Video Distributions and Post Production

You've exported your video from your editing package. Good. Of course, if you've done things right you will probably have a HuffYUV file that is several gigabytes in size. You are more than likely eager to compress this to something you can use to put online or send to a convention.... but don't be hasty as there are still a lot of things you should do to prepare your footage for distribution.

In order to post-process footage, we are going to return yet again to Avisynth. This is the best post-processing tool around. What you should do is import your huffYUV avi file into an avisynth script either by using the 'Open file with Avisynth' option in VirtualDubMod or manually making a script that reads:

AVISource("yourhuffyuvexport.avi")

This should show you your video in it's full resolution glory... it looks great, but it still needs work.

The post production options you choose will depend on what type of distribution you want to encode. Most people will want to make two kinds of distribution encode - one for distribution on the internet and another for distribution to conventions.

As most of the differences will be in how you prepare your avs file, you may want to make two avs files - one for the internet distribution and another for the convention one.

Please make sure you read through every step carefully as each step is important if you want to get the right result.

Now, what exactly still needs to be done?

1) If you edited interlaced, you need to remove the interlacing now. The exception is if you are going to keep your video interlaced for display on a television, or if you are sending it to a convention that accepts interlaced videos.

2) You can make your video look significantly nicer by cleaning it up some with AVISynth. If you opted to keep your video interlaced, then you should skip this section, as most of the filters mentioned are designed with progressive footage in mind.

3) Do you need to encode your video for online distribution, or for a convention, or for both? Before you encode, you need to crop and resize your video properly, and because of the differences, the guide splits into two parts here. If you are going for online distribution, then you should definately make sure that your video is not interlaced, and I strongly recommend that you have cleaned up the video.

AbsoluteDestiny & Zarxrax - May 2006