Opening Video Files

I've saved the information about input files until now because CCE is somewhat picky about what you put in. It won't read MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files directly. In fact it can't even read AVI files if their color is encoded any way other than RGB or YUY2. It also assumes a certain colorimetry is used, which may or may not be the case. If the last three sentences were complete gibberish to you I recommend stopping to read a little about color in digital video. We have a short guide that may help.

There are two ways to open most video files with CCE. If they're AVI files and certain video codecs are installed, they may be automatically converted to YUY2 before CCE gets the frames. A better way to open files would be to use AviSynth. AviSynth, along with other tools like ffdshow and DGIndex, makes it possible to open just about any type of video file around with CCE. AviSynth reads and processes frames on the fly, so it can convert MPEG files from their native YV12 color format to the YUY2 (or RGB) that CCE accepts.

Opening Files with AviSynth

AviSynth tends to scare people away because it has a script interface instead of a native GUI. Fortunately you don't really need to know much of anything to do simple things like reading frames to send to CCE. Here is an example script you can use to open any file you have DirectShow filters installed for. Software DVD players, ffdshow, and DV decoders are the most common DirectShow filters used.

To use this script, copy and paste it into a text document, editing according to the directions in the script comments. Name the text file with an AVS extension and save it in the same folder as your video file. Assuming you have the appropriate DirectShow filter installed you're ready to open it in CCE.

# This script will open video that you have DirectShow filters installed for

# Replace [filename] with the name of your source file

# Replace nn with the framerate of your video

DirectShowSource("[filename]",fps=nn)



# Keep interlaced=true if your source is interlaced

# For progressive sources delete it

ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)

Adding A Source File

To add your AviSynth script as a video source you need to be on the main CCE window. Either select Open and then File from the File menu or just right click in the white space and click on Add in the popup menu. Navigate to the folder your video file is in and select the AVS file you just saved. When the file is added it wil automatically inherit the settings of the active template, which as you'll remember was indicated by a checkmark on the Template menu.

Some information will be available from the main window, like the number of frames, running time of the video, and some basic settings inherited from the template. Changing the active template after a video file has been loaded doesn't apply the settings from the template. If you have to change a lot of settings, sometimes it's faster to close the file (right click on it and select Delete), change the active template, and open the file again. Double clicking a file in the main window opens it's encode settings.

The Options menu gives you access to some program-wide settings. Select any of the thre options; Outputs, Extensions, or Misc, and a dialog with four tabs will popup. You can set options for the default location of encoded video files and whether a log file will be created automatically. The Extensions tab lets you change the default file extension used for diferent files CCE creates. Some people prefer to have elementary (video only) MPEG-2 streams get an M2V extension and MPEG-2 program stream end with MPEG. This is too distinguish them from their MPEG-1 equivalents.

The settings in this guide will always produce MPEG-2 elementary video streams. By default, CCE will give them an MPV extension. If the source video is from film and your going to be playing it back as NTSC video you will need to add pulldown flags with some other program. Otherwise it should be ready to either author to some standalone format, or simply be muxed with an appropriate audio stream into a single program stream.

Version History

v1.0 8/15/2007 by Vurbal