VisualHub Users Guide By Tyler Loch, Fearless Leader, Techspansion LLC Release 1.
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Table of Contents Chapter 1: Crash Course 4 Chapter 2: iTunes 6 Chapter 3: PSP 8 Chapter 4: DV 11 Chapter 5: DVD 14 Chapter 6: AVI 17 Chapter 7: MP4 19 Chapter 8: WMV 21 Chapter 9: MPEG 23 Chapter 10: Flash 26 Chapter 11: Advanced 28 Chapter 12: Xgrid 30 Chapter 13: Tidbits 33 Chapter 14: Troubleshooting 35 Chapter 15: Appendix 37 Appendix A: Cheat Codes 39 Appendix B: Supported Codecs/Formats 41 Appendix C: Credits and Other Info 43 3
Chapter 1: Crash Course "This readout tells you where you're going, this one tells you where you are, this one tells you where you were." - Dr. Emmett L.
Introduction VisualHub was created to allow people to convert video to many popular formats with ease. Most people will figure it out right away with no help. If you’re someone who scoffs at the notion that an “easy to use” program needs a 44 page Users Guide, then don’t read past this page. You won’t need to learn any more than this page teaches you. Some people will need a crash course (this section) to get jump-started.
Chapter 2: iTunes "You know, our next big step is we want it to make toast. I want to brown my bagels when I’m listening to my music. And we’re toying with refrigeration, too.
What Is It? A specialized set of MPEG-4 settings that play on modern iPods, and on the Apple TV. What Plays It? Fifth-Generation (5G) iPods. aka "iPod with Video", released in late 2005, and Apple TV, released in February 2007. More Information The 5G iPod was announced in late 2005 with video playback capabilities. Its 320x240 screen plays MPEG-4 and H.264 video at varying sizes and data rates. The iPod has the capability to hook up to a TV for higher-resolution video playback.
Chapter 3: PSP "This is the design that we came up with. There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which users and game software developers will have to adapt to...
What Is It? A specialized set of MPEG-4 settings that will play on the PSP. What Plays It? PSP, or PlayStation Portable, released in spring 2005. More Information The PlayStation Portable is Sony's grand entrance into the portable gaming market. It's a "jack of all trades", competing with both the GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS, and iPod. Its crazy-bright and glossy 480x272 widescreen display makes for great video playback.
AVC Encoding AVC, also known as H.264, is a newer, more advanced video compression type. Videos compressed with AVC will look better than its default MPEG-4 counterpart and takes up less stick space. Of course, there's a catch. It takes much longer to compress to AVC than MPEG-4. This is another personal preference. Advanced Settings The Advanced panel will show an extra section of you have the PSP tab selected.
Chapter 4: DV "...and it's indestructible! [WHAM] [WHAM] [WHAM] ...aww...I broke some of the shielding...
What Is It? A nearly-lossless format geared towards non-linear video editing. What Plays It? MiniDV camcorders, iMovie, Final Cut Pro. More Information DV video became the standard for home and prosumer video editing with the release of iMovie in 1999. iMovie and Final Cut Pro use it as their native editing format. Since it's a near-lossless digital format, there is no "generational loss" as experienced on analog VHS or more primitive digital formats when copying and editing video from device to device.
After Conversion If you want to add your completed videos to an iMovie project, 1. Make sure iMovie is closed. 2. Locate your iMovie project file. Control-Click on it and choose "Show Package Contents. 3. A new window will open showing you the innards of your iMovie project. Your completed videos from VisualHub can be dropped in the "Media" folder seen inside your iMovie project's folder. 4. 5. Open iMovie again. You will be warned about a foreign video in the iMovie trash.
Chapter 5: DVD "I go on Kazaa every week [...] a lot of it was pornography, some of it was music, but a lot of it was films." - Jack Valenti, May 2003 "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." - Jack Valenti, 1982 "In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless.
What Is It? A specialized set of MPEG-2 settings and authoring utilities that are geared towards creating discs that will play back on standalone DVD video players as well as computers. What Plays It? Standalone DVD players and most computers. More Information DVD : VHS :: CD : Vinyl (do you remember your grade school analogies?) DVD is the widely-used modern format for home video. Video quality is variable, allowing for very long running times. VisualHub can fit up to 18 hours of video on one DVD.
one DVD. The final result of this conversion is a disc image file named “VisualHubDVD.iso” that can be tested before being burned at your leisure on any Mac with Disk Utility, or with any PC burning software. Burn When Done Does what it says. Only available when "Author as DVD" is checked, it will burn the .iso file created by VisualHub to a recordable DVD in your default disc burner automatically. Make sure you've inserted a disc before conversion completes.
Chapter 6: AVI “Please spell DivX ;-) correctly ! Capital ‘D’ lower-case ‘iv’ capital ‘X’ and do not forget the eye-blinking smiley ‘;-)’ !” -Gej 17
What Is It? A legacy Windows video container resurrected by the DivX project. VisualHub creates DivX-compatible MPEG-4 AVI files. What Plays It? Windows, Mac and Linux with appropriate codecs, VLC, DivX-certified DVD and portable players. More Information DivX video surfaced in 1998 as a hack to allow MSMPEG4v3 video in the AVI container with MP3 audio. It quickly took internet downloadable video by storm, becoming the preferred video format by many websites and online communities.
Chapter 7: MP4 "In this world of 'my codec is better than yours' -- this codec is better.
What Is It? A modern container format, used with MPEG-4 and H.264 video. What Plays It? QuickTime, VLC, some portable players. More Information The MP4 container gets its heritage from the QuickTime .mov container. Its native video formats are MPEG-4 and H.264 (also known as AVC), with AAC audio. Easy Settings One-by-One 320 pixels wide By default, VisualHub will create a MP4 file with the same image size as the original video.
Chapter 8: WMV "I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.
What Is It? A Microsoft-created video container format. What Plays It? Windows Media Player on Windows, Flip4Mac and Popwire WMV decoders on Mac, VLC, Xbox360, some portable devices. More Information The WMV format is Microsoft's video format for both local use and internet streaming. The ASF and WMV formats are nearly identical, with just the file extension differentiating the two. VisualHub uses the WMV8 video codec and WMA9 audio codec.
Chapter 9: MPEG ”The basic scheme is to predict motion from frame to frame in the temporal direction, and then to use DCT's (discrete cosine transforms) to organize the redundancy in the spatial directions. The DCT's are done on 8x8 blocks, and the motion prediction is done in the luminance (Y) channel on 16x16 blocks.
What Is It? A legacy format supported by virtually all computers. What Plays It? Some standalone devices, some DVD players, every computer after 1996. More Information MPEG video was created in the early 1990s as a worldwide standard for digital video. It lives on in many forms today. MPEG video can be played by nearly every computer without special software, plugins, or codecs needed. Easy Settings One-by-One NTSC/PAL There are two major television formats in the world. NTSC and PAL.
MPEG Profiles There are hundreds of devices that use MPEG video to some extent, all with their own specific settings needs. VisualHub has presets for some of the more popular device formats. VCD Creates an MPEG file conforming to the strict VCD 1.1 specifications. VCD was an MPEG-derived format popular in Asia, and playable by many DVD players. SVCD Creates an MPEG file conforming to the SVCD specifications. SVCD was an MPEG2-derived format created by China as an alternative to the DVD format.
Chapter 10: Flash "People are all the time asking me, "Mike, how do you do those stupid voices for your dumb animal characters?", and I say, "I'm Mike. Matt does the voices.
What Is It? A Macromedia and Sorenson-created video format commonly found in Macromedia Flash .swf files. Used by Google Video and YouTube What Plays It? Macromedia/Adobe Flash web browser plugin for all formats, VLC. More Information Flash 6 included a video codec to go along with MP3 audio to allow simple video to be embedded in .swf files. In recent months, its use has exploded due to its inclusion in Google Video and YouTube, among other community video sites.
Chapter 11: Advanced "We knock them into little pockets with sticks. ...
Warning: Certain settings used in the Advanced drawer may create video files incompatible with some devices. Option Explanation Crop Will remove n number of pixels from a side, depending on which field a number is entered. (Left,Right,Top,Bottom) Crop values must be even numbers. AutoCrop By This File: Will find video edges (black bars, etc) and automatically set Crop settings for all videos according to the selected file only.
Chapter 12: Xgrid “The Xgrid Console has an intuitive Aqua interface that makes it easy to execute UNIX commands.” - Xgrid Technology Preview PR.
What is it and what does it do? Xgrid is Apple’s clustering technology built into Mac OS X. Xgrid can speed up a batch conversion by dealing out a video to each available CPU on your network for conversion. When you have more than one video in the file list and then check the "Enable Xgrid Encoding" checkbox, VisualHub will enlist the help of any Macs on your local network that have Xgrid enabled to distribute the load of batch encoding.
Panther Agents: You will need to download the Xgrid Agent for Panther from Apple’s website: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/xgridagentformacosx103.html Once installed, there will be a new Xgrid option in System Preferences. It has a similar window as shown above and should be filled out in the same manner. Note: VisualHub does not need to be installed on an Agent. All necessary files are sent to the Agent prior to conversion.
Chapter 13: Tidbits "But the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, no matter how much he cries or how much he begs...never, never feed him after midnight.
Video Stitching Video Stitching = Combining all the files in the video list into one massive file big enough to tell your grandkids about. Stiching is available for the iPod, DV, MP4, AVI, and MPEG formats, and is enabled by selecting the “Stitch Videos Together” checkbox in the main window. Important: Every file that is going to be stitched together must have the SAME characteristics as all the other files. This means the same resolution, framerate and audio quality.
Chapter 14: Troubleshooting "Son, you tried your hardest and failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try." - Homer J.
Hey, my video’s out of sync. What gives? Sometimes, a video file will get out of sync during conversion. It’s usually more noticeable near the end of the video. Two possible ways to solve this: 1. Switch decoding methods. In the Advanced panel, check the “Force” box and try converting with QuickTime or ffmpeg Decoding. If your file is a QuickTime movie, try ffmpeg Decoding. if not, try QuickTime Decoding. Both methods have a different way to keep audio sync and one may work better than the other.
Chapter 15: Appendix "...But what I'd really like to do is drive a flaming bus through a wall of TVs with a stick of dynamite strapped to my head.
(vermiform appendix) 38
Appendix A: Cheat Codes "The arcade version of Gradius is really difficult, right? I never played it that much, and there was no way I could finish the game, so I inserted the so-called Konami code (laughs).
What in the world is a “cheat code”? How do I rescue the princess? A “cheat code” in this sense is a very advanced setting for people who want to go above and beyond the GUI. A cheat code could also be a way to use VisualHub in strange, horrible ways. Many Cheat Codes are selectable from the Advanced panel. All cheat codes should go in the “Extra ffmpeg Flags” section in the Advanced drawer unless otherwise noted. Explanation String Best possible H.
Appendix B: Supported Codecs/Formats “Note, the names of encoders and decoders dont always match, so there are several cases where the above table shows encoder only or decoder only entries even though both encoding and decoding are supported for example, the h263 decoder corresponds to the h263 and h263p encoders, for file formats its even worse” - ffmpeg Source 41
Extra Information What follows are charts of supported video/audio codecs and container formats for import into VisualHub. Supported output formats are the selection tabs in the main interface. “Partial” means not all files in that format/container are supported - it’s hit or miss depending on container/codec-specific information. VisualHub cannot convert protected files, as found on the iTunes Music Store or Windows-based audio/video stores.
Appendix C: Credits and Other Info 43
Credits License Information ffmpeg Installing and using the software indicates your ©2006 ffmpeg Contributors. ffmpeg is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard. http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net FAAC, FAAD ©2004 AudioCoding - http://www.audiocoding.com libvorbis, libogg © 1994-2006 Xiph.org - http://xiph.org liba52 http://liba52.sourceforge.net LAME agreement to the terms of this license. If you do not agree to the terms of this license you must uninstall and delete the software from your computer.
