VirtualDub is an open source video capture and processing program. It might not have the editing power of software like Adobe Premiere, but as a quick way to process video it’s hard to beat.
You can use VirtualDub to trim and clean up video before exporting to tape or processing with another program. With the right plug-ins, you can output your video in various encoded formats—ready to be distributed on CD, DVD, or over the Internet.
VirtualDub is popular. At the time of writing, visitors to Sourceforge are downloading it over 16,000 times a day.
This book is your step-by-step guide to getting the most out of VirtualDub. As the title suggests, we’ll cover how to capture video, process it with VirtualDub’s editing and filtering features, and finally how to encode video in an appropriate format for distribution.
Whether you’ve been using it for a while, or are just downloading it for the first time, you’ll find plenty in this book to develop your VirtualDub skills, leaving you with higher quality, more effective videos.
Chapter 1 introduces the key world of VirtualDub. We’ll see how to get hold of VirtualDub and install it, and learn about the various tools that complement VirtualDub such as VDubMod and AviSynth.
In Chapter 2, we’ll study the process of capturing video—choosing and installing video capture hardware of various kinds. You’ll find out what to look for, and how to set it up on your computer.
Chapter 3 shows how to use this equipment to get crisp, good quality captures in VirtualDub. You’ll also see how to do some basic "pre-processing" such as cropping and cleaning graphical noise from the video.
With the capturing done, it’s time to do some processing! Chapter 4 introduces VirtualDub’s processing features, and helps you understand the VirtualDub interface that will be your home for the next few chapters.
Chapter 5 looks at some basic editing techniques: how to cut, copy, and paste sections of video, and how to extract images from videos.
Chapter 6 is where the real fun begins, as we transform the look of a video using VirtualDub’s built-in filters.
In Chapter 7 you’ll see how to apply some even more advanced effects using plug-ins.
VirtualDub makes playing with video easy, but there’s still some complex science going on behind the scenes. Chapter 8 helps you understand the complex and arcane world of video—so you’ll understand those terms like interlacing, frame rate, PAL, NTSC, field bob, and colorspaces.
In Chapter 9 we look at how to use AviSynth, a popular "frameserver", to give us great control over video processing by writing scripts that deal with video one frame at a time.
Finally in Chapter 10 you’ll see how to encode and compress your video ready for distribution—so plenty of people can get to see the great work you’ve done!
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