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11 <H1>VirtualDub plug-in</H1>
13 <P><B><U>Important:</U> Make sure that
14 you read this documentation carefully in order to avoid mistakes!</B></P>
15 <P>The prerequisite for using this
16 plug-in is that you already familiar with the “manual”
17 process of encoding clips with VirtualDub (<A HREF="http://www.virtualdub.org/">www.virtualdub.org</A>).
18 The great thing about VirtualDub is that it offers both a graphical
19 user interface (GUI), accessible via <B>virtualdub.exe</B>, and a
20 command line interface (CLI), accessible via <B>vdub.exe</B>.</P>
21 <H2>Step 1: create VDub configuration
23 <P>Let's say we had a clip that we
24 wanted to encode not only once, but twice – into different
25 formats. Let's say that the first goal is to encode it to a loss-less
26 Huffyuv clip, and the second goal is to encode it to a quality-based
27 1-pass XviD clip using MP3 sound.</P>
28 <P>What you need to do first is to open
29 VirtualDub, set up the settings for one of the goals (by going into
30 the video compression and audio compression dialogs) and then click
31 on File → Save processing settings (CTRL+S). You will end up
32 with saving a .vcf file somewhere on your hard drive …
33 remember where you put it! After that, you'd set up the settings for
34 your second goal and save these processing settings as well, as a new
36 <H2>Step 2: Enable and set up the VDub
38 <P>First we need to set up the global
39 settings of the plug-in. Go into the preferences dialog and enable
41 <P><img src="images/preferences_global_vdub.gif"/></P>
42 <P>Use the “...” button to
43 specify the path to the vdub.exe file. The setting <B>max number of
44 VCFs per job</B> is important, because the number you put in there
45 will influence how many VCF files you will be able to select in the
46 <B>job dialog</B> (the dialog where you create or edit a
47 job/template). For our example we need to set it to 2, but it doesn't
48 matter if you choose a higher value. Since VDub will encode <B>two</B>
49 files for us, we will have to tell VDub under which filenames to save
50 them. You can select which approach you want to use by configuring
51 the setting <B>output as suffix(0) or file(1)</B>. If you <B>don't</B>
52 check the checkbox this means that you will enter a small part of the
53 file name, the <B>suffix</B>, that will be put at the end of the
54 original file name. E.g. if your original filename was
55 “C:\render\myVideoFile.avi”, and the suffix is
56 “_huffyuv”, the resulting file would be
57 “C:\render\myVideoFile_huffyuv.avi”. However, if you
58 checked that checkbox, you would instead get a “...”
59 button that allows you to specify the filename for the resulting file
60 manually (this is handy if you wanted to save the file to another
61 folder for example).</P>
62 <P>The <B>show extra options</B> setting
63 will be explained at the end of this page.</P>
64 <P>Let's now have a look at the dialog
65 when editing a job</P>
66 <H2>Step 3: Set up the job-specific
68 <P>Open the job dialog.</P>
69 <P><img src="images/edit_job_vdub.gif" />/P>
70 <P>Let's ignore the 2 checkboxes at the
71 top for a moment. What you will need to do is to specify the path to
72 the 2 .vcf files you created previously in VirtualDub in step 1. Then
73 you need to specify the suffix (or the file using the file-chooser)
74 so that VDub knows where to save the encoded videos.</P>
75 <H2>Step 4: Run the plug-in</H2>
77 <LI><P>If you had your job recorded
78 (without using the plug-in) then the status of the job will already
79 be “<B>done”</B> and you can right-click the job and run
80 the VirtualDub plug-in</P>
81 <LI><P>If the job has <B>not</B> been
82 recorded yet, just click on Start processing and wait for the result</P>
84 <H2>Additional information</H2>
85 <H3>Empty VCF paths</H3>
86 <P>As you know you can specify any
87 number in the <B>preferences dialog</B> for the setting <B>max number
88 of VCFs per job</B>. In case of our example that consists of 2 jobs,
89 if you selected 3 (or more) as max. number, and then opened the <B>job
90 dialog</B>, you would see 3 fields each for the <B>path to VCF file</B>
91 and <B>output file</B> setting. This, however, is not a problem. The
92 plug-in will only execute those VCF jobs for which both the path to
93 the VCF and the output file fields are filled with proper
95 <H3>VDub job control</H3>
96 <P>You still don't know what the 2
97 checkboxes in the <B>job dialog</B> at the top of the VDub settings
98 mean. What you need to know is that VirtualDub is having its own “job
99 queue”, which, however, is called <B>“job control”</B>.</P>
100 <P>The following scenarios can make
103 <LI><P>Having <B>both</B> checkboxes
104 <B>enabled</B>: Each time a new NDR job is executed which has
105 VirtualDub jobs, the <B>job control</B> of VirtualDub will be
106 cleared. This means that if you had other, old things in there
107 (possibly when working with VirtualDub outside of the NDR) that
108 these will be deleted from VirtualDub's job control, before the new
109 jobs are added there. Checking the second checkbox means that after
110 adding one of the VirtualDub jobs from within the the NDR,
111 VirtualDub will actually encode them right away (which you will
112 want, at least under normal circumstances).</P>
113 <LI><P>Having <B>both</B> checkboxes
114 <B>disabled</B>: In this case the only thing the NDR would do would
115 be to add the two jobs to the job control of VirtualDub, but
116 VirtualDub won't be encoding them. They are just put into the queue.
117 This means that if you were to start the the graphical user
118 interface of VirtualDub after the NDR completed processing, and open
119 the Job Control (F4), you'd see these jobs “waiting”,
120 and you could render them by pressing the Start button in Virtual
123 <P>The reason why these checkboxes exist
124 is flexibility. I often want the NDR to record stuff over night,
125 because during the recording process my PC is virtually unusable.
126 However, encoding clips in VirtualDub is a task that, depending on
127 the codec, can be done in the background and allows me to use the PC
128 for other things. In this case I'd disable both checkboxes, have the
129 NDR record all clips and add them to VirtualDub's job control, and
130 then on the next day, I decide when and which jobs to encode into
131 different formats from within the VirtualDub GUI.</P>
132 <P>And btw, just to be clear, the <B>second</B>
133 checkbox means that, <B>when enabled</B>, VirtualDub would actually
134 start encoding <U><B>all</B></U> clips that have already been in
135 VirtualDub's job control and that have not been encoded yet.</P>
136 <H3>Extra options</H3>
137 <P>If you selected the <B>show extra
138 options</B> checkbox in the <B>preferences dialog</B>, you will
139 notice that, in the <B>job dialog</B>, you got 2 additional
140 settings/checkboxes for each VCF file. Their names are pretty much
141 self-explanatory. I added these checkboxes because, after a scene was
142 rendered, I usually have the clip encoded into a loss-less format
143 (e.g. Huffyuv) right away. Since it is no problem to encode further
144 things (e.g. compressed XviD movies) based on the Huffyuv clip
145 (instead of always using the original avi file), enabling both these
146 checkboxes for VCF 1 would mean that the 2<SUP>nd</SUP> (3<SUP>rd</SUP>,
147 4<SUP>th</SUP> …) VCF jobs will be based on the
148 huffyuv-encoded file, and I got rid of original, big video as well,
149 saving hard disk space.</P>
150 <H3>Trouble shooting</H3>
151 <P>In case you suspect that the
152 expected, encoded file(s) is somehow incorrect (or even missing),
153 have a look at the <B>logs</B> directory in the NDR folder. You will
154 see log-files with the following format:</P>
155 <P>VirtualDub_NameOfTheJob_vcf1.log</P>
156 <P>Instead of “vcf1” you
157 might also find “vcf2”, “vcf3”... it
158 specifies for which VCF file of that job the log file stands for.</P>
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