THE VIDEO CAPTURE BIBLE

Written by g00z REVISED: 5.19.2002

The Video Capture Bible

INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this guide Ive written this primarily not due to a lack of adequate guides around (Check www.divx-digest.com -- there are at least 30 Cap guides on there!), but because I think a lot of cappers are missing the point of the craft. That point is, above all else, quality. There are so many bad, lazy, shifty encodes floating around IRC it makes my stomach churn. Nothing is more disappointing than waiting all night for your DCC to complete to find the episode youve gotten is total crap and completely unwatchable. Ive written this in hopes that people that are currently capping can get some pointers on how to improve their encodes, and for new encoders to get off on the right foot and avoid common pitfalls involved in capturing and encoding. Also this guide should be an entertaining read. I think Im a pretty funny and quasi-intelligent guy. I make myself laugh. I hope you have fun reading this. This guide is meant to be as detailed and understandable as possible. There are screen shots of every step you need to take, in-depth explanations of each step, and FAQs in case you get stuck. Video capture is an art -- it is not a science. There is no Right way to do it. Wonderful encodes can be done using completely different methods. Much like painting, there is no wrong or right way, but simply an aesthetic that must be used to judge what the encoder was trying to accomplish. But remember one thing: If it doesnt look as good as the source material or better, its done wrong. That is your only guideline to follow. Do no harm. This guide is the way I do things. There are other methods but they wont be covered here. This is just what I have found to work the best as a speed/quality trade off, and is also dependent upon my particular setup (Hardware wise). A lot of this knowledge comes from pure experimentation, trial and error, and good old fashion common sense. Ive also gotten a lot of help from the countless guides out there (Ive read them all, I assure you) as well as the biggest guide to rock my world (And the most useful in my opinion):JWAs Capture Guide. Legal Stuff The dont sue me clause I am not your mother. I dont even know who you are. If you mess anything up, fry your computer, loose your term paper, slip in the bathroom on a wet spot, Im not goddamn responsible. In other words, by reading this guide you agree you cant sue me. Grow up lawsuit types. The world isnt responsible for you being an idiot. Fair Use VS the MPAA hatred for consumer control A lot of guides start off saying Dont capture/encode anything you do not legally own or something along those lines. Let me make something clear: there is *NO* difference between caping an episode with your computer than there is mom time recording her soap operas while shes not home. The MPAA would like you to believe you are a criminal unless you pay them every time you even *THINK* about any of their intellectual property. The only thing that is Illegal is when you give copies of your captured material to random dudes on IRC, USENET, etc. Even this is technically disputable as fair use in my opinion. Does the FBI think that Mary-Jane-So and So should go to jail if she lends her buddy Jennifer-So and So a copy of the latest episode of Days of our lives she time recorded because Jennifer missed the show? Common. This pure crap. There is little difference between lending a friend a VHS tape and sending somebody an episode on IRC. The MPAA has done a good job at criminalizeing what should be, for all intensive purposes, legal. But since I have to say it, dont indiscriminately distribute your caps. I should also mention I am not a lawyer, so all of this is just my opinion anyway. Copyright (Or lack there-of) This guide isnt copyrighted. Go nuts and distribute this thing everywhere. Make 2 Million copies. Send it as chain mail to your friends and enemies. Sell it on Canal street next to the Vietnamese bootleg videos. But by no means take credit for it. Dont change the By name. If you do, Ill hunt you down and kill you. Ill cut you to pieces and feed you to live perhanas. Ill put you out of business like Enron. Ill creep into your house and shoot poison arrows into your neck. Ill tell all your friends you like the Extreme Ghostbusters and thought the 3D version of Voltron was Cool. In other words, dont do it. Oh one more thing -- You can quote me or use parts of this guide for whatever twisted purposes you may have as long as you give me credit like a normal curtious human being.

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THE DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS

What we are doing here is more important than you can possibly imagine. Sure its fun and gives you pride at what youve created, but most importantly here we are preserving the past. Many of the shows and cartoons weve come to know and love are on the verge of complete extinction, dinosaur style. Due to the severely screwed up copyright laws in America, and other parts of the world, most copyrighted materials dont release control into the public domain for over 150 years. Thanks Sonny Bono. Thanks Disney. Glad your goddamn mouse is still a protected work of art. Wouldnt it be awesome if some Austrian guy owned the copyright to all the great works of art from the 15th century. That would rock if we had to pay 50 bucks to look at the Mona Lisa, or listen to a symphony by Beethoven. The problem with this whole copyright thing is what happens when a controlling parent company looses interest in a copyrighted item, or worse yet goes out of business. Take Heckle and Jeckle for example (Fantastic and witty cartoon that came from Terrytoons studios and aired on CBS/Viacom in the early 70s). No airings, or videotapes of this cartoon have seen the light of day since 1984. Im not kidding. All the original reels of this have been sitting in a vault in Viacom wold headquarters collecting dust and slowly deteriorating from film rot for nearly 20 years. Viacom doesnt give a damn. So, since Viacoms copyright doesnt expire for oh say, another 100 years, and they dont care that people want to see this cartoon again, these original works will most likely be damaged beyond view ability within the 100 years it will take to legally obtain a copy of these films. This is where we step in. We get our hands on the best source material we can find. We make digital copies of these shows. We spread them to IRC, USENET, FTP sites, Kazza. We make sure its immortalized. We make sure in 100 years there will be SOMEBODY on the planet that has a copy. Dont take this lightly. We are seriously saving history from being forgotten. And you know what they say about history. Those that dont know history are doomed to repeat it.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
Before we start there are a couple things we need to check: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. You have used a computer for more than 2 days. Processor is at least 600 MHz or better. Have a capture card (Duh) Your capture card has VFW drivers (More on this later) You have a lot of free Hard Drive space You have DMA enabled on your Hard Drive. You are running some version of Windows. You have a brain and can follow simple instructions. Deductive reasoning is a plus too.

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SOFTWARE & CODECS

Needed Tools: You dont need to be a millionaire. Hell, you dont need 50 Cents. All you need is a decent net connect and these FREE applications an codecs. Pay software sucks -- really. For some weird reason, some of the best tools I use are totally free. Why cant Abode seem to make Aftereffects (A $900 software package) as burley and fast as VirtualDub? I dont know.. But Im not complaining. After Effects and Premiere are for suckers.

Divx 3.11 Alpha http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec.html This is what started it all. While in a legal gray area (This codec is actually a stolen Microsoft implementation of Mpeg-4), Its still the most popular format for encoding video for distribution on the net. Its small size, reasonable CPU overhead, and high quality make it a prime choice for compressing your video files. It really is the MP3 format of video. MPAA president Jack Valenti wakes up in a cold sweat screaming every night because of it. There is a legal version (All From Scratch code) known as Divx 4.0/Divx 5.0 (Under the name Project Mayo as well). These new versions are quite legal and open, and pack more features (Better control and multi-pass VBR encoding). The reason I choose to use Divx 3.11 Alpha instead is because 3.11 is more wide spread, has less CPU overhead, doesnt interfere with other versions of Divx (4.0 and 5.0 will Overwrite older versions of the codec making things screwball at times), and comes free of Ad Support. The 5.0 Version has a Pro release that comes with ads. This scares me as I think in the future these new versions of Divx will come with spy ware and all kinds of crap. Better stick the old standby. If it aint broke, dont fix it is my motto.

VirtualDub http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/ The swiss army-knife of video tools. Avery Lee is pure genius and has created the best dream tool for any serious capper, ripper, or video hobbyist. Besides being a completely amazing application, its free and its GPLed so you can poke around the source or modify things if you want. With this application you can capture video (Custom sizes - segmented avi control), edit (Chop, Join, without the need to re-compress), clean (Around 200 filters created for this application), and compress. Ten goddamn stars. AVIUtil http://ruriruri.zone.ne.jp/AVIUtil/ Think of AVIUtil is a bizzaro world version of VirtualDub. It has most of the same features as VirtualDub does, but as an added bonus it seems to handle automatic inverse telecine with grace and intelligence. I wouldnt recommend doing everything in AVIUtil, but you could if you wanted to. A little slower than VirtualDub, but a god send when it comes time to de-interlace your video and shift the frame rate back down to the original format (More on this later.) Oh yah.. Its free too.

Huffyuv http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html If you want to capture with the best possible quality possible, but dont want the disk access/space overhead of capping directly to raw YUV2, this is the answer. Basically, this is a Lossless codec that stores data using a compression method similar to the ZIP file format. Its fast as hell (Little to no CPU overhead), makes your files 1/2 the size they would be with YUV2, and its GPLed. You can cap without using this, but I wouldnt recommend it. Anyone serious about capping uses this and you should too.

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Optional Tools: ATI MMC 6.3 http://www.pcphotovideo.com/favorite.htm Got an ATI Card like an All-In-Wonder Pro? Go download this NOW. ATIs new drivers for all of its products (Known as the MMC 7.1 Release) are WDM drivers, while this older release (No longer available from ATI) uses both WDM and VFW drivers. What does this mean? It means that without the older driver that has VFW support, you wont be able to capture in VirtualDub, and thus be cursed to use ATIs software with less features and a clunky interface. ATI, in typical corporate fashion, has screwed all the users of its hardware and has totally removed this old driver set from existence.. Lucky for us with ATI cards, some very cool guy has posted the old drivers on his site for those of us that dont want to be stuck using ATIs horrible capture application. Virtualdub Filters http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/ Besides the wonderful and adequate filters that come with VirtualDub, Donald Graft has an impressive set of useful filters on his site, as well as links to a bunch of other sites that have great filters on them as well. Such filters like the Cartoon Tool, VHS Cleaner, and many others make great additions to your filter library. TMPGenc http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html Are you hardcore? Do you have future vision? Want to do caps that will stand the test of time? Then dont fool around with just making Divx versions of your caps - Go SVCD! The wave of the future is here. The Mpeg-2 Format (Same that is used for DVDs, HDTV Digital Streams, Digital Cable, and Digital Satellite Streams) is not only a recognized standard (As opposed to Divx and other weird implementations of Mpeg-4), but unlike Divx this format will play natively on many Home DVD players. When I do caps, I make a Divx version (For distribution on IRC and Usenet), and a SVCD version for myself and archival purposes. SVCD can look just as good as DVD if you know what your doing, and a typical 44 Minute Episode will take up only one CD. If your serious about capping and want to think about the future, you should make SVCD versions of all your caps, so in say 3 years when Divx is no longer important, and our internet connections are all 10 Mb Down, youll be ready with perfect copies of your videos. TMPGenc is the best tool for making SVCDs and VCDs. Its free. Its amazing. Go get it.

Good Reference Sites: http://www.vcdhelp.com/ An all around good place to be. Especially if you want more information on SVCD, what DVD players currently support the SVCD and VCD formats, as well as some decent cap guides of their own.. You should have this put in your favorites/ bookmarked or you are going to hell. http://www.divx-digest.com/ The mother of all sites concerning Divx, DVD ripping, and also some decent cap guides. Nicki Pages tutorials are well written and can be a lot of help if you have questions. A good section with links to every piece of software you ever need is on this site as well. http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/ Once again, Donald Grafts home page. If you have to ask why, then you are a total n00b.

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METHODS AND MADNESS

The Target Codec Question So whats the best final format to encode your caps as? The best format IMHO is SVCD. SVCD (Really just MPEG-2) is the most open, best looking, most compatible, most bang for the buck format you can choose. The stuff looks as good as it can with little artifacts or distortion of source. But seeing as how most of the world isnt ready for SVCD, Divx will do nicely for now. Divx is small, lightweight, and looks pretty darn good when done right. For those that want the lowdown of all the big formats out there and why to use them or loose them, here is my take on them all (In order of quality): Raw YUV2 Avi: Pros: Lossless Quality. Cons: Huge -- Im Talking 1 Gig a minute huge. Unacceptable. Huffyuv Avi: Pros: Lossless Quality. 1/2 the size of raw YUV2 Cons: Still way big. About 300 Megs per minute of video. Sorry, try again. SVCD (Or MPEG-2): Pros: Near to perfect quality. Decent size (About 20 Megs per minute). Good compatibility (Any computer with a software DVD player can play these, as well as quite a few consumer DVD players). Good for archiving. In the near future, all releases on the NET will be SVCD -- take a look at usenet where 50% of all posts are now SVCDs Cons: Still a little too big for you typical net guy with a halfway decent net connect. Confusing to most people that dont understand that you cant just open it up with media player like normal .mpgs.

Divx Avi (Choose your variety) Pros: Small size (about 5-10 Megs per minute). Very watchable quality. Somewhat good compatibility (Most people have divx installed now if they are into TV via the net). Not too bad on the CPU. De facto standard for IRC releases these days.. Also popular with the DVD ripping kiddies. Cons: Legally gray (For the 3.11 release, this codec is illegal. Microsoft sues school districts. They can put this codec down anytime they feel like it). Quality varies from encoder to encoder. New version while legal has the ability to become proprietary at any time. Not compatible with ANY DVD players, and some OSs dont play them so well (Divx on anything but a windows machine can be sketchy at best -- ask any Mac or Linux user). VCD (Or Mpeg-1) Pros: Decent size (about 10 Megs per minute). Highest compatibility rate of ANY format (There are no computers and very few DVD players that cant handle this format). Watchable quality. Cons: Cant go beyond a rez of 388x248 -- so some quality in image definition is lost. A little bit to big for the bang per buck factor. ASF/WMF/Microsofts idea of the future of video. Pros: Looks alright and can be very small size wise. Cons: Dude, its Microsoft -- Duh. Screwball seek time (Try sliding the seek bar -- takes 2 minutes for the video and audio to resynch). Proprietary. Cant be played on anything but a windows machine. Just plain evil when it comes down to it. Quicktime (AKA Sorenson) Pros: Good Image quality with a small file size. Cons: Proprietary. Screwed up player. Player nags you about getting the pro version every 2 seconds. Doesnt full screen correctly. Ugly interface.

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Real Media Pros: None. Cons: Please, delete all your RM files. Stop distributing files in this format. At the end of this tutorial I go off on a rant about how bad this format is in all things holy and human. Worst looking format you could possibly choose.. I think Intel Indeo or Cinapack looks better than this joke of a codec.

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The Target Resolution Question So whats the best final resolution? Much of the answer depends on the final file format used, as most formats are locked into specific resolutions. For instance all SVCDs are 480x480, and all VCDs are typically 352x288 (Or 352x240 for NTSC). Well skip the other formats and just ask this question for Divx, since that is what this guide mainly covers as well as being the one format that is unincumbered by size restrictions for the most part. First off, there are specific sizes that a Divx AVI should be at. Those sizes are: 720x480, 640x480, 608x456, 572x432, 512x384, 480x360, 384x288, 352x264, 320x240, 160x120 You will notice that all of these sizes have one important thing in common, and that is that all of these numbers are divisible by 16 -- In other words, you can take any of the numbers here, divide them by 16, and have no remainder (Or with floating point math, all numbers are integers). The reason this is important has to do with the way that Divx, or MPEG-4, compresses video data. Divx uses a block matrix of 16x16 pixels to store its data. If you have ever seen an over compressed Divx file, and notice that it gets blocky at times, you will see that these blocks are exactly 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels high. I could go into detail about why MPEG-4 works this way, but suffice it to say that your resolution MUST be divisible by 16! Another important item regarding size is that you must also account for is the aspect ratio you wish to use. Aspect Ratio is simply a fancy way for describing the ratio between the width and height in a rectangle. There are all sorts of standard aspect ratios used in video. For example, in theaters the aspect ratio is much wider than it is tall (As in Wide-screen) and thusly when you watch a movie on a television you get black bars on the top and bottom (Called Letter boxing) so the image doesnt get stretched and distorted since your TV is not even remotely as wide as a theater screen. Since our obvious final target is either a computer monitor or a television screen, we must find out what the aspect ratio for that is. As you can see from your resolution settings, the lowest setting is 640x480, and from there you can derive the aspect ratio of 4:3. As a side note, American television sets share this aspect ratio, while most European televisions do not. Most European countries use a different standard known as PAL (The American standard is known as NTSC) that uses a slightly taller aspect ratio. So the real question is do you want to use 4:3, or is your target a PAL television set? Most people would

agree that it is better to shoot for 4:3 as you are more likely to watch a Divx file on your monitor than you would your television if you are in a country that uses the PAL standard. Now lets talk a little bit about your source material. Are you capturing from Cable/Antenna, VHS or Digital Satellite? All of these sources have their own limitations that must be considered. Now keep in mind, analog video signals dont quite follow the standard set of rules here, in that there really is no such thing as Resolution in the typical width by height fashion we have been pondering here. Analog video signals are a little weird and it involves some serious science and math to properly describe the nature of a signals size, so we will skip all that math and just present the rough numbers that each source has: VHS: Anywhere around 320x240 -- Basically depending on the recording speed, head alignment, and many other factors the signals resolution can very. As a safe bet, assume the best and think of VHS in terms of 320x240. Cable/Antenna (Broadcast Video) 480x360 Digital Satellite/Digital Cable & DVD From 720x480 to 640x480. Now, as stated earlier, our real goal here is to do no harm, and try to get our resulting digital transcription to look as good, if not better than our source. So depending on source, your final file should be at least 320x240 for VHS, 480x360 for Broadcast Video, and 640x480 for Digital Satellite. This is because if you are scaling down from the original signal size, your resulting product wont be as sharp and detailed as the original. Now there is one last thing to consider here.. That is the CPU usage and compression. While it seems the most logical to simply have all your resulting encodes at 720x480 or bigger, this is not practical for two reasons.

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Number one is that the bigger the resolution is, the harder a CPU has to work to render the video from the compressed file. Keep in mind that your CPU is already doing a lot of work -- Its reading the file from the disc, decompressing the MPEG-4 and MP3 streams, sending data to the audio card, etc. While you may have a 40000 Ghz super duper new Pentium 8 chip, you must keep in mind you are also doing this for others and other folk may not be as fortunate as you to put 3 Grand down on a new computer.. Most likely they fall into the middle range (At this time, most likely a 500 MHz computer or so). From my experience, a 500 MHz machine can barely keep up with 640x480, and anything higher than that it will start to choke and drop frames. Number two is compression. Keep in mind that the bigger a video file is, the more data that must be compressed to keep the file at a reasonable size -- so there is a tradeoff between resolution, file size, and amount of compression. In most instances, 2 files of the same file size, with one being 640x480 and the other being 480x360, the 480x360 file will look better than the larger version simply because there is less data to compress, thus less compression artifacts and loss of clarity due to over compressed video. This is a common mistake among folks who rip DVDs -- I keep seeing these DVD rips done at 720x480 (The native DVD resolution) that fit on one CD. Let me tell you, these rips look very bad. While it may seem like the best thing to do to get the maximum resolution the DVD has to offer, the resulting over compression makes the rip look way worse than one done at a smaller resolution. After weighing in all these factors and much experimenting with different resolutions, I can say without a doubt in my mind your target resolution should be.... (drum roll please) 480x360 This resolution has the best tradeoff between CPU usage, compression, and clarity for all source materials. Its the middle of the road and its where you want to be. Keep in mind, if you are capturing from a VHS tape that isnt in such hot shape this could be overkill. You may be better off making the target resolution only 320x240 as your adding nothing but compression artifacts since VHSs resolution is no bigger than this anyway.

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The target frame rate question Now we get into the most misunderstood part of video capturing and encoding. So many people have zero concept of FPS that its simply staggering. It isnt without reason however, as there is a little bit of voodoo involved in the subject. First thing is first -- NO ANALOG VIDEO SOURCE ON THE PLANET IS HIGHER THAN 30 FPS! If you are capturing at 60 FPS, your stuff wont look any better than it does at 30 FPS. As a matter of fact it will most likely look worse than 30 FPS since you would be dropping crazy frames from pushing your hardware way too hard. Second thing is second -- YOU MUST CAPTURE AT YOUR SOURCE VIDEOS FRAME RATE! This means that if you are capturing an NTSC source (American/Japanese TV) your FPS must be 29.97 and if you are capturing a PAL source (Most European countries) your FPS must be 25. If you capture at a higher rate or a lower rate than your source, you will get video that looks choppy and staggering. This is my number one pet peave, so dont take this lightly. There is nothing worse that encodes that arent the correct FPS. They are just painful to watch.. I delete encodes with the wrong FPS at first viewing. Third thing is Third -- Most, if not all, video that airs on television was shot on reel film -- whos frame rate (For NTSC) is 23.976. Now if you are smart you should be asking yourself, I thought you said all NTSC video is 29.97 But its shot at 23.976? What the hell? How does the frame rate go from 23.976 tp 20.97?? This is where the mystical stuff comes into play. Video that is projected is known as Progressive video. This is also the same format that your computer monitor displays video -- in a nice logical fashion -- one frame after another. Now, Television on the other hand, and the signal that is fed into it is known as Interlaced video and it some serious voodoo. Essentially, a television displays half frames where it only draws half of the vertical lines in the first pass, then the other half of the lines in the second pass. Its much more complicated than this, but it is an adequate description for our purposes. So how does video that was originally progressive get changed into a interlaced source? Through a process known as a Telecine (The word itself describes the process). Half frames are stuck in-between full frames so the television can draw them, and consequently, raises the frame rate, and that is where you get your conversion from 23.976 to 29.97. This is a terrible description, but this is all you really need to know about the process.

Another thing to consider here is that the amount of compression artifacts is relational to the FPS -- and this is pure logic here. If a video is 23.976 FPS, every second of video has 23.976 frames in it; If a video is 29.97 FPS, every second of video has 29.97 frames in it. This means that the higher the frame rate, the more frames Divx has to compress, and thus the less quality in each resulting frame. So the wise choice is to go with a lower frame rate to achieve better compression. Now, you understand that you need to capture at 29.97 FPS (NTSC) and your resulting file should have a frame rate of 23.976, but how do you get from point A to point B? The answer is a process known as an Inverse Telecine. This process basically combines half frames of interlaced video to create a progressive video stream that is at a lower frame rate (Since youve combined the half frames you have less frames in the end). A lot of programs have the ability to do this with different results. From my experience the program that handles this the best is AVIUtil. Virtualdub can do this as well, but Ive never gotten good results.

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The Target Bitrate question Now that we have decided on using Divx at 480x360 and 23.976 FPS, what bitrate should we use for Divx. The answer to this question is purely aesthetic -- For the most part, your bitrate should be the lowest you can use (For a small file size) with little to no compression artifacts so you keep in line with the Do no Harm motto. This is purely subjective, but in my experience a bitrate of about 900 will yield decent results -there is hardly any visible compression artifacts, and the file size isnt too monstrous. A video about 22 minutes long will be about 175 Megs if you have a good clean source. Some people may think this is a little large, but let me assure you, connections get faster every day so you may as well shoot for the future instead of the here and now. After all, whats the point in over compressing something so it looks bad if in 10 months you will want to re-encoded your stuff because your pipe is fatter? Might as well go for the gold I say. Also, I didnt come at this bitrate arbitrarily -- You will notice that if each 22 minute episode is 175 Megs, you will snugly fit 4 episodes on one CD, or 2 episode if they are 44 minutes long. Sounds a whole lot like 2 Hour SP speed VHS to me.

In a nut shell, we will need to capture the video at a size as large or larger than our target 480x360, run filters over it to clean up the video as well as de-interlace and change the frame rate via an inverse telecine. To do this, it is best to capture this video LOSSLESSLY, because if we capture the video in a compressed state, we will have to compress the video again after processing that will lead to compression artifacts and all kinds of other nasties. Another reason we want to capture it losslessly is because compressing video on the fly eats up all kinds of CPU, and our CPU is already trying its best to keep up with capturing the video in the first place. We cant make the processor work harder than it can, so its best to capture video without compression so the CPU can keep up and not drop frames. Dropping frames is bad. Very, very bad. Now, it should be noted not everyone has a 200 Gig hardrive. And furthermore, not everyones HD is fast enough to keep up with capturing raw video. Raw video takes up A LOT of space per each second. So we need a good in-between from capturing completely raw (YUV2) to capturing compressed (DIVX). This is where Huffyuv comes into play. It is a lossless compressor (No quality loss), its the fastest thing around (Low CPU usage), and it makes files about 1/2 the size of raw YUV2 (Perfect for saving space and taking it easier on slower hardrives). Once you have captured your file, you can then do all your processing and create the final product. As an added bonus for caturing raw, you can make more than one version of the same cap (A SVCD version, A high-bandwidth Divx version, as well as a smaller low-bandwidth version for the bandwidth challenged).

Wrapping everything up in a neat package So we know our target specs: Divx 3.11 AVI (900 bitrate) File @ 480x360, 23.976 FPS Now to get from capturing to our final product we should remember a few things: 1. We have to capture at 29.97 FPS and somehow get to 23.976 FPS 2. We will need to De-Interlace the video (When you capture at a resolution higher than 320x240 the video will be interlaced) 3. We will want to clean up the video a little bit -- Broadcast video is laden with static that will inhibit the compression process and VHS video has lots of tape squelches and discoloration.

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The Step By Step Guide

AKA the Capture Bible
Now that you understand what we want to accompish, and understand what we need to do to get the best results, lets go to work!

CHECKING YOUR SYSTEM

First, lets check to make sure you can actually capture video with my video capture tool of choice, VirtualDub. Open up your Control Panel and go to Multimedia Properties. Inside you will see a Devices tab the shows you all the Multimedia Device drivers on your system. Make sure you have a device inside the Video Capture Devices section. If you dont, you either dont have a capture card correctly installed, or your capture card does not come with VFW drivers. If the second is the case, then you will be forced to capture video with whatever capture utility came with your capture card. This is bad ju-ju, because most capture applications bundled with hardware suck very very badly. You may not be able to select Huffyuv as your codec. You may not be able to capture at a decent resolution. You might even be unable to capture to AVI (But instead only to MPEG or MPEG-2)

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CAPTURING THE VIDEO

Assuming all is well so far, go ahead and open up VirtualDub -- your new best friend. The first time you run VirtualDub it might complain about having Hacked Illegal video codecs on your machine (Divx 3.11). Ignore this -- it means nothing -its just a legal thing Avery had to do since Microsoft has been a real pain in the ass to him in the past. From the file menu, select Capture AVI and cross your fingers. If all is well you will see a source video frame appear and a new set of options at your disposal as illustrated below:

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From here, first check to make sure your audio is set up correctly. You can easily check this by selecting the volume meter from the Audio pull down that will display a neat little meter for the incoming audio signal. If none of the meters are moving, your audio input is not selected correctly. To remedy this, double-click the little speaker in the bottom right hand corner of the screen (Windows Mixer) and re-select your audio input as shown below:

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Once your audio is correctly set-up, next go to the video menu.

Also here you can set your Brightness/Contrast/Color/Tint -Its best leave these settings at their default, but some signals may require a little help. My cable for instance (Since Im using a 75 Ohm Coax connection) is a little desaturated and dull, so I bump up my contrast, color, and shift the tint a little towards the blue spectrum. Use your best judgment here and remember, DO NO HARM. If you are connecting with a 75 Ohm coax cable, you can set your channel and video type here as well. Once you have everything set the way you want it, click OK to move on. Next, select your video compression. As stated earlier, we want the best possible source to process upon, so choose Huffyuv. If you are having problems with high-CPU usage or dropped frames, try configuring Huffyuv to use a faster compression algorithm.

From here, first select the Source for your video. You should get a dialog box similar to this:

Once you have your compression set, move on to the actual video format. As seen in the screen shot below, choose your width and height, and leave the data format on YUV2 -- This data format is needed for Huffyuv to work correctly.

From here you can select your connector (Cable/75 Ohm Coax, Composite, or S-Video). A little explanation on the whole connector thing: The quality of video you get per connector is as follows: S-Video (Best), Composite (Good), and Cable (Worse). Many dont have the luxury of an S-video connection to their VCR/ Cable Box/Digital Satellite Receiver. A few others (like myself) cant use a composite connector. So basically, whatever is the best connector you can use, use that.

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On the dimensions issue: We want to capture at a format that is as good if not better than our final output (480x360). You can see here I cap at 480x480. I do this for two reasons. Number one, I also make SVCD out of my caps, and as 480x480 is the resolution of an SVCD, its a logical choice. Number two is that capturing at 480 pixels tall will give better de-interlacing results -- something we will cover later on. From the Capture menu, we want to check two things here:

One is Enable multi segment capture. The video we will be capturing here is HUGE -- 44 minutes of video will easily consume about 18 Gigs of drive space. But there is one hitch here -- Windows, being a Microsoft product after all, has a built in limitation with file sizes -- It can not make files larger than 4 Gigs. As our video will be about 18 gigs, this presents a serious problem, but one that VirtualDub fortunately solves for us. With this option selected, every time the video file reaches the 4 Gig limit, VirtualDub will create a new video file and continue capturing on the fly. Another thing we need to do to allow for multi-segment capturing is set up Spill Drives. In here we set up our primary capture drive (Mine is D) and a secondary drive in case the first one is filled up (My C Drive). Also we fill in the maximum size for AVI files in the bottom most field. I set mine to 1900, so my files are easier to manage and I have less audio synch problems as well.

The second thing we want to check is Auto increment filename after capture. This means the every time you begin to capture video, VirtualDub will name its capture file Capture and then a number that starts at Zero and increments every time a capture takes place. This assure that no capture files will be overwritten with new ones.

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The last bit of setting you need to make here are the most important: Audio Format and Frame Rate. Click the boxes on the bottom right of VirtualDub to set these to our desired settings: 44K/15Bit/Stereo for the audio, and 29.97 FPS for the frame rate.

Now, to make sure the next time we open up VirtualDub to capture something, we want to make sure VD remembers all of our settings so we dont have to go through all of this again. To do this, open up the Capture Preferences and check all the boxes that Say Save next to them. After words, hit OK and VD will remember all of the previous settings we have entered into it.

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We are all set, so lets capture! To begin capturing in VirtualDub you can either select Capture Video from the drop down menu, or more elegantly press F6 to begin. Once the capture starts, your information pane on the left should look something like the panel to the right: There is some important information here you should be aware of: 1. Time Left/Disk Space Free - Make sure you have enough time and space to do your cap! If not, its time for a new hard drive. 2. CPU Usage - Make sure this stays bellow 100% -- if it gets stuck on 100% you will start dropping frames. If your CPU usage is too high, you can either capture at a smaller size (320x240), or you may be able to fiddle with some settings in your computer to make sure things are running smoothly. 3. Frames Dropped - Its quite ordinary to drop a few frames here and there. Dont panic if you see that a frame is dropped. However, if you are dropping A LOT of frames (More than one frame per second gets dropped) you should stop capturing and perhaps lower the size of your video to compensate. Its a bad trade off, but the alternative is to get a faster hard drive or faster CPU, and that costs money. You can also play with the size and number of IO buffers so that you dont drop any frames. Also in VirtualDub, you can switch between overlay and preview mode, which may help to keep from dropping frames.

When done capturing the video, press Escape to stop capturing. Everything is good, and you just captured your first high-quality video!

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PERFORMING THE INVERSE-TELECINE AND DE-INTERLACING

If all has gone well and you could capture video at 480x480, you now need to change the frame rate back to its original 23.976, and also de-interlace the video to turn it back into a progressive video stream. If you couldnt capture at a resolution higher than 320 Pixels tall, you can skip this section as your video has been made naturally progressive due to only capturing half of the vertical resolution. Open up AVIUtil and load your first video segment. You will need to repeat this cycle for each segment that VirtualDub created while capturing unless you set up a batch job, or append all the sections together and compress the file as it re-renders. For the sake of being brief, Ill cover the method of doing this for each segment you have captured.

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First, go to Setting and choose Frame rate Conversion. In the sub menu here you want to select 24fps <- 30fps (4/5) and 30->24FPS invoke automatic inverse telecine. Dont let the numbers here fool you -- it really means 23.976 FPS from 29.97 FPS, but for the sake of saving space in the menu it is rounded up to 24FPS and 30FPS.

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Next from the Settings menu select De interlace and in the sub menu choose Automatic inverse telecine in the first half. This will blend your half frames (Known as fields) into whole frames that coincide with the frame rate change you set up one step back. Now take a look at the preview pane -- Your video that looked jaggy with interlacing artifacts should be clean as a wistle now, looking like normal video. You may have to slide the seek bar around in the AVIUtil to get it to re-render the preview. Next, you can chop out the bits of the file you dont need. This includes VHS leaders, commercials, station identifications, etc. To do this move the seek bar to the start point of the bit you want to cut out. The click the second to farthest right button on the bottom right of AVIUtil to select your start point. Then move the seek bar to the end of the bit you want to cut out and click the button in the very bottom right hand of AVIUtil to set the end point. Now you should see your area to be deleted highlighted in blue and can proceed to delete it by selecting Edit-->Delete selection range.

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After your happy with your edits go to render out the file. Do this by going to File-->Save AVI. This will bring up the following dialog box (To the right) Here you need to choose a filename (Something logical), set your video codec (Huffyuv again) and click save. If you are totally cramped for drive space, you can get away with compressing it as a Divx file (with a very high bitrate like 3000), but if you want to do the best job you can, it is best to stick with Huffyuv to make sure the source stays as clean as possible. Once rendering, AVIUtil will display information similar to this in the title bar:

This tells you how much longer it will take to render the file, and what frame its on (out of how many frames there are total). When done, we can move on to step two, now that we have a our captured video that has been de-interlaced and had its frame rate changed back to 23.976.

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CLEANING THE VIDEO AND PREPARING FOR ENCODING

Next thing we want to do is remove any extra noise or signal degradation from our source video so it will look better, and also compress better. The more noise in a source video, the more Divx will have to compress -- and thus more artifacts and a worse looking encode. Open up VirtualDub once again, and from there open up the first video segment. Since we are on our last leg of the process, we can merge all of our parts together in VirtualDub to make one big final video stream. To do this, go to File-->Append Video. This will allow you to consecutively tack on all the segments of video to create one single video file out of all of your parts. Continue appending segments until you have them all loaded. Next, go to the Video menu and make sure Full processing mode is selected. VirtualDub has 4 Different options for processing video: 1. Direct stream copy -- This is used for doing simple edits (Like deleting commercials) and for only editing the audio portion of a AVI. It just makes an exact copy of the video stream and does not re-compress it. This is the fastest. 2. Fast Re compress -- VirtualDub will re-compress the video stream to the format you have selected in compression, but does it in Fast mode. This yields less quality, but processes much faster than Normal Re compress mode. 3. Normal Re compress -- Same as Fast Re compress, except it will take its time compressing the video to yield the best results. 4. Full processing mode -- Any time you are using filters, changing the color depth/frame rate you must use this option. This makes VirtualDub process the video and then re-compress the effected stream. Set up your filters From the Video menu, select Filters. From here, the filter dialog box will appear where you can add filters, configure them, and select cropping options. Click the ADD button to add our first filter:

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Choose temporal smoother from your menu and double click it to configure the filter. The Temporal smoother is what will clean up the bulk of your noise, jitter, and VHS de saturation bands. What this filter does is quite intelligent -- It reads frames ahead of the current frame, and compares a group of frames to each other. Then, it looks for small changes in the image and replaces these small changes with a combination of all the frames. What this does is remove static by discovering that the static is, and bits that are not a part of the original video. It sounds like magic, but it really works well. One word of warning about this filter is that if it is set too high, it will start to blend video frames together resulting in ghosting and other undesirable effects. I usually set this filter somewhat in the middle. Any higher than this and it will start to look bad.

Next choose Static Noise Reduction (By Steve Don) from the filter menu and configure it.

Static Noise Reduction is a somewhat optional step. If your video signal was clean enough you shouldnt need to use this. From my experience, however, sometimes its necessary to clean your video a little bit more than the Temporal Smoother does. If you were capping from an S-video source or a digital satellite source you shouldnt need to do this. Another thing to keep in mind is that this filter will slow down your render time, so if your impatient or have a slower computer you can skip this step to save yourself some time. However, if you want the best looking encode you can do, you should run this filter to make your encode look the best it can. I usually set this filter at about 12. The lower the number, the less cleaning will take place, and the higher setting, the more blurred your video will before. Remember the Do no harm motto here.

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From here on out, you have to make a decision. If you want to only make a Divx version of your cap, you can skip ahead to re sizing and compressing the final video -- but if you wish to make another version of your cap (Such as a SVCD) its better to just process the video and compress it/resize it to a Divx file later in a separate step. Now assuming you want to just process the video to make multiple versions of your cap, you should configure your video compression (From the video menu) to use Divx Low Motion at a very high bitrate. We do this so our final one part AVI is small enough that it doesnt go over the maximum file size in windows (4 Gigs) and set the bitrate high so no compression artifacting occurs for our cleaned video. I usually set my bitrate for this step at about 3000 or so. After selecting our compression method, go to File-->Save as AVI to render out our file. Choose a filename, click save, and watch the render go (Slowly). The VirtualDub Status window will tell you the time elapsed, total estimated time to completion of the render, as well as the projected size and video rendering rate. The video rendering rate is how fast VirtualDub is processing the video. On my modest 700 MHz computer with all of these filters set up, my rendering rate is about 3.7 FPS here. Dont confuse this with your file frame rate (23.976) -- this is just how fast VirtualDub is processing the video. Once done, we can move on to the last step.

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RE SIZING AND COMPRESSING THE FINAL PRODUCT

Close and re-open Virtual Dub to clear out the filter list (If you didnt skip ahead to this point) and open up your cleaned 1-file AVI you have just created and open the filter dialog box again. From here, we select resize from the filter menu and configure it. Our source video file is 480x480 and may have black borders or VHS noise at the bottom. Here is where we fix all of that: Set your new width to 480 and your new height to 360. Then, select Precise bilinear from the filter mode. You will see there are a lot of options here, but Precise bilinear will give the best results for the type of re sizing we will be doing here. Basically, Nearest Neighbor is the fastest resize, but it looks very jaggy and isnt anti-aliased correctly. Bicubic is the best option for making the video size larger, and Bilinear is the best option for shrinking an image size. Since we are scaling down from 480 to 360, Bilinear is the option we want, and we want to use Precise to make the results as good as they can be. Back in the filter dialog, select your resize filter in the filter list and click the Crop button to set up cropping options. You want to remove any unnecessary image information such as black bars and VHS end frame noise. Here is a typical setting I use:

You will see that the cropping configuration takes place before the re sizing does -- In other words, it crops the video, then will resize it, so no matter what your cropping options were, your final video will be 480x360 -- The size weve been wanting all along.

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NOTE: If you skipped ahead from the last section and just wanted to make a single divx file from your cap, you will need to move your resize filter to the top of the filter processing list to make sure it processes first before the other filters (Temporal Smoother/ Static Noise Reduction). This will make the temporal smoother do less work (Since their is less image to clean) and will make your render go a little faster. Now take a look at your output video. It should look something like this:

Then we select our audio compression (MPEG Layer-3) from the compression menu. I usually compress my audio to 96 kBit/s @ 44k Stereo. You can compress it more (64) if you want to save space, or if your an audiophile you can go with a higher bitrate (192/160). Personally, I cant tell much of a difference from 96 to 192 when it comes to television audio. It pretty much sounds how it sounds -- but I will leave this up to you.

Clean, hardly any static, correct aspect ratio and size, and no interlacing artifacts. Next, select Divx as your compression codec and set it at about 900 kps (As decided earlier in the guide). The very last thing we need to do is compress our audio track. In so far, our audio track has been raw uncompressed PCM data. To get the file much smaller, we need to change this to the ever so popular MP3 format. We do this by first selecting Full Processing Mode from the Audio menu:

NOTE: Sometimes your MPEG Layer-3 codec wont show up correctly in the compression menu. This is either because you dont have a MP3 compressor installed on your system, or some other compressor screwed up the Radium codec. If this is the case you can use Divx :-) Audio, although the results wont be as good. Now save out your final video and let it render. Thats it! You should now have a wonderful looking encode. That wasnt so bad, was it?

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MAKING AN SVCD OUT OF YOUR CAP

If you wish to make an SVCD out of your cap (As I do) here is a brief description on the easiest way to do this. Start TMPGenc, and load your video file (The 480x480 version that you created before you resized and compressed the divx version) - Do this by clicking the browse button next to the Video Source pane at the bottom of TMPGenc. Dont worry about the audio source portion, TMPGenc will fill that in for you:

The click load on the bottom right hand corner to load up the SVCD template. Open up the SuperVideoCD (NTSCFilm).mcf in TMPGencs template directory. This will set everything correctly for an SVCD encode of your capture. Now, all you need to do is Hit Start to render the SVCD. Its that easy. If you have a bunch of caps you want to convert to SVCDs, you can add this to a batch job by hitting Control-M and adding it to the Job Control List.

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD ENCODE AND A BAD ENCODE

Now just to make sure we are clear on why we go through all the work to do a simple video encode, Im going to demonstrate the differences between a bad encode, and a good one (Using my methods). Below is Exhibit A (The Bad Encode) and Exhibit B (The good encode). Both encodes are the same file size (About 80 Megs) and the same length (About 11 Minutes). Both are frames from a smurfs episode to simplify things a bit.

Exhibit A: The Bad Encode Exhibit B: The Good Encode

The Bad Encode: 1. Inadequate Video Size This encodes video size is 320x240. As you can see, a lot of fine details are lost because of this small size that makes the video blurry, pixelated when full screened, and makes most of the text unreadable. While it can make for a smaller file size if done correctly, it makes the video looks worse than standard VHS for the most part. 2. Too much noise and VHS banding There is a lot of static and junk noise in this frame that makes the overall video look very bad, especially when full screened. If the author had simply run a temporal smoother over the captured file, it could have been much clearer and clean looking. 3. Discoloration/Wrong Hue If you compare A to B, you will see that A is overly green amd color shifted. I assure you, the actual source video for this had a much more brown tone as seen in Exhibit B

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4. Overcompression/Artifacting The bad encodes source suffers (Though not as badly as I have seen in other encodes) from compression artifacts that make the video a little blocky and noisy. This looks a lot like an over compressed JPG you would see on a web page.

The Good Encode: 1. Good Video Size This encodes size allows for all the fine details to shine through. You can even read the tiny text on the bottom of the Title Card! This is the most desirable and makes all the glory of the original shine through. 2. Low noise, Clean Image All the shapes and colors here are nice and sold and the lines are well defined. 3. Correct Hue and Saturation The colors are vibrant and correctly adjusted, as true to the source 5. Good Balance of compression vs. Size. The kicker to this whole comparison is the fact the Both A and B are the exact same size! Thats right. Same size, same length, but encode B looks 10 Times better than encode A. Amazing.

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GENERAL FAQ
Q: Your guide is stupid and so are you. Thats too much work. A: Thats not a question. It doesnt justify an answer. Q: My video card doesnt have VFW drivers, only WDM drivers. What do I do!? A: Either get a different capture card (I would recommend a cheap Hauppage), Wait for VirtualDub to support WDM drivers (Avery, are you listening?) or use a different capture program, like the one that came with your capture card. There are gobs and gobs of different capture applications out these, but most of the good ones use VFW, so your selection will be pretty limited. VirtualDub is just what I happen to use and feel is the best for the job, although some people swear by AVI I/O (A pay application, BTW). Do what you need to do to capture the video. If you can only capture at 320x240, that is unfortunate, but you need to do what you need to do. Q: I cant seem to capture at 480x480 or bigger without dropping a whole bunch of frames. Is there anything I can do? A: Well, there is a lot you can do, but none of it is guaranteed to help you out. First, you can make sure DMA is selected for your capturing hardrive. Secondly, you can fiddle about with the IO buffer sizes in VirtualDub to try to help out. If all else fails, capture at a somewhat smaller size, upgrade your CPU, or upgrade your harddrive.

Q: I dont have a lot of harddrive space. Is it OK if I capture straight to Divx? A: Yes and No. If you capture straight to Divx, you will need a faster CPU to process the video on the fly. Secondly, your video source will look worse (Especially when compressing on the fly). Keep in mind that if you want to do the best cap you can, you really should capture to Huffyuv or raw YUV2. Some people capture to a codec known as MJPEG that seems to compress fast, and doesnt use up much drive space. The downside to this method is that the video will look worse than Huffyuv, and there are no free versions of MJPEG that I know of. So youll need to throw down some money if you want to go this route. Q: Umm, where the hell is VirtualDub storing my video captures??? A: If you havent configured the location for your captures in VirtualDub, the default setting is to store the capture files in the root of your capture drive, in other words C: (Or D:) under the name CAPTURE.AVI. Q: Shouldnt I capture my Audio at 48K/96K, etc? Isnt that better than 44K? A: Well, that is certainly your prerogative. But keep in mind that most peoples soundcards cant play audio at a higher sample rate than 44K (At least correctly). Also, were talking about an audio signal that was most likely broadcasted/recorded at like 32K max, so what you are capturing is quite wasteful. Its much like capping at 60 FPS -- its a total waste of space/ time. Q: I cant get multi-segment capture to work correctly. What am I doing wrong? A: Make SURE you have your spill drive settings correct. This means having a drive set up in the dialog, as well as Maximum Avi Size set correctly (Less than 4 Gigs).

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Q: Cant I join all my files together in AVIUtil or set up a batch job to make the process of inverse telecine a little less tedious? A: You can join all your segements together in AVIUtil, but if you are saving out your video as Huffyuv, keep in mind this file will be bigger than the 4 Gig barrier in windows. If you are compressing it to a high bitrate Divx file here, you can do this no problem and save yourself some trouble down the road. Concerning batch jobs in AVIUtil, I havent gotten this to work right. Perhaps I have a buggy version of AVIUtil or just plain dont know what Im doing, but I havent figured this out yet. Youre welcome to play with it though.. Just be prepared to waste some time. Q: After doing the inverse-telecine, my video looks jerky. Whats the deal? A: In some rare instances, the source was NOT shot originally at 23.976 FPS, and most likely shot at either 29.97 FPS (Home Movies/Video Camera) or 15 FPS (Some cartoons -- But very rare). If this is the case, just skip the AVIUtil part and go straight to VirtualDub. From there you can either try out the De interlace filter in VirtualDub (Sometimes looks OK, other times looks bad) or just drop the resolution to 320x240 to take out the interlaced lines at the cost of clarity. Q: Man. It takes a looooong time to process my video in VirtualDub.. Is all this necessary? A: If you dont have the patience to do it right, you really shouldnt be doing it all. But if you really want to make a cap, but dont have the CPU power and have to wait 2 days to process 22 minutes of video, just skip the Static Noise Reduction and as a last resort go straight to the resize/recompress.

Q: What about watermarks/logos/into screens? How do I do that? I want people to know I did the encode! A: You can easily make a watermark/logo in photoshop and overlay into your video using various VirtualDub filters out there, but let me make this clear: Logos/Watermarks suck. Nobody likes them. Nobody cares that WeedTV did the encode for the most part, and they are just annoying. I dont use them, and you shouldnt either. Just tack on your handle to the filename (Such as Show - Episode XXX - Title [YOUR HANDLE].avi). A lot of ungrateful folks remove your name from the filename once they have downloaded the file, so if your worried you can always make an intro screen. Just make it short, sweet, and above all else, please dont make it annoying. Mixing a Korn/Dr.Dre song with an episode of say, My Little Pony is pretty retarded if you ask me. Keep it classy kids. Dont abuse your photoshop filters or limited knowledge of 3D Studio max. As far as REMOVING logos/watermarks from video (Like the Cartoon Network logo) it is possible through the use of the VirtualDub filter Logo Away. Ive had varying degrees of success with this. A lot depends on if the logo is transparent or not. Unfortunately the cartoon network logo is solid, so the best you can do is but a black box over it. Since this does little good, you may as well leave it in. Its not a big deal. Q: Your guide was very helpful. Is there anything I can do to show my thanks? A: Sure. Find me on IRC and send me your caps. Or better yet, post them to Usenet.

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EPILOUGE
The Story of Real Media Once upon a time, when the web was new as the morning, there was a company with the unimaginative name Real Networks. They made a proprietary video codec that made video files very small for distribution on the internet. They gave out free copies of their player and a free version of their encoder. At the time, the only other option of bandwidthlight video was Apples Quicktime, witch wasnt that great. People rejoiced. They encoded southpark episodes in this format and put them on their web pages. People downloaded this stuff in droves. They played nice with everybody and tried to portray themselves as a real friend to the net community.. They even made a Linux version of their player -- a move at the time that was unheard of. Their was much rejoicing. Then the dark times came. The net grew up. People began to get fatter connections. They turned in their 28k modems for T1s are their new internet jobs. Microsoft came out with their own competing product known at the time as the ASF format (Later to be known as WMF when some smart fellows figured out how to hack their precious file format). Real soon realized it couldnt make money off of their server software alone (Duh). Real then met the Devil in the desert. Except, he didnt refer to himself by his true name, but instead choose the handle Comet Cursor. The devil said to Real Networks, Hey, you can make money off of your real player if you bundle your software with me.. Ill make money stealing peoples demographic information and spying on them, pay you a cut of the money, and no one will be the wiser! Oh yah, if you join me now, you will have a throne in my kingdom. (Or something.. havent read the bible in a while) (Getting melodramatic yet?) Low and behold, shaking hands with the devil is a bad thing. Consumers got pissed. Did real wise up? They continued to bundle all kinds of pointless crap with their product.. meanwhile..... Some smart hackers said Hey.. this new ASF format of Microsofts.. it uses an MPEG-4 interpretation that isnt too damn bad.. If we just took the codec and put it in an AVI, got rid of this weak ASF format, this could make net distribution of video kick ass! It will be the next MP3 for the love of Achilles!

Then, divx was born.. There was much rejoicing. Video actually looked pretty much like normal TV now, and furthermore the files were small.. Why, almost as small as Real Media, except you could play it with any player you liked, the overhead was less, and the coup-de-grais was that now with fatter internet connects, a 33 Meg file for a 22 minute show looked stupid. Also meanwhile.... Linux guys, wanting the new G3 fancy implementation of Real Media began to get impatient waiting for their Linux version.. now the other shoe was on the wrong foot so to speak.. Their Linux player didnt play the new format, and Real wasnt doing anything about it.. Now they, and all of humanity began to see the error of their ways by trusting one controlling companies proprietary format to dictate media on the web. Darker times approached. Real, realizing that people wouldnt download the new version of their players that had even more spy ware, crap, cookies, ads, because they would just keep their older versions, made a second deal with the devil. This time the devil convinced them that their software should Auto-Expire after 60 days, so people would be forced to download the new version and couldnt continue using the old copies. Meanwhile in a joint effort, they had lawyers removing all older copies of the real player software off the web to prevent any clever folk from opting-out of all the ads, spy ware, and shit. The rejoicing continued, but this time for Divx. Time passes now and we see the new version of Real Player. The Format still sucks. and the player sucks even worse. Anyone with less than a 2 Ghz computer cant run the software. Dial home devices are built into new builds that send information Real Networks as soon as a computer boots.. Not just smart start center is running in the system tray anymore.. Now there are 7 different applications devoted to real running in the windows task manager at boot up. Real starts loosing lots of money.. The Dot-Com bubble bursts. Layoffs.. Desperate times... Recession.

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Date: 2003 - Location: Unknown. A fan of digital video takes a CD out of his collection with southpark episodes in Real Media.. He puts the disk into his computer and tries to play it. His Real Player has passed expiration date and needs a new version.. The fan now goes to Reals site.. Its down. Real has been out of business for 3 months now. He then searches the web to find another application that can play Real Video files. He finds none. He then searches for a utility to convert Real Video to his new favorite format, SVCD.. He finds one! But alas, it requires the real player to work, because Real Video is a propriety format.. whos copyright, thanks to Disney and Sony Bono, doesnt expire for 150 years. The moral of this real life fairy tale? Real Video is for Sucks.

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