|
A. Changes Log
0. Requirements
1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Using Instructions
3.1. Configuring
Output
4. FAQ
5. Acknowledgements
6. Contact Info
Readme
A.Changes Log
- Version 0.6
- SMP support
- iDCT API
- IEEE1180 testing
- Control Panel
- Audio Player
- Jobs
- Quality improvements
- MISM API
- OpenDML AVI Output
- Profiles
- Audio Dynamic Range Compression
- Audio extraction
- MMX, 3DNow, and SSE2 optimizations.
- Much more
0.Requirements
- Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT4.0/2000 or Windows XP
- CPU with MMX technology. Dual CPU systems supported.
- For MPEG output you may need additional plugins.
Although
FlasKMPEG bundles with bbMPEG encoder, other commercial
encoders are also supported.
- LSX-MPEG plugin 1.0+
- Panasonic Premiere plugin 2.01 or 2.1+
- AVI files are supported right off the box
1.Introduction
1.1 What FlasKMPEG does?
FlasKMPEG takes MPEG streams (video streams are currently
not supported) and encodes them into another format, trying to achieve the maximum
possible quality and trying to minimize the conversion impact providing a straightfordward
aproach to the MPEG1/2 to MPEG/AVI conversion.
FlasKMPEG uses 'plugins' to support output formats
making that way the program more flexible, and having a wide variety of output
options.
1.2 How do you achieve High Quality
Conversion? How does it work?
FlasKMPEG tries to take control in all the parts involved
in a transcoding operation. Doing so, the whole process can carefully been controled
and tweaked so optimal quality can be achieved.
FlasKMPEG MPEG2/MPEG1 decoder uses the MSSG (Mpeg Software
Simulation Group) decoder, that is what is usually called the 'reference' decoder.
2.Installation
instructions
General procedure
The program is packaged into a self-extracting
executable that will deploy the contents of the program into the desired folder.
Just execute the package and choose a destination directory.
To install a plugin just copy it into the
program's folder and rename it to whatever_you_want.cm.flask. FlasKMPEGpeasopeich.dll
can still be used for compatibility reasons. That means that you can name a
plugin everything you want, but in order to be detected, it must have the termination
*.cm.flask (standing for 'compiler module for flask').
New from 0.6 you can use customized iDCTs.
An iDCT is a part of the MPEG decoding process that takes significant amount
of time in the decoding process. FlasKMPEG supports different iDCT implementations
through iDCT modules, files with the name *.idct.flask . Just throw your customized
iDCTs into FlasKMPEG directory and they will be recognized automatically.
FlasKMPEG 0.6+ also support standarized
MPEG inputs. A MISM (Mpeg Input Stream Module) can be seen as an input plugin
but just for MPEG streams. Although in 0.6 the support in MISM is very limited,
is expected to increase in future releases.
When FlasKMPEG
starts up it will detect all the available and CORRECTLY INSTALLED plugins.
All the detected plugins will be listed in the select output format menu. The
most likely reason for a plugin not being detected on startup is an incorrect
installation. Please, follow the instructions below for specific plugin installation.
Specific installations
- Panasonic MPEG1 Encoder Plug-In for Adobe Premiere5.x
This plugin will allow you to export
MPEG1 files from FlasKMPEG. You don't need to have Premiere to install the plugin
and use it.
1.- Create a folder for the program
and place the program inside that folder.
2.- Install the Panasonic plugin and write down the place
where the plugin will lay in. The installation program will ask for it, and
if you have Premiere installed it will point to the Premiere plugin directory,
if not you have to tell the installer the folder you want to place the plugin.
3.- Once the installer is over, you have to copy the plugin
into the FlasKMPEG.exe folder. The original name of the plugin should be something
like "cm-mpeg-pwi2.0e.prm" although this may vary between versions.
4.-If you've successfully found and copied the plugin into
FlasK MPEG folder you have to rename it to:
FlasKMPEGpeasopeich.dll or panplug.cm.flask
5.-That's it, the program should run now without a problem
- LSX-MPEG for Adobe Premiere
This plugin will allow you to export MPEG1
and MPEG2 files from FlasKMPEG. You will need to have Adobe Premiere to install
the plugin.
1.- Create a folder for the program
and place the program inside that folder.
2.- Install the LSX-MPEG plugin and write down the place
where the Adobe Premiere's plugin folder is located.
3.- Once the installer is over, you have to copy the plugin
into the FlasKMPEG.exe folder. The original name of the plugin should be something
like "cm-lsx.prm" although this may vary between versions.
4.-If you've successfully found and copied the plugin into
FlasK MPEG folder you have to rename it to:
lsxmpeg.cm.flask
5.-That's it, the program should detect now the plugin
without a problem
This plugin will allow you to export MPEG2
files from FlasKMPEG. You will need to have Adobe Premiere to install the plugin.
1.- Create a folder for the program
and place the program inside that folder.
2.- Install the Cinema CraftLSX-MPEG plugin and write down
the place where the Adobe Premiere's plugin folder is located.
3.- Once the installer is over, you have to copy the plugin
into the FlasKMPEG.exe folder. The original name of the plugin should be something
like "cm-mpeg-cce.prm" although this may vary between versions.
4.-If you've successfully found and copied the plugin into
FlasK MPEG folder you have to rename it to something like:
cinemacraft.cm.flask
5.-That's it, the program should detect now the plugin
without a problem
*WARNING*
The original package of FlasK MPEG
encoder includes neither the Panasonic plugin nor LSX one because they are commercial
products. If you received a package with the plugin included you're not dealing
with the original distribution.
AVI output and MPEG output through
bbMPEG (MPEG1, MPEG2, VCD & SVCD) are supported right off the box.
3.-
Using Instructions
Using FlasKMPEG
Using FlasK MPEG is easy!. To convert a
file the first you have to do is open the file with File->Open Media. FlasKMPEG
will show the dialog to open files. The possibilies to open files will depend
on the current configuration, but all supported media files are listed in the
open dialog box.
Is important to note that MPEG streams
can have any name and extension, and although FlasKMPEG lists the usual ones,
that won't preclude the correct opening of a file.
Depending on the media being opened,
different options can appear when opening the file. Usually those options imply
selecting what tracks are desired to perform a conversion, or some other mediadependant
settings.
The FlasKMPEG Control Panel
The control panel is a powerful and helpful
tool that can ease the process to perform your converson. It gives quick access
to the most used features of FlasKMPEG and also can be used to preview and prepare
the output material.
The control panel pops up just when a file
has been opened. Lets see what the main buttons do:
- ||<< Seeks the
video to the first frame available in the stream. If the video is corrupted
at the beginning, this frame doesn't need to coincide with the beginning of
the file.
- <| Play backwards. Plays the stream
frame by frame backwards. Because of the nature of MPEG streams, this option
is usually very slow.
- |> Play. The button shows one
frame after another, that is playbacks the file. This feature doesnt run in
realtime, it totally depends on the power of your CPU.
- [] Stop. Stops whatever the control
panel is doing.
- < Frame backwards. This button
steps one frame backward from the current position.
- > Frame forward. This button steps
one frame forward from the current position.
- <<
Fast backwards.
- >> Fast forward.
- >>|| Jumps to
the last frame available in the stream
Working with Jobs
A job represents a conversion task. You can
program as many jobs as you want inside the control panel. When you click
on 'FlasK It!' all the jobs will be converted with the current configured
options.
-
Adding Jobs. To add a job you
must select the range of the job in the slider. To select the start position
move position the video in the desired position and click on the |_ button.
Repeat the process to select the end position using the _| button. After
you're done click on 'Add' and the job will be added to the job list.
-
Deleting Jobs. Select a job from
the list and click on 'Delete'. If you want to delete all jobs, click on
delete all.
-
Reviewing Jobs. You can
use the position marker buttons |_<< and >>_| to jump to the
beginning and end of the job. Also, clicking on the job list will show the
selected job.
The FlasKMPEG Audio
Player
The audio player can be used to preview
the audio conversion and select the audio track to use. Lets see its settings:
-
Dynamic Audio Compression.
If turned on it tries to make the sound constant
in volume. If the volume is low, the audio is amplified and if it is strong
it is attenuated. The effect is that the range of volumes that the audio
can have is compressed, and thus the name. Use this option with care, if
the setting is to high you can easily overload the audio.
- Normalization. This option doesnt alter
the dynamic range of the audio. It simply amplifies the sound by the value
specified. If you click on 'search' the stream will be parsed looking for
the highest peak in the audio stream and that value will be set. Permorming
a conversion with this value will assure you that you don't overload the audio
and at the same time you keep all the dynamic range and set the volume to
its maximum possible.
- Multichannel volumes. Effective when you
have multichannel audio, it allows the user to adjust the volume of individual
channels
- Dolby Surround Downmix. If selected, the
multichannel downmix is Dolby Surround compatible.
- Available tracks. Choose here the track
you want to use to perform the conversion. The audio player will play the
track you select.
Configuration Options
If you succesfully
opened a stream you should be able to open the configurations dialog (Options->Global
project options) or Configure in the control panel.
The window is divided in a series of tabs:
video, audio, post processing, files and general that are explained below.
Video tab
- Frame Size:
this will be the final resolution of the compiled video. The numbers must
be a multiple of 16 because video codecs usually require that. If you want
to compile VideoCD compliant MPEGs the resolucion has to be 352x240 for
29.97, 23.976, 24 framerates (NTSC) and 352x288 for 25fps (PAL).
- Time Base:
This will be the final frame rate of the compiled video. Important! From
version 0.45 and up, this framerate is detected from the input stream if
you're using the default profile. If you feel that FlasKMPEG didn't guess
it correctly you can change the frame rate. Selecting a fps other than the
fps from the original file, will imply doing framerates conversions.
- Video Structure:
With Video Structure you can tweak the way FlasKMPEG decodes and handles
interlaced and progressive content. Here we have the options available:
Reconstruct progressive images: This option is only available
with 23.976 and 24 fps setting. It's main use is for 24fps progressive encoded
MPEG2 material. Check this option if your source is 24fps progressive. This
setting is not an IVTC (inverse telecine); If the video contains the original
progressive frames checking this option will effectively ouput those frames. If
this option is not checked, FlasKMPEG will follow the MPEG sintax for decoding
the video structure.
Deinterlace video: If your source is interlaced you can use
the video deinterlacer. The deinterlacer analizes the video and tries to
convert it into progressive video trying to remove the interlacing artifacts.
Use it with care because it's terribly slow and may be it won't help in
your case. The video deinterlacer analizes the motion of the
video. If a zone is moving, it blends or interpolates that zone avoiding
the artifacts. In quiet zones, the full resolution is kept. You can tweak
the behaviour of the deinterlacer by making him blend the moving areas (blend
instead interpolate) or interpolate them. With the 'threshold' setting you
control how much sensitive to motion is the algorithm. A lower setting means
more sensibility (0-255).
To help you decide what settings are the best ones for you, here you have
a table:
| Source type |
Recommended action |
|
NTSC 24 progressive
|
Deinterlace video off & Reconstruct
progressive frames
|
|
NTSC 29.97 or 30
|
Try Deinterlace video if interlacing artifacts
are annoying
|
|
PAL 25
|
Try Deinterlace video just for video material
(soccer, TV programs...)
|
- iDCT options:
The video information inside MPEG files is stored in the frequency domain
rather than in the spatial domain (the images we see). That way, the information
gets compacted and that compactation can be used to compress (reduce) the
amount of information you have to send over the transmission channel. MPEG
uses the DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) to translate spatial information
into frequency information.
To bring back the spatial information from the MPEG stream you have to apply
the iDCT, that is, the Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform, that undoes the
DCT that was used during encoding.
Although MPEG is almost deterministic (given a MPEG stream the output should
be identical in all decoders), the standard has a degree of freedom when
choosing the iDCT to use. That way, the decoder can be more easily implemented
depending on the hardware below it. What the standard requires from the
decoder is that the iDCT meets IEEE-1180 specs, or in plain words, that
the error from the iDCT doesn't go beyond what IEEE-1180 imposes.
Selecting 'Auto Select', FlasKMPEG will perform a benchmark of available
iDCTs in your system and it will pick up the one that being IEEE1180 compliant
is also the fastest. If you want to know more details about the iDCTs installed
in your system, click on 'Perform Test'. A window will pop up and will perform
the IEEE1180 test over the currently selected iDCT. Check the first line
of the analysis result to know if the iDCT passes the test:
for example for the default MMX iDCT you should see:
FlasKMPEG
Analysis result:
IEEE-1180 32 bits integer precision using MMX Meets IEEE1180
spec
Test time: 4.346 seconds |
Audio Tab
- Direct Stream Copy:
Within this mode, the track you selected when you opened the file will be
copied to the specified file 'Output files'. Currently supported streams
are MPEG1 audio and DolbyDigital AC3. If you multiplex the video and the
audio, the result should sync.
- Decode Audio:
This is the default mode. Only AC3 audio is supported at this time. The
audio is decoded and is multiplexed with the video without additional steps.
Here you can select the out sample rate frequency for the audio. Clicking
'Same as input' will leave the sample rate untouched. If you wish to make
VideoCD compliant streams you have to use 44100Hz as sampling frequency,
and for DVD compliant streams you must use 48000khz. The sampling rate converter
is fairly new so it could contain some bugfixes, let me know if you found
some.
- Don't process audio: Audio is not processed. The program
output just a video stream.
Post Processing Tab
Using post processing you can achieve
optimal results when processing your files.
- Resizing quality options:
This selects the filter to use when resizing. Basically they offer different
types of quality and speed settings.
Nearest neighbour is the fastest and could be used for quick
jobs that doesn't need any quality.
Normal bilinear and bicubic filtering are suitable for those
jobs where good quality in resizing is needed. Without achieving the quality
of the HQ bicubic, they offer a good balance between speed and quality.
The HQ bicubic is the highest quality one, and the slowest
too. I strongly suggest its use when using the 'keep aspect ratio' option.
Keeping aspect ratio usually has weird input and output images sizes so
if you use normal bilinear or bicubic filters, you could get a lot of aliasing
here.
However, the best you can do is try all the filters and
see what's the one that best fits your needs.
- Letterbox, cropping and aspect options
- Aspect ratio. All MPEG files carry embedded in
the stream the aspect ratio that that video should be displayed with.
That implies that the actual video resolution doesn't have to match
the intended display resolution. Turning on 'keep aspect ratio' will
make FlasKMPEG to adjust the aspect ratio so that the image is correctly
displayed on 4:3 displays
- Cropping and letterboxing. You can select here
how to crop and letterbox the video. Read the 'Output Pad' section to
learn more about this.
Files
Tab
- Output files: You can select the audio and video output
files here.
General
Tab
- Compiling time:
Check 'compile whole file' to compile the input stream up to the end of
the stream.
If you want jobs with specific number of frames, specify manually the number
of seconds of the compile or equivalently specify the number of frames.
The seconds box accepts not integer numbers, and after you have entered
a value the program will adjust the number of seconds to match a number
of frames for the selected frame rate.
- Search size: Put in this box the amount of KB
you want FlasKMPEG to search for audio and video streams. If the audio track
you want is missing, try increasing the search size.
The Output Pad
The output pad is an useful
tool that allow you to easily select all the cropping, frame size and letterboxing
settings looking previewing the settings all the time.
To understand how these settings
are related take a look at the logical path the video flows inside FlasKMPEG.
|
VIDEO OUTPUT ---> DEINTERLACING --->
RESIZER ---> CROPPING ---> LETTERBOXING
|
To enable cropping check crop, and to enable letterboxing
check letterbox.
When you crop an image you discard some parts of it. The
image you crop in FlasK MPEG is the one that is output by the resizer. You
can scale the video and crop then the result. The cropped image is always
smaller than the resized.
To change the output of the resizer adjust the 'Output Size'
controls. If 'crop' is not checked, you will se the window scale at the same
time you adjust the contronls. If crop is enabled, you still can adjust the
output size, but this time the size of the window will be determined by the
'width' and 'height' controls of the crop pad.
To understand cropping, take a look at the following scheme:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Resized image or original image
width x height
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Top Offset
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cropped image
crop width x crop height
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Left Offset
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ajusting 'Top offset' and 'Left offset' you can
move the crop window through the resized or original image. 'Crop width' and
'Crop height' you can select the window to crop (and the actual final frame
size) and 'width' and 'height' is the size of the original or resized image.
Pressing 'Reset Settings' will reset the settings
disabling crop, disabling letterbox and restoring the original image size.
Letterbox is simple, adjust the amount of black
bars you want to add at left, right, top and bottom of the image.
In this section we
will talk about how to configure the output plugins included in the released
pack.
- AVI Output
FlasKMPEG includes an AVI output plugin that should be used to
output AVI files from MPEG files. The basic procedure when using the AVI plugin
is to select the suitable codecs from the 'output format' configuration dialog.
You must understand that and AVI is a recipient in which media is carried
in a given format. The format of the AVI is usually referred to as a 'codec'
(compressor - decompressor) and you need the compressor codec to be installed
in your system to be able to render AVI files with it. Likewise, you also
need the decompressor codec in the playing system to render those AVI files.
Currently, the AVI output of FlasKMPEG has still bugs but it's
working OK with many codecs.
- MPEG output through bbMPEG
FlasKMPEG MPEG output is obtained thanks to the bbMPEG
plugin (to obtain the latest version go to Brent Beyeler bbMPEG home page:
http://members.home.net/beyeler/bbmpeg.html
and copy the bbmpeg.dll file into FlasKMPEG directory and rename it to mpeg.cm.flask
).
This nifty plugin has the ability to output MPEG1, MPEG2, VCD
& SVCD giving the option of the user to tweak a lot of parameters of the
mpeg stream. Best of all, IT's FREE. You may notice that it's somewhat slow
though.
bbMPEG has no configuration previous compiling so all the
configuration is done when you start compiling a file. In that moment you
are able to choose between all the MPEG formats as well as specifying bitrates,
framerates and so on for the MPEG output stream.
For the time being YOU MUST SPECIFY the duration
of the compile in the output dialog box when using bbMPEG.
4. FAQ
4.1 Hey Boy.
This program is painfully slooow. Is it normal?
It is :-( This program is free, that
is, you don't pay for its use. Although the MSSG decoder offers excellent quality
it is terribly slow. Notice that the program decodes a MPEG2 stream, resizes
the video with bilinear and bicubic flters... From 0.49 MMX has been included
in the program and it's expected that performance will increase in future releases.
4.2 Is FlaskMPEG
a DVD ripper?
FlasKMPEG
IS NOT a DVD ripper. FlasKMPEG was thought mainly for file based MPEG1
and MPEG2 conversions.
4.3 XYZ plugin won't start up!!
First check
that the plugin XYZ is installed correctly in FlasKMPEG directory. If it is,
check that you meet the requirements of it.
4.4 FlasKMPEG won't open any
files!!!
The
most likely cause for this is that you have a faulty installation. FlasKMPEG.exe
is not the only component of FlasKMPEG. At least one iDCT module must be present
and so a MISM has to be.
4.5 Could you add a suspend and resume
option?
No,
I can't add a suspend and resume option because Adobe Premiere's plugins doesn't
support that option.
If your
project is gonna take a big amount of time to be finished I would suggest you
to encode the thing in parts. You can program FlasKMPEG to compile a specified
number of seconds or frames, or use the control panel to generate conversion
jobs.
4.9 Installing your program screw
up my Windows9x/Me multimedia playback system. You must tell me how to uninstall
it. Your program is shit.
Curiously
enough, FlasKMPEG setup is harmless. It simply copies the files to the destination
directory. Delete FlasKMPEG files, and FlasKMPEG will be gone. There is no way
that FlasKMPEG can screw up Windows playback in any way because FlasKMPEG is
a standalone application and don't even use DirectShow architechture. Do you
want your money back? Sorry, you did not pay anything for it!!
5. Acknowledgments
To Mr. Avery Lee , creator or VirtualDub for that incredible
app, and for his help with the resizing stuff.
To Nemesis for all the Icon designs
To MPEG2AVI author for the MMX iDCT
To DVD2MPG creator for his help with the premiere plugin
stuff.
To Aaron Holtzman for his free source AC3 decoder
To the MSSG (MPEG Software Simulation Group) for that
magnifient decoder
To all the translators that made internationalization
possible
To Benjy for his help with the Web Site
To Brent Beyeler for bbMPEG
To AGRABBER for the AVI output plugin
To Glenn & Remco for his help with the Subpicture
Stuff
To Benjy for gfx design and all his support
To all those people that in one way or another contributed
to the creation of this program.
6. Contact Info
For suggestions and bugs reach me at:
contact@flaskmpeg.net
home page: http://flaskmpeg.net
|
