VirtualDub
Encyclopedia
VirtualDub is a video capture
and video processing
utility for Microsoft Windows
written by Avery Lee.
It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression. VirtualDub was originally created for the purpose of compressing anime
videos of Sailor Moon
.
Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License
, VirtualDub is free software
.
files, requiring that appropriate video and audio codec
s are installed.
& Video for Windows
capture.
Capture features include capture to any AVI variant, audio VU meters, overlay and preview modes, histogram, selectable crop area, video noise reduction, auto stop settings (based on capture time, file size, free space, and/or dropped frames), and designate alternate drive(s) for capture overflow. VirtualDub can also help overcome a common problem with digital cameras that also record video. Many models, especially Canon, record in an M-JPEG format that is virtually incompatible with some NLE
programs, such as Vegas 6.0 and 7.0; simply saving such an AVI file as an "old-style AVI" in File allows the video to appear in Vegas.
VirtualDub supports DV capture from Type 2 (VfW) FireWire controllers only (capture will not work with Type 1). There is no DV batch capture, still image capture, or DV device control capability.
VirtualDub can also be used to create a video file from a series of bitmaps or targa
s. This requires that individual frames are given file names numbered in sequential order without any gaps (e.g. 001.bmp, 002.bmp, 003.bmp...). From those, the frame rate can be adjusted, and other modifications such as the addition of a sound track can be made.
VirtualDub comes with a number of filter
s. Examples include reducing the video size by half, converting the video to grayscale
, arbitrary rotation and about a dozen more. Plugin filters further extend VirtualDub's capabilities. A filter SDK is available for developers to create their own video and audio filters.
In addition to applying filters, entire image sequences can be saved to hard disk
as BMP
or TGA
files, which may be later modified. In addition, the sound track can be extracted from a video, and modifications made to it; filters can be applied before the track is spliced back in. Frame sequences and sound tracks must be edited in external software programs.
's ASF
file format, but this was removed in version 1.3d following an informal phone call from a Microsoft employee claiming that it infringed one of Microsoft's patent
s. Microsoft never identified any specific patent numbers that it believed to have been infringed, but speculation by others is that might be relevant.
In August 2006, VirtualDub's German users who hosted copies of VirtualDub, or even linked to them on their web pages, began receiving cease and desist letters
from a private individual that claimed to have German word mark
on "VirtualDub". However this issue has been solved: the word mark in Germany has been deleted and an injunction has been granted against the former owner of said word mark.
, released under the GNU General Public License
and hosted on SourceForge.net
.
VirtualDub has spawned a number of forks
, one being the now abandoned VirtualDubMod
, which was claimed to include extra features not in Avery Lee's version – such as support for MPEG-2
and Ogg Media. VirtualDubMod is a unification of three projects/forks: VirtualDub-MPEG2, VirtualDubOGM, VirtualDubAVS and more. Another example of a fork is Nandub, which enabled use of Smart Bitrate Control
.
and Mac OS X
operating systems using Wine
, including the popular Deshaker plugin. However, native support for these systems is not available.
Video capture
Video capture is the process of converting an analog video signal—such as that produced by a video camera or DVD player—to digital video. The resulting digital data are computer files referred to as a digital video stream, or more often, simply video stream...
and video processing
Video processing
In electrical engineering and computer science, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, which often employs video filters and where the input and output signals are video files or video streams. Video processing techniques are used in television sets, VCRs, DVDs, video codecs,...
utility for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
written by Avery Lee.
It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression. VirtualDub was originally created for the purpose of compressing anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
videos of Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon, known as , is a media franchise created by manga artist Naoko Takeuchi. Fred Patten credits Takeuchi with popularizing the concept of a team of magical girls, and Paul Gravett credits the series with "revitalizing" the magical-girl genre itself...
.
Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, VirtualDub is free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
.
Features
VirtualDub operates on AVIAudio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
files, requiring that appropriate video and audio codec
Codec
A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...
s are installed.
Video capture and creation
VirtualDub has digital and analog capture capabilities. It supports both DirectShowDirectShow
DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...
& Video for Windows
Video for Windows
Video for Windows was a multimedia framework developed by Microsoft that allowed Microsoft Windows to play digital video.-Overview:...
capture.
Capture features include capture to any AVI variant, audio VU meters, overlay and preview modes, histogram, selectable crop area, video noise reduction, auto stop settings (based on capture time, file size, free space, and/or dropped frames), and designate alternate drive(s) for capture overflow. VirtualDub can also help overcome a common problem with digital cameras that also record video. Many models, especially Canon, record in an M-JPEG format that is virtually incompatible with some NLE
NLE
NLE is an acronym. It may stand for:* Non-linear editing system* National Latin Examination* North Luzon Expressway* N.L.E. Tractors, a codename for Cultivator No. 6...
programs, such as Vegas 6.0 and 7.0; simply saving such an AVI file as an "old-style AVI" in File allows the video to appear in Vegas.
VirtualDub supports DV capture from Type 2 (VfW) FireWire controllers only (capture will not work with Type 1). There is no DV batch capture, still image capture, or DV device control capability.
VirtualDub can also be used to create a video file from a series of bitmaps or targa
Truevision TGA
Truevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
s. This requires that individual frames are given file names numbered in sequential order without any gaps (e.g. 001.bmp, 002.bmp, 003.bmp...). From those, the frame rate can be adjusted, and other modifications such as the addition of a sound track can be made.
Editing
VirtualDub can be used to delete segments of a video file, append new segments, or reorder existing segments. However, segments of different files cannot be mixed, and no transition effects can be applied.VirtualDub comes with a number of filter
Filter (software)
A filter is a computer program to process a data stream. Some operating systems such as Unix are rich with filter programs. Even Windows has some simple filters built into its command shell, most of which have significant enhancements relative to the similar filter commands that were available in...
s. Examples include reducing the video size by half, converting the video to grayscale
Grayscale
In photography and computing, a grayscale or greyscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single sample, that is, it carries only intensity information...
, arbitrary rotation and about a dozen more. Plugin filters further extend VirtualDub's capabilities. A filter SDK is available for developers to create their own video and audio filters.
In addition to applying filters, entire image sequences can be saved to hard disk
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
as BMP
Windows bitmap
The BMP File Format, also known as Bitmap Image File or Device Independent Bitmap file format or simply a Bitmap, is a Raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images, independently of the display device , especially on Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems.The BMP...
or TGA
Truevision TGA
Truevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
files, which may be later modified. In addition, the sound track can be extracted from a video, and modifications made to it; filters can be applied before the track is spliced back in. Frame sequences and sound tracks must be edited in external software programs.
Past legal issues
Early versions of VirtualDub supported importing of MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's ASF
Advanced Systems Format
Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media...
file format, but this was removed in version 1.3d following an informal phone call from a Microsoft employee claiming that it infringed one of Microsoft's patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s. Microsoft never identified any specific patent numbers that it believed to have been infringed, but speculation by others is that might be relevant.
In August 2006, VirtualDub's German users who hosted copies of VirtualDub, or even linked to them on their web pages, began receiving cease and desist letters
Abmahnung
Abmahnung is the formal request by one person to another person to forthwith stop a certain behaviour.If this formal request is made by an attorney, then it is a cease-and-desist letter...
from a private individual that claimed to have German word mark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
on "VirtualDub". However this issue has been solved: the word mark in Germany has been deleted and an injunction has been granted against the former owner of said word mark.
Development
VirtualDub is free softwareFree software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
, released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
and hosted on SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
.
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
, one being the now abandoned VirtualDubMod
VirtualDubMod
VirtualDubMod is an open source video capture and linear processing tool for Microsoft Windows. It is based on Avery Lee's VirtualDub, and is licensed under the GPL. VirtualDubMod is hosted on SourceForge and is at version 1.5.10.2 ....
, which was claimed to include extra features not in Avery Lee's version – such as support for MPEG-2
MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
and Ogg Media. VirtualDubMod is a unification of three projects/forks: VirtualDub-MPEG2, VirtualDubOGM, VirtualDubAVS and more. Another example of a fork is Nandub, which enabled use of Smart Bitrate Control
Smart Bitrate Control
Smart Bitrate Control, commonly referred to as SBC, was a technique for achieving greatly improved video compression efficiency using the DivX 3.11 Alpha video codec or Microsoft's proprietary MPEG4v2 video codec and the Nandub video encoder. SBC relied on two main technologies to achieve this...
.
Running on Linux and Mac OS X systems
VirtualDub runs under LinuxLinux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
operating systems using Wine
Wine (software)
Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...
, including the popular Deshaker plugin. However, native support for these systems is not available.
See also
- AvidemuxAvidemuxAvidemux is a free and open-source video editing program designed for video editing and video processing. It is written in C++, and uses either the GTK+ or Qt.- Features :...
- AviSynthAviSynthAviSynth is a frameserver program for Microsoft Windows developed by Ben Rudiak-Gould, Edwin van Eggelen, Klaus Post, Richard Berg, Ian Brabham and others. It is free software under GNU GPL license.-Scripting video editor:...
- Comparison of screencasting softwareComparison of screencasting softwareA comparison of notable screencasting software programs, that are used to record activities on the computer screen, mouse movement, and often includes live audio for later playback. Screencasting is an asynchronous communication technology...
- Comparison of video editing softwareComparison of video editing softwareThis is a comparison of non-linear video editing software applications. See also a more complete list of video editing software.-General information:This table gives basic general information about the different editors:- System requirements :...
- MediaCoderMediaCoderMediaCoder is a transcoding program for Microsoft Windows. It has been developed by Stanley Huang since 2005.MediaCoder uses various open source audio and video codecs, among several proprietary codecs and tools to transcode different audio/video formats and has many extra features...
- VirtualDubModVirtualDubModVirtualDubMod is an open source video capture and linear processing tool for Microsoft Windows. It is based on Avery Lee's VirtualDub, and is licensed under the GPL. VirtualDubMod is hosted on SourceForge and is at version 1.5.10.2 ....
External links
- Project home page
- Project page at SourceForge.netSourceForge.netSourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
- Project forums
- V3.co.uk Review
- VirtualDub Filter Pack 2011