audio while capturing. However, not everything was plain sailing. TV capturing was an entirely new thing to me and I had to rely on Unofficial VirtualDub Support Forums, Doom9 Forums, Lukes Video Guide, VideoHelp Forums and countless Google searches. There were hardware problems, software limitations, and not forgetting inappropriately set XVID parameter.

But all in all, I am very pleased with how things have turned out. I now have very good quality video captures, with no advertisements (as I manually delete them after the captures), no jumpy playbacks and no more mouldy tapes. I don't have to worry about hardware replacement parts as PC components are fairly standard - unlike say a VCR video head or some obscure roller.