DesignByNumbers

Occasionally you run into a free utility that makes complex tasks so easy that you ever wonder how you did without it. Virtualdub is a linear video processor that has been highly optimized for speed. The authour Avery Lee is, in his own words, “very impatient” which means that a lot of effort has been expended to make this application one of the fastest available for the tasks it performs.

Virtualdub is not a sophisticated video editor, but rather a valuable companion to one. It allows you to perform lightning fast processing and filtering of video files. One of the best features is the ability to take a folder of sequentially numbered images, and a wav file, and with a minimum of effort compress it into a video file. It is extendable with third-party filter support. For additional filters go to Donald Graft’s website, which has an extensive library of his own filters, and links to most other Virtualdub compatible filters.

The built-in functionality of Virtualdub includes these features:

• Reads and writes AVI2 (OpenDML) and multi-segment AVI clips.
• Integrated MPEG-1 and Motion-JPEG decoders.
• Remove and replace audio tracks without touching the video.
• Extensive video filter set, including blur, sharpen, emboss, smooth, 3×3 convolution, flip, resize rotate, brightness/contrast, levels, deinterlace, and threshold.
• Bilinear and bicubic resampling — no blocky resizes or rotates here.
• Decompress and recompress both audio and video.
• Remove segments of a video clip and save the rest, without recompressing.
• Adjust frame rate, decimate frames, and 3:2 pulldown removal.
• Preview the results, with live audio.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 9:18 am and is filed under DesignbyNumbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.