lossless codec weirdness on conversion

videosean

I recently did a fresh Windows 7 64 install to a new SSD. My previous windows 7 install didn't seem to have this issue but I can't confirm that 100% really - all I know is I've been using camstudio with the lossless codec for years and have never had to set keyframes to every frame before. It could be that I've changed my workflow a bit (I perhaps used to use Sony Vegas 7 or 8 to convert the camstudio lossless videos) because I've really grown to like megui for converting videos to x264 and don't want to mess around with any other program unless I really need to - I'm not going to install the old Sony software unless I really need to edit something.

So I've been bangin my head against this for more than a week. I've been able to figure out that basically any frame that isn't a keyframe seems to get thrown out or somehow messed up on conversion. There's nothing I've changed that should be causing this... just a fresh windows install on a new hard drive.

so there's a word limit here...

videosean

continued...

This issue is true for both the 1.4 and 1.5 lossless codecs. It also doesn't matter which version of camstudio I use. When I first installed camstudio and started to make recordings Megui would fail to be able to detect the video properly via directshow. The lossless codec videos also wouldn't play (only got the audio, no video) in Zoom Player and Window Media Player (version 11 I think - almost never use it) so I uninstalled the camstudios (the old 2.0 and the 2.6 beta), unistalled FFDShow, and then reinstalled the camstudios by running the installers "as administrator" via the right-click on the exe files. It seems installing as administrator will properly register the lossless codec on win7 because after doing that the videos played fine in Zoom Player and WMP and also Megui would detect properly via directshow. It doesn't seem to matter if I let FFDShow handle the playback/decoding of the camstudio codec or not - I don't think Megui uses FFDShow but Zoom Player does.

Here's some sample vids. The converted videos end up looking terrible unless I tell camstudio to make every frame a keyframe when using the lossless codec. If anyone knows a way I can get the camstudio lossless codec to work for conversion to other codecs withOUT making every frame a keyframe I'd like to know... because having every frame be a keyframe makes for much bigger video files.

videosean

continued...

- keyframe every 6 frames.
- keyframe every 2 frames.
- keyframe every 1 frame.
- showing megui workflow

http://blog.spench.net/2010/02/04/camstudio-adobe-premiere-virtualdub-lossless-cscd-and-lzocodec/ - I came across this page while trying to figure this out and it leads me to think that this is a problem that has always been and maybe I used to use Sony Vegas to convert the CS lossless video to uncompressed video or something before using Megui to convert to x264.

Maybe I just need to use Megui to convert to uncompressed video and then do x264 conversion - haven't tried to figure that out yet though.

TerryBritton

videosean,

Have you tried any other converters? I've had luck recently with the free MediaCoder FLV edition (though I actually use it to make MP4s).
http://www.mediacoderhq.com/flv-converter/

Much easier to use (by design) than the full version of MediaCoder and no requirement to pay $15 in order to do bulk conversions.

Of course, Any Video Converter has been popular around here:
http://www.any-video-converter.com/download-freeware/

I'd recommend Freemake Video Converter EXCEPT that it shortened my videos and knocked my sync out of whack, but I'm sure they are working on that. It is nice in that it uses all my cores OR the Nvidia CUDA processing (but don't use that option anywhere for low-bitrate conversions...)

Also, the free Microsoft Expression Encoder is good for some things, especially if you use Windows Movie Maker, of course.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24601

I'm inclined to blame your converter, as you probably would deem obvious by now! :-)

Terry

videosean

I'm inclined to agree with you! Thanks for your input