You can use Wax to frameserve an AVISynth script INTO Vegas. This is a little tricky, but can be done. However, this is not what you want to do.

What you want to do is frameserve FROM Vegas, and for that, Wax is not what you want to use.

Instead, go back to Satish's site and download the Frameserver plug-in. Install this. Then, go to the Render As dialog. In the "Save As Type" listbox, you will now find a new selection called "DebugMode Frameserver." Select this. Specify some file name. Nothing will be saved to this file, but it will create a "signpost" that your AVISynth script will point to.

You should be able to figure it out from there. If not, ask another question.

I have a variety of AVISynth "cleanup" scripts that I'd be happy to post, if you want. I just cleaned up (I am ashamed to admit this, because it shows how I am rapidly progressing into my 1950's childhood as I dotter into old age) some "Adventures of Superman" videotapes I just purchased on eBay. I did Inverse Telecine on them, then cleaned the chroma and did temporal smoothing. Finally, I applied the Despot filter to get rid of a tremendous amount of dust spots (the video had not only black dust spots, but lots of white spots as well -- how to you get WHITE spots on film? Dirty negatives, I guess).

Definitely check the color and contrast of your finished result by brining the final cleaned version (MPEG-2 version if you plan to make a DVD) back into Vegas and doing an A/B check against the original on an external TV monitor. There are an amazing number of issues in doing the colorspace conversions that some AVISynth plug-ins require, and there is also always the interesting issue of RGB 16-235, depending on what codecs you are using. If the restored version appears to be "muddy," you are going to have to pay attention to these things. If the color and contrast looks as good as the original then, as the director would say, print it!

can i frameserve uncompressed frames as images with frameserver so i can use photozoom pro to resize my video?

any tips on how?

can i frameserve uncompressed frames with frameserver so i can use photozoom pro to resize my video?

By definition, frameserving transfers frames from the host (Vegas in this case) to the client without doing any compression. That is one of the major advantages and is pretty much the whole idea of frameserving in the first place, namely that you can take the bits from each frame, without any further compression or processing, and send them to another application. This not only saves time (by not having to first save and then open in the other application), but also saves disk space (because uncompressed NTSC video takes 90 GBytes per hour) and eliminates artifacts from compression.

Thanks for the information John. I do have some other questions. What I am a little confused about is where the .avs script comes in. Lets say I have some video in my Vegas timeline. I do my color correcting, etc. Then I click on the frameserver to render. I got that. Okay....Now how do I point to the avs file? Do I do it from CCE or from vegas? As far as I can tell, the encoder that I serve to will look for the name that I give the signpost file, right? How do I tell it to use my avisynth.avs file to process further. Is this clear for you? I hope so! Thanks for your help. Do I have to use the name of the signpost file in my avisynth script where I have the command avisource(signpost file)?????
Thanks again!
Mark

Vegas "serves" the video to a "signpost" AVI using the Satish Frameserver which you enable using the Render As dialog. Once you start the frameserver, Vegas just sits there doing absolutely nothing. If you open Windows Explorer and then navigate to the folder where you put the "signpost" AVI file (when you started the frameserver), you will see a small file there. If you double-click on it, whatever media player you have assigned to AVI files (usually Windows Media Player) will start playing the video from your Vegas timeline, complete with whatever color corrections or fX you may have assigned. Because Vegas can't render many fX in real-time, your player will stutter and pause.

Now, to use AVISynth, you should first install AVISynth, which I assume you have already done. You then create your script using Notepad or some other editor that can save plain text. In that script you should have a line, somewhere near the beginning like this:

AVISource("D:\frameserver.avi")

This command will open a file named "frameserver.avi" (which is the name I happen to use when I run the Satish frameserver, but you can use any name you wish), located in the root directory of the D: drive. Thus, this is how you use the frameserver signpost to get the video from Vegas into the AVISynth script.

You then follow this with whatever other commands are part of the script.

You then need to somehow get the video that results from this script into some other application. AVISynth does not save video to disk, but instead frameserves it to another program. Thus, each frame of video is first processed by Vegas (using the fX, transitions, compositing, etc. that you have applied in your project). That frame is then sent, via the Satish frameserver, to the AVISynth script, via the signpost file. AVISynth executes the instructions in the script and does something to that frame of video. When it finishes, it puts that frame into its own frameserver. That frameserver "signpost" is the script file itself. That script file must have the extension "AVS" because when you installed AVISynth, that installation changed Windows so that AVS is now treated (by most applications) in the same way as an AVI file. Thus, you can open the AVS file in media player and see results of your Vegas project, as modified by your AVS script.

You now must figure out what application you want to use to read the output of the AVS script. You can use VirtualDub, and I highly recommend using it. I use it all the time to test the AVS script and make sure it is doing what I want. You can use Vegas, but since Vegas doesn't open AVS scripts directly, you have to import the AVS file via the Wax plug-in, and this is more trouble than it is worth. If your goal is to encode the result, then you can use almost any MPEG-2 encoder and it will almost certainly open the AVS file. Thus, think of the AVS script file as an AVI file, and then ask yourself what you want to do with this gorgeous AVI file, and that will tell you which application you should use to open it.

————-
Ah – sigh -- I suppose what you really want to do is to open the results in Vegas. OK, here's how to use Wax to open the AVS file.

So, just to review, you've got your first "instance" of Vegas running the frameserver; the AVS file points to that frameserver signpost. You now want to open that AVS file in Vegas and save the result as a DV AVI file or an MPEG-2 file.

Open a second instance of Vegas. Put some video on the timeline (any video, it doesn’t matter). Click on the fX button for this event, and add Wax. In Wax, make sure Mediapool is selected and then click on the "Add Media Files" button (not the "Open Media" button). Add the AVS file that contains your script. While still in Wax, drag the video from that AVS file down to the timeline, directly below the "Host Media1" line. Then, click on the X for Host Media to disable it. You can then exit Wax. Finally, drag the edge of your "dummy" video event until it is exactly as long as your entire project in the first instance of Vegas. The thumbnails on the timeline will still show the video for the "dummy" event, but the preview will show the video that has been created by the first instance in Vegas and modified by AVS. You can now click on Render As to render to a DV or MPEG-2 file (or anything else).

(If you are really clever, you will put the cursor at the end of the project in the first instance of Vegas, before you start the frameserver, and double-click on the timeline counter and press Ctrl-C to copy the exact time. In the second instance of Vegas, you then click on the Event Details window and paste this timeline setting into the Event length field, thereby setting the length for the “dummy” event exactly)

Thanks so much for the guidance! It is very much appreciated. I would be more than greatful to try some of your scripts. I am really a neophite when it comes to avisynth, the filters and their parameters. By the way, have you tried a filter called "RemoveDirt"? It is fantastic for cleaning up specs of crap on film using avisynth. Anyway...thanks for all of the information. I will give it a go a little later.
Mark

By the way, have you tried a filter called "RemoveDirt"?

I used Despot. Not sure why I didn't use RemoveDirt. I'll try that next time and see if I like it better. The Despot was pretty touchy to set up: Just a slight increase in some of the controls caused buttons on people's shirts to disappear when they moved. Also, it did well on spots, but not on hairs.

Let me know what problems you need solved, and I'll send or post the script, if I happen to have it.

Johnmeyer- I would really like to try these clean-up filters.
Can you post them or email them: gary[at]laminatedsushi[dot]com

Cheers.
Gary

I'll email some scripts to you.

Hi John,

Could you email some of your scripts to me also???
mwkurt@tampabay.rr.com

Thanks!
Mark