PluginPac Adapter (supporting VirtualDub filters) released!!

satish wrote on 3/19/2003, 1:52 AM

PluginPac Adapter for Vegas (to use VirtualDub filters in Vegas) is now available for free download. With this new FX you can use a large number of image and video processing VirtualDub filters in Vegas.

I've tested successfully with a large set of freely available VirtualDub filters online, however there are bound to be some filters which may not work properly in Adapter... point out such filters to me.

VirtualDub filters inherantly do not support keyframming. So dont expect to have keyframmable parameters in PluginPac Adapter... (you can still keyframe the 4 parameters given above as they are external to the VDub filters).

Limitations of VirtualDub filter support:
-----------------------------------------

1. VirtualDub filters have a very different interface which is unsupported directly by Vegas, so there are 4 parameters (Frame number, Frame rate, Start of sequence and End of sequence) which are given to the user to allow control how VirtualDub plugins see the filtered video. For most VirtualDub filters, letting these parameters to default values should be fine but play with them if you dont see expected results.

2. VirtualDub filters are not designed for parameter storage to a project file, so you will not be able to save the filter parameters into your Vegas project file. This means each time you close and open Vegas, you have to choose the VirtualDub filter parameters again.

The help file for PluginPac Adapter features a novel new idea, using a Flash movie for showing how to use the FX. Open the PluginPac Adapter help file and click the link that says "for the first time usage, click here." and you'll see a flash-based tutorial. This tutorial was created using Wink, a tut-creation program developed by me (and will be available free in a couple of weeks). Check it out...

Download latest PluginPac from DebugMode . Also featured are minor bug fixes for 3DLE and Shatter3d.

Thanks
Satish

PS: Tutorials on how to use Adapter with a few tricky filters (including the Deflicker filter) will be posted soon.

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Comments

satish wrote on 3/21/2003, 2:24 PM

Are you talking about the "Edit>Cut" menu option which does that "cut/copy/paste" thing?

BillyBoy wrote on 3/21/2003, 3:33 PM

Yes.

musicvid10 wrote on 3/22/2003, 9:58 AM

I obviously haven't had time to test it thoroughly, but basic functionality seems to work without issue in VV2. The other plugins work too.
Thanks, Satish!

Blackout wrote on 4/15/2003, 10:26 AM

Hi satish,

im having a few problems with the dynamic noise reduction plugin inside your Adapter, i can get several plugins to work but not these ones. There are two versions, the normal, and the MMX optimised. The normal one does not seem to do what its meant to, it just messes with contrast slightly even at full strength, whereas it removes noise quite effectively in virtualdub.

The mmx optimised one loads, however once operational i lose all preview ..the preview window goes black.

Have you tested with this plugin?

could you have a quick look at these and see if im in error and theres an issue at my end instead?

Many thanks,
Blackout

Erk wrote on 4/15/2003, 2:07 PM

Satish, many thanks for your excellent and generous work.

G

BrianStanding wrote on 4/15/2003, 3:51 PM

Satish,

How do I preview the filter effects? Do I have to render first?

shogo wrote on 4/15/2003, 4:10 PM

No I don't have to render at all
Are you previewing to an external monitor?
If so I had to move around on the timeline sometimes before I see the effect. Also make sure you hit ok I belevive, I used an awesome noise remover plugin for virtual dub with this and it works great.

Blackout wrote on 4/22/2003, 1:17 PM

Hi satish,

im having a few problems with the dynamic noise reduction plugin inside your Adapter, i can get several plugins to work but not these ones. There are two versions, the normal, and the MMX optimised. The normal one does not seem to do what its meant to, it just messes with contrast slightly even at full strength, whereas it removes noise quite effectively in virtualdub. It doesnt seem to be doing the same thing.

The mmx optimised one loads, however once operational i lose all preview ..the preview window goes black.

Have you tested with this plugin?

Also i have a plugin called snr.vdf by Steve Don. Its called Static Noise Reduction...very handy. No matter what i do, i cant get your adapter to load or even recognise this plugin/file when i point to it. It simply doesnt come up in the Adapter list, even tho other plugins in the same folder are recognised. Any ideas?

Many thanks,
Blackout

satish wrote on 4/22/2003, 1:28 PM

sorry didnt look at it. will do now.

Blackout wrote on 4/23/2003, 7:19 AM

hi satish, i have one solution , your adapter cant see any plugins that are in CAPITAL LETTERS. eg. the SNR.VDF is in captitals...as are several other Virtualdub filters by default. Renaming them one by one to lower-case (ie. snr.vdf) has made them available in your Adapter list.

I could never see the Temporal Cleaner plugin either (TCLEAN.VDF)...making it lowercase (tclean.vdf) has made it available in your Adapter list....however this plugin crashes vegas and the whole session....and every time i load the session with the tclean.vdf file in the list i get vegas closing down suddenly again...maybe this plugin hasnt been tested cause you couldnt see it either?

Kind Regards,
Blackout

Blackout wrote on 4/29/2003, 12:33 PM

Hi satish, do you need any further info on this problem? let me know if you can see this problem, i can recall someone else posting a similar observation where the settings do not seem to be relating to the same effect as in Virtualdub.

Congrats again on your fine work... :)

Blackout

satish wrote on 4/29/2003, 8:06 PM

Yes, if you can send me the filters that are not recognized by adapter (including those with capital names, i'm unable to reproduce the problem here...). That would be very helpful.

Thanks

Blackout wrote on 4/30/2003, 2:25 AM

sorry to sound dumb, but where do you want it??

cant seem to find an email or upload address 4 u....looked on your site also.

B.

jopereira wrote on 4/30/2003, 8:29 AM

That someone else it's me. I do have problems with VHS plug-in (http://flaxen.dynip.com/vdf/) it seems to have no effect using adapter.

I also have TCLEAN problem (didn't test it lower case).

JP

jopereira wrote on 4/30/2003, 8:29 AM

That someone else it's me. I do have problems with VHS plug-in (http://flaxen.dynip.com/vdf/) it seems to have no effect using adapter.

I also have TCLEAN problem (didn't test it lower case).

JP

Blackout wrote on 4/30/2003, 1:21 PM

Thanks jopereria, i looked for your post everywhere, i thought i was going nuts :)

Satish...here is the Temporal Cleaner - TCLEAN that is not seen and then crashes, also here is 2DCleaner that is in capitals and is not seen by your adapter.

http://home.earthlink.net/~casaburi/download/

Here is the dynamic noise reduction filter that has the Preview problem for one version and the settings problem for the other. Also here is the Static Noise Reduction filter that is in capitals that is not seen by your plugin...

http://www.shdon.com/

These are some of the best noise reduction tools around and as SoFo do not supply a noise reduction plugin (yet...heres hoping), they make your Plugin Adapter very useful.

Kind Regards,
blackout

satish wrote on 5/1/2003, 1:06 PM

I found the problems and fixed them.

1) There was a capitalization issue, Adapter was only recognizing files with lowercase extensions ".vdf, .dll" (and not ".VDF, .DLL").

2) The filter parameter memory was limited to 10kb, but the TCLEAN filter was allocating more than 64kb of memory. That was the cause for the crash.

Both these fixes will be available in the next PluginPac release which will hopefully include support for Photoshop filters (date not decided yet).

Thanks

Blackout wrote on 5/1/2003, 3:33 PM

thanks satish! great work man...i assume the memory problem was also associated with the Dynamic Noise Reduction Plugins also? as they also had problems....and the other plugins listed were not crashing but just not working in the same way when using the same settings as in Virtualdub..hopefully all these problems were linked?

kind regards,
Blackout

satish wrote on 5/1/2003, 4:25 PM

many vdub plugins work on a sequence of frames - meaning they keep track of when the render started and how far is it in the sequence etc... For such filters, you need to use the "Sequence start" and "Sequence End" checkboxes available in the Adapter setup dialog. Have a look at the subtitler tutorial i posted a while back on how to use them. If you do not use these options, these plugins will not work the same way they do in VDub.