Can someone please help me out!

I've spent a whole day trying to resize a PAL Avi to get it into shape before I encode it in CCE2.5.

I've downloaded Virtual Dub to try and use the resize option but my Pal 480 by 576 file comes out the wrong aspect -- way too thin with black borders on either side.

Then I downloaded DVD2SVCD which seems to have just about everything with it including AVISYNTH, but I can't get that to produce a working file. (it reports an avisynth line read error)

The original file is in Premiere -- is there a way of resizing it there?

Desperate to crack this one guys.

To recap, please can somebody tell me how to turn a Pal AVI into a SVCD sized avi ready for CCE?

Thanks.

Dominic

While exporting from premiere, you'll have to choose 'ms-avi'as the file type in the export settings dialogue box. Click on next and you can choose frame size, aspect ratio, and your dv compressor. Leave the 4:3 aspect box unclicked.
If your frame size, aspect ratio and pixel aspect ratio don't conform to the standards of the compressor you have chosen, Premiere will refuse to encode, stating that the disk is full.
Experiment with a short clip of your source material until you have the desired result.
Of course any alteration from the source aspect will cause Premiere to be slower in its exporting.

You could resize in Premiere, but it is painfuly slow. What you should do is download the Video server for Premiere (www.videotools.net). Then, from Premiere, export to the video server. This will create a fake AVI file that can be read by ANY video program. The next step is the resize. It is best (and fastest) to do it with AVISynth. Use a script similar to this one:

AVIsource("C:\Temp\XXX.AVI")
# PAL. For NTSC use (480,480)
BicubicResize(480,576)
ResampleAudio(44100)

Save it as an AVS script, and load in into CCE, while the frameserver is working from Premiere.

Thanks for the pointers guys.

I tried some exports from Premiere and I think I may be getting to the heart of the problem.

Here's how it panned out last night:

When I exported the video as a Pinnacle AVI, the resize in Virtual Dub still kept screwing up, creating a new AVI in the wrong aspect --ie squashed up with bars on the sides.

However, when I exported with as a Microsoft AVI (not DV) and tried some of the other codecs as Mark suggested -- huffy, Indeo 5.1 etc -- the resizing worked as it should and I was able to import non-Pinnacle AVIs and successfully resized them.

So what gives? Is it that the Pinnacle codec is unsuited to making AVIs for CCE SVCD conversion?

I read a post on the Pinnacle website from one guy who worked out that it took him twice as long to encode MPEG when using a pinnacle Avi as source material as opposed to other codecs. Anybody any thoughts on this?

CODEC QUESTIONS

Given that I can now resize in Virtual Dub, I'm keen on using the best codec both in Premiere and in Virtual Dub. Which one should I use? Is Indeo 5 up to scratch? The "huffy" one (?) looks pretty advanced though it was compressing at a very space hungry rate of 2GB for every 4minutes.

To recap, I'd love to know which Codec I should be using in premiere for SCVD creation (the pinnacle avis work fine for DVD creation)

Thanks,

Dominic

P.S. I'm probably pushing my luck here, but I'd be very grateful if someone could mail me a copy of CCE 2.64 that works. I've tried about three downloaded "demos" and I can't get them to fully work. At the moment I'm stuck with 2.5.

Gracias.

email:dom@fatmelonfilms.freeserve.co.uk

"Stuck" with version 2.5? I should be so lucky...
Anyway, later versions do not support frameserving, so stay with 2.5

Do you know if 2.5 is compatible with XP Pro? I'm about to upgrage from 98SE. Also, isn't 2.5 crippled by a 2gb limit?

Actually All versions support frame serveing, all just don"t support AVIsynth or VDR files but they all support VFAPI, which is My usual choice for frame serveing cuz I don"t like the quality of the CCE 2.50 version, 2.62 and 2.64 are better, and the small amount of time longer it Might take with VFAPI is worth it for the better Quality..

Hi,

First of all: Capture right resolution.

IMHO virtualdub is all You need for avi - capture -edit- crop- bordersmear -logo -hue- saturation whatsoever and more coming.

Crop off black bars and resize rest to 480x576.