Q: What is official SoFo position on loading AVS files?

DDogg wrote on 4/21/2003, 12:49 PM
Q: What is official SoFo position on allowing Vegas to load Avisynth AVS files?

I have been told by many that opening Avisynth avs files via the Windows VFW interface is fairly simple, but I do not know if this is correct as it applies to the Vegas internals. I (I think many) would appreciate a clear reply from SoFo stating SoFo's position.

Now that we have a frameserver this seems even more important to allow serving Avisynth files into Vegas. The workarounds are effective but clumsy, and I hope they will become unnecessary soon.

Comments

DDogg wrote on 4/22/2003, 7:26 AM
<bump> I don't want to be a pest on this but I am really interested and looking for whether this capability may happen.
SonyEPM wrote on 4/22/2003, 8:46 AM
AVS files are currently unsupported. As with other features, we cannot comment on future plans.
mikkie wrote on 4/22/2003, 9:10 AM
I think if you search the forum archives you might come up with some info.

Just IMO, FWIW, don't believe that neat & tidy could be used to describe any frameserving setup. The nature of the beast (avisyth) originally was to tie often incompatible apps together, allowing say an NLE to open an incompatible file format. Quite a few features/capabilities have been added since, most accessible thru scripting, but if you review the docs at the avisynth.org site it can get pretty involved. Installing/using the ReadAVS.dll for vfapi lets you use avs files in Vegas (& most other NLEs) rather easily.

Use of AVS files and/or frameserving in general is made more difficult by windows and the decreasing use of the older vfw framework - the reason for most kludges I know of. For the developers of any NLE, supporting non-windows std formats that are out of their control, whether DiVX, xvid, avs, or any of the other codecs out there is pretty difficult from practical & possibly legal standpoints. And again FWIW, frameserving out of Vegas is cool as yet another capability (thanks Satish!), but could always serve into it with V/Dub or avisynth, so I really don't understand how the new plugin makes anything more important.
DDogg wrote on 4/22/2003, 12:28 PM
"I think if you search the forum archives you might come up with some info."

Just trying to get SoFo to state their position instead of the complete obfuscation as they did regarding frameserving. IMO, the answer could have been better thought out, but maybe they have their reasons for 'no comment'.

"... don't believe that neat & tidy could be used to describe any frameserving setup."

Agree, although I never said those words, but it could be much MORE neat and tidy (your words) without VFAPI and readavs.dll, Link2 or ffVFW which each have certain limitations inherent in their design. Further, avisynth can convert natively to any color format Vegas desires so that is not an issue.

"but if you review the docs at the avisynth.org site.."

LOL, yes I have for many years. :-)

"Installing/using the ReadAVS.dll for vfapi lets you use avs files in Vegas (& most other NLEs) rather easily."

Yes, of course. Tutorials I wrote for anybody interested:
VDub frame serving:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47483
Avisynth frame serving:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47194

"For the developers of any NLE, supporting non-windows std formats that are out of their control, whether DiVX, xvid, avs, or any of the other codecs out there is pretty difficult from practical & possibly legal standpoints."

Perhaps you are pontificating a bit just for the heck of it? :-)

Part of the implied question is about whether this is literally a few lines of simple code to allow the Windows VFW interface to open the AVS, or is there an underlaying internal matter that prohibits doing this in Vegas, or is it political.

In other words, for many apps (but I do not know about Vegas and had hoped the response from SoFo might have been less cryptic and more helpful on the subject), it is SIMPLY a matter of the code saying:
[]
If AVI [or AVS] then open via windows VFW else
use another method (many apps assume if not AVI then must be else)
[]

Although I wonder if the above may be the case, it may also well be that Vegas uses some specialized and proprietary method to open AVI based files. If so, then it would be completely understandable if they did NOT support native AVS. Again, it would just be rather decent of SoFo to say so, one way or the other but maybe they have their reasons for being so tight lipped.

But, if the simple situation above IS true then it makes no sense (IMO) to not support it, although that is a viewpoint coming from my admittedly restricted understanding of how Vegas opens AVI files. IF a small piece of work might bring the native support of the power of the de-interlacing, noise, and resizing filters of Avisynth to Vegas I would certainly think that would be a rational and positive thing for SoFo to do. Those filters represent some of the best GPL programmers in the world and literally thousands of hours of work. Avisynth is very useful for a myriad of professional tasks like, as said and IMO, worldclass video noise filtering, resizing and de-interlacing. Frankly I doubt any commercial program would ever be able to equal these. That work is just too expensive to pay for I should think.