Some Kind of AviSynth Files Update?
Ok, as promised, I present to the 5 of you still making gifs on Tumblr an updated and (sort of) improved process for (somewhat) easily leveraging AviSynth to make (mostly, but not “only”) Tumblr gifs.
I’ll consider this the “final form” for this awful slapped together bat file setup and focus my attention on something much more convenient and interesting for you guys to use--but I will update this as necessary as functional problems arise. I haven’t really had a chance to do a ton of testing, so I hope you guys can help me with that and let me know what kind of experiences you’re having trying this stuff out, good or bad. If you’re running into issues please let me know about them! It would go a long way towards making something better in the future.
Additionally, if anybody has some grievances/wishes/problems/concerns with their current process--whether that’s this set of batch files or your process with the old files/vapoursynth/etc., whatever--please do let me know. I have some pretty cool ideas, but I’d be interested to know what you guys hate about the tools available to you atm, or what you would like to see improved.
** I repeat, I have not done a ton of testing. Problems may be likely. Keep backups of your plugins folder and current C:/video setup for your own sake **
Anyway, on to the stuff, here’s what needs to be done:
- Uninstall AviSynth 2.5. Tell them “I love you” and thank them for everything. We need to move on...it’s not them, it’s us...
- JK, it’s them. We’re replacing 2.5 with AviSynth 2.6. Download and install. Don’t worry about where your install ends up, though it is most likely C:/Program Files (x86)/AviSynth/
- Download this new batch (heh) of files: batinator-2.1.2.zip
- The packaged zip includes a plugins folder. Move the contents of the included plugins folder into your AviSynth plugins directory. Refer to step 2, this will most likely be C:/Program Files (x86)/AviSynth/plugins/. Nothing you guys haven’t done a dozen times by now.
From here it should be business as usual. Within the batinator folder is an auto.bat. Drag your videos into this and the process will start. If you’ve ever used “avisynth” for this before it should be very familiar.
For reference, here are some things the new setup does better
- Automatically find the avisynth plugins folder, no matter where it is. 32-bit, 64-bit, wrong folder name, doesn't matter. If avisynth is installed, it'll find the corresponding plugins folder.
- Work from anywhere, not just c:/video. Put it in your desktop if you want. Put it in your music folder, I don't care.
- Take a range OR cut 10 seconds automatically. 17s was too long tbh, you really need 17 seconds for one scene? STOP.
- Better time seeking. Have you ever put in a timestamp and had this thing spit out the wrong scene by like a second? Awful. No more of that. Using the power of Math™, no frames are left behind.
- Attempts to automatically decide the best process to load the video based on the format. There should be no more need for a lossless.bat to try a different method manually
- Be less sloppy in general. What the hell is even happening in that black window? Nobody knows.
- Save every output video to the output folder without overwriting, in case people want to make multiple cuts before working in photoshop. Because realizing you have to go back and re-do that gif that got overwritten is the saddest thing ever...
- Resizer slightly less ugly (still working on that but I'm lazy)
- Less shitty resamplehq errors, calculates better sizes in the resizer so that avspmod stops bitching for once in its stupid life
- New remake.bat uses the same video and clip and skips to the steps of resizer + avspmod so you can try again, for when you were too lazy to preview it and SWORE those sharpen settings would look good, and they totally don't.
- [NEWER] Leverage AviSynth 2.6 and L-SMASH for previously unsupported/badly supported video formats.
Some known issues/things planned
- There are some problems with characters in certain languages that I have yet to fully look into. If you’re running into strange problems, checking if you have any non gringo friendly characters in any of the file paths would be a good first start
- Files that load with LWLibavVideoSource may not load 100% perfectly. I’ve had issues with the first 20 or so frames being either janky or frozen, sometimes in the preview, sometimes only in the final output. I THINK I fixed this, but if you do run into it, please let me know. As a temporary solution, I would suggest overcompensating on the start time of your cut and making it start a few seconds earlier, just to ensure the first few frames you need are actually clean.
- As usual, AviSynth is a Windows tool. I have cross-platform plans for the macfriends, but this will likely leverage VapourSynth, not AviSynth, and will be a re-write that is essentially the focus of what I intend to move on to now that this is (mostly) out of the way.
TL;DR
- Uninstall AviSynth 2.5
- Install AviSynth 2.6
- Download new files (includes plugins folder): batinator-2.1.2.zip
- Move plugins to AviSynth 2.6 plugins directory (located wherever AviSynth was installed)
- Drag files into auto.bat and it’s business as usual
Please let me know how it works for you and any errors/issues/you encounter, even if they are known issues. More detail and insight are always welcome