Explaining SonicAxioms AVConvert, pronounced a v convert.

AVConvert allows for editor-less media file editing - fast and easy audio and video batch-conversion via the right-click context-menu. AVConvert should work from Windows 7 onwards.

This txt file is meant to be read by a text-to-speech app. Be aware that the voice you are hearing might not properly pronounce all words, path names, hyperlinks and commands mentioned in this txt file. If applicable, please use copy and paste to make sure that the correct strings are used.

 In the following text, the name AVConvert might sometimes be abbreviated by the three letters A V C. This document covers AVConvert version 2024-05-05p, and thus, might not cover all features of later versions.

Thank you for your interest in AVConvert, a free, extremely fast and easy-to-use audio and video conversion and editing tool for Windows. Since its initial release in 2020, AVConvert has evolved into a Swiss-Army-knife of fast and convenient media file editing. This document explains all AVConvert functions and gives you a lot of other useful information and tips for handling media files. AVConvert is based on the free FFmpeg (pronounced f f empeg) multimedia framework (https://www.ffmpeg.org) and runs on 64-bit Windows systems. On 32-bit Windows machines, you need to download the latest 32-bit FFmpeg static release EXE file from the aforementioned website and replace the 64-bit version that came with AVConvert.

Description

AVConvert adds numerous editing and conversion options to the right-click context menu of video, audio and some image file formats in Windows Explorer. Using AVConvert, you can convert media files from one media format to another and do a lot of other useful things with your media files simply by right-clicking them, thus, extremely fast and without having to launch a dedicated application and without having to tweak any settings. Whether you wanna convert a single or hundreds of files at once, the conversion simply requires highlighting the desired file(s) in Windows Explorer window and then selecting the desired option in the context menu. In the case of simultaneous conversion of multiple files, all selected files must usually have the same file extension.

AVC is designed to complete tasks as quickly and unintrusively as possible. With common video editing programs, many processes require considerable rendering time. However, with AVC, even dealing with huge source files, numerous processes require only a few seconds to complete since the source material is not time-consumingly re-compressed but simply copied from the source to the destination file! Both audio and video quality remain entirely untouched in those cases! This is one of the very special features that differentiate AVC from most other video and audio editing programs - including commercial ones - and it is why it far surpasses so many other programs in terms of speed and preservation of image and sound quality. If you use S-ATA-SSD or even M.2 NVMe SSD drives, the gain in speed by working with AVC is even greater!

For example, two of the most useful features of AVC are lossless video file trimming and lossless video file concatenation. Trimming and re-ordering large amounts of video files is a matter of seconds or minutes at the most instead of hours of re-rendering! You can give your original video footage a cinematic wide-screen look in just a few seconds and without losing quality by using the lossless video cropping feature! Only if a video format conversion or an image overlay process is carried out, re-compression of the video data is unavoidable and does the conversion take longer. Conversion parameters are preset in a way that user intervention is hardly ever necessary and potential quality loss is compensated for by a slightly increased bit-rate.

Besides the context menu entries it provides, AVC has no user interface and neither provides a preview nor an editing time-line. This is on purpose! A fast work-flow requiring minimal user intervention was the main goal I had in mind when I came up with the idea of a context menu-driven media conversion utility. You will quickly notice the benefits of this approach in many situations since it avoids having to open a dedicated application and messing with parameters. Usually, you simply trigger a desired option in the context menu and are done with the task. Conversion parameters and AVC preferences can be accessed and configured in the folder background or desktop context menus. Use your media player as a previewing device.

I'd like to point out that AVC is far from being able to do everything conventional video editors can do! However, in contrast to these, it can accomplish many things much faster and losslessly. You can create impressive, professionally-looking videos without ever having to open a single clip in a video editor! With AVC, you can perform "editor-less media file editing".

As a quick reference, the provided document named "AVConvert - all context menus overview.pdf" shows all available AVC context menu and sub-menu entries. This document may not always reflect all menus of the latest version.

How does AVConvert work?

The only way to modify the context menu on a Windows computer is to add specific entries to the Windows registry. These entries will be added when you register AVC in your system as described in the next section. Clicking on one of the context menu entries executes a simple, human-readable DOS batch file containing FFmpeg commands. FFmpeg will then perform the chosen task. The AVC package is very small yet extremely powerful. It will definitely simplify and speed up your work with lots of media files.

Installation

AVC is not installed in the usual way by launching a setup/installer .exe file. Instead, AVConvert has to be registered in your system. The registering process will add the required context menu entries to the Windows registry. 

It is recommended to extract the AVC folder provided in the zip file to your operating system partition, either to its root or into a sub-folder of it. C:\AVConvert or C:\[sub-folder]\AVConvert will both work fine, however, it must not be placed more than one sub-folder deep. C:\[first sub-folder]\[second sub-folder]\AVConvert will not work.

If your operating system is not located on the C partition, replace C with the drive letter of your operating system partition.

Make sure that there are no non-ASCII characters in the path name!

AVC versions prior to version 2023-06-11p required the AVConvert folder in the zip to be extracted to the root of the C drive, resulting in the path C:\AVConvert. This is no longer required but still highly recommended!

Do not rename the AVConvert folder to something else.

While in principal, you could extract and run AVC from almost any drive and folder of your choice, issues may arise from doing so. Please read the section named "Additional information on how to properly install AVConvert" a few paragraphs down for more details.

To finally register AVC in the system, right-click the provided "register_AVConvert.bat" and click on "Run as administrator" and wait patiently for the command prompt to close itself. As soon as the window closes AVC is operational.

Congratulations, you can now enjoy various media file editing options in the right-click menu of your media files. By right-clicking the empty area of a folder (more specifically the folder background) or the desktop's background you can find out which version of AVC is currently installed on your computer. You can also access AVC's preferences via the same context menu.

Uninstall

To completely unregister AVC, either right-click the "unregister_AVConvert.bat" which is located in the AVConvert folder and click on "Run as administrator" or trigger the unregistering process from AVC's folder/desktop background context menu (under "AVConvert - global settings ..."). Either way, all registry entries associated with AVC will be removed (nothing more - nothing less!). As soon as the unregistering process has completed, you may delete the entire AVConvert folder incl. its sub-folders. Important: Always use the "unregister_AVConvert.bat" file that came with the version you want to uninstall!

Also note that if you had chosen to temporarily disable AVC context menus, you might trick yourself into thinking that AVC has actually been unregistered entirely. However, as long as there are AVC menu entries in the folder/desktop background context menu, AVC is still registered on your system.

Updating AVConvert

Please always unregister your current AVC version before registering any other version (be it newer or older). To unregister the current version, proceed as described under "Uninstall". While there's no risk of system damage when uninstalling with a wrong unregister bat file, some context menu entries may not get removed. After a removal is completed, you can safely delete all files inside the AVConvert folder. Extract all files from the new version into the existing AVConvert folder and finally right-click the new "register_AVConvert.bat" and then click on "Run as administrator" to properly register the updated version in the system.

Additional information on how to properly install AVConvert

It is highly recommended to extract the AVConvert folder to the root of your operating system's partition, typically to C:\AVConvert. You can also extract it to C:\[folder level 1]\AVConvert. Two folder levels in total are allowed. If your OS is not installed on the C:\ partition, then extract AVConvert to [OS drive letter]:\AVConvert or [OS drive letter]:\[folder level 1]\AVConvert. Folders deeper than 2 levels from the drive's root are not allowed, thus, "D:\[folder level 1]\[folder level 2]\AVConvert" will not work).

Make sure the full path name does not contain any non-ASCII characters.
Do not alter the name of the "AVConvert" folder.

Extracting and registering AVC to a non-OS partition may cause issues when you later restore your system partition using a system imaging software like Macrium Reflect or AOMEI Backupper since you might end up creating an AVC version mismatch between the reverted registry entries on your system partition and the non-reverted AVC files in the folder where you extracted AVC to - which remains unaffected by the restore process. If you encounter this situation, please right-click the empty space of your desktop to look up the AVC version that had been captured in the system image and just now been restored. To unregister AVC in this situation, you have to extract the zip file of the matching old AVC version into a new folder and run the provided unregister batch file from there. Basically, if you are running AVC from a non-OS partition, you must keep all original AVConvert zip versions archived somewhere to be able to unregister them.

Temporarily disabling/re-enabling AVConvert context menus

AVC adds an extensive number of menu entries notably to the WAV, MKV, MOV and MP4 context menus. You can temporarily disable all menu entries to tidy up your context menus and then re-enable the menu entries at any time. To temporarily disable AVC onvertmenu entries, right-click the folder or desktop background and click on "AVConvert - temporarily disable AVConvert context menus". All AVC menus will be disabled (unregistered). The only three menu items that remain are the re-enabling menu item, the current version menu entry and a menu item to entirely unregister AVC. Those menu items can be found in the folder/desktop background context menu.

AVConvert default settings

Whenever you perform lossless operations like transcoding, trimming, cropping and concatenating in AVC, all properties of the original media file will be preserved since the process only involves copying data from the source file(s) into the output file(s). However, if you trigger a lossy process, AVC will use customizable parameters from different settings files to render the output files. 

AVC stores some setting in the AVConvert\USER sub-folder. By avoiding overwriting the files in this folder you can keep your custom settings when updating to a newer version of AVC.

AVConvert video output frame rate (default: 25 fps)

When registering AVC for the first time or after updating AVC incl. overwriting the AVConvert\USER sub-folder, output video frame rate will be set to 25 fps. You can change the output frame rate by right-clicking the empty background of a folder in Windows Explorer or the desktop background, choosing "AVConvert - global settings ...", clicking on "set global video output frame rate", entering the desired frame rate into the text file, saving the file and finally clicking on menu entry "B. click here to make changed frame rate take effect". The custom frame rate will remain effective until you either change it again or until the corresponding file C:\AVConvert\USER\AVC_FRATE.txt gets overwritten during an update process of AVC.

AVConvert video output resolution (default: 2160p)

AVC's default video output resolution is 2160p (4k). You can change this setting by right-clicking the empty background of a folder in Windows Explorer or the desktop background, choose "AVConvert - set A/V resolution/encoding quality ..." and click on the sub-menu entry showing the desired resolution. The options are 720p (HD), 1080p (FullHD), 1440p (2k) and 2160p (4k).

AVConvert default image and text overlays

By design, AVC needs to have image and text overlay files specified at all times, however, the default title insert and logo overlay image files are both blank, transparent PNG files in 4k resolution and the text overlay file has no text specified in it. As a result, even though all possible overlays are specified, nothing visible will actually get overlaid. As soon as you specify images with visible, non-transparent content in them or if you type in some text into the text overlay file and save it, you will see those overlays in the output video whenever you trigger a process that requires video re-compression (like resizing or overlaying). The same is true for screen recordings, so you can have title and/or logo overlays integrated into the screen video on-the-fly which means that as soon as you stop the screen recording
your video is virtually ready for delivery apart from some minor lossless trimming at the beginning and the end of it or muxing with the final audio.

You can disable overlays by either specifying blank image files and an empty text overlay file or you can temporarily disable the currently specified overlay files by clicking on the "disable all overlays" entry in AVC's overlay settings context menu accessible by right-clicking the folder/desktop background. In the latter case you can easily re-enable formerly specified overlays in the same sub-menu while when using the first method, you will have to re-specify each desired overlay file again separately.

Background information regarding media file conversion

Among other things, AVC allows you to convert your media files between the most common media file formats. When converting audio to audio, you can choose between various lossless and lossy formats. The lossless formats are AIFF, FLAC, TTA, WAV and WV. Conversions between these formats do not lead to any change in quality. The only disadvantage of lossless audio formats is that they require more storage space. The special feature of the FLAC, TTA and WV format is that the audio data is also compressed here but without any loss of quality! The resulting files are smaller as a result but are identical in quality to the original uncompressed files. However, the reduction in file size is not quite as significant as when converting to a lossy audio format.

The lossy audio formats are AC3, MP3, M4A, OGG, OPUS, CCITT a-law, and CCITT mu-law. These formats omit seemingly imperceptible components of the original audio, so less data needs to be stored and the resulting files are significantly smaller than the uncompressed versions. However, the omitted audio information cannot be recovered, even when converting back to an uncompressed format. Repeatedly converting between lossy formats will accumulate the quality losses of each conversion pass!

The uncompressed audio format WAV is the central audio format in AVC. WAV is best suited for post-processing audio in an audio editor or in a DAW. Even if the lost details of compressed audio files cannot be recovered by converting back to WAV, it is still best practice to convert lossy formats to WAV prior to post-processing the material in an audio editor.

Convert AC3, MP3, M4A, OGG, OPUS, TTA, FLAC, WavPack, AIFF, CCITT a-law and CCITT mu-law to WAV and convert WAV to AC3, MP3, M4A, OGG, OPUS, TTA, FLAC, WavPack , AIFF, CCITT a-law and CCITT mu-law. Existing meta-data (additional information and tags) present in the source files is transferred to the target file, provided the target format supports the storage of such meta-data. In general, you cannot convert from any audio format directly to every other format but you can always convert to WAV first and then to the desired target format.

Numerous video editing functions in AVC are lossless for both the video material and the audio that is interleaved in the video file! This is a major advantage of AVC over many other - even commercial - programs! In addition to avoiding any loss of quality you also benefit from much faster processing since, during lossless processes, source data is not recalculated and re-compressed, as is usually the case, but only directly copied without alteration to the target file. The speed of these processes is therefore not at all depending on the CPU power but only on the read and write speeds of the hard drive which are especially high in the case of SSD or M.2 NVMe drives. The greater the amount of data to be losslessly processed, the greater the amount of time-saving through fast transcoding in contrast to the very slow and at the same time quality-reducing re-compression. In case of video conversions, AVC saves the output files in h.264 codec in the MKV video container which is currently the most versatile and compatible among all video containers.

In cases where a format conversion requires recalculation, artefacts are kept at a minimum. AVC's default conversion quality is set to High Quality (HiQ) for both audio and video but you can switch to Low Quality (LoQ) mode separately for audio and video at any time. This roughly halves the data rate of video and/or audio, so the resulting files will be about half the size of those in HiQ mode. However, even when using the LoQ mode, video and audio material hardly shows any artefacts but the output files will be significantly smaller, much easier manageable and can be sent via the Internet faster. Besides HiQ and LoQ mode, AVC offers 2-pass encoding. When using 2-pass mode, FFmpeg will run an analyzing pass on the video first to find out where it should allocate higher and lower bit rates according to the amount of motion detected in all video frames. The actual encoding will be done in the second pass. Sections with more motion will get encoded at higher bit rates to avoid artefacts. While output quality will be the same with both encoding modes, the more efficient distribution of bits leads to significantly smaller output file sizes when 2-pass encoding is used. Note that 2-pass encoding will require approximately 50 % longer encoding time.

How did AVConvert come about?

Incidentally, I came up with the idea of creating AVC during the Covid-19 lock-down in the summer of 2020 when I was looking for a way to convert the often very unwieldy large 4k video files from my Olympus camera as quickly as possible (preferably with just one click) into smaller, more manageable versions without any perceivable loss of quality. Since I'm running a recording studio, I also constantly have to convert large amounts of media files between all imaginable formats.

Here's another time-saving tip. It affects the way you transfer image and video files from your camera to the computer. I automated this process as follows:

After connecting my camera to the computer via USB, it is automatically recognized by a program called "USB Drive Letter Manager" and is always automatically assigned the same drive letter which I specified. Without this tool, Windows itself assigns a more or less random drive letter to it which greatly defeats the automation of the process. Since the path to the camera is now always the same, I can use a batch file to trigger a copy command which transfers all videos and images from the camera to a folder of my choice for reviewing. As soon as the copying process is complete, I double-click on a second batch file which in a first step deletes all data on the camera in order to free up the storage space on the SD card and then automatically "safely removes" the camera.

For this convenient procedure to work you need:

• USB Drive Letter Manager - https://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html  The provider's homepage describes how to permanently assign desired drive letters to USB drives.

• HotSwap - http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm  This utility sits in the notification area at the bottom right corner of the screen and allows USB devices to be removed much faster than when using Windows' own USB device removal feature. Most notably, however, it can be controlled and automated via batch commands.
• HotSwap - http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm  This utility sits in the notification area at the bottom right corner of the screen and allows USB devices to be removed much faster than when using Windows' own USB device removal feature. Most notably, however, it can be controlled and automated via batch commands.

• First, create the batch file for copying the camera's data to the computer (the process will start after double-clicking on this file). To create a batch file, start by first creating an empty plain text file (right-click in Explorer - New - Text document). Paste the following command line into it and then save the file labeled something like "Copy pics and videos from camera.bat". Make sure to save with the file extension ".bat" instead of ".txt". This is the command:

xcopy "O:\DCIM\100OLYMP\*.*" /S /E "E:\AVTemp\" /-Y

This command causes Windows to copy all files from the source path "O:\DCIM\100OLYMP\" to the target folder "E:\AVTemp\". You will be prompted with a warning message before files of the same name are overwritten in the target path. You must adjust the source path and the target folder path to your requirements in the command and then save the batch file. Create a shortcut to it on the desktop and double-click it whenever you want to copy files from your connected camera to the computer. As soon as the copying DOS window closes, all files (images and videos) have been copied to the destination folder.

• Launch an image viewer (I recommend using X-n-View-M-P or FastStone Image Viewer) and browse through all the copied images and videos to ensure all media files have been correctly copied.

• To delete all files in your camera and then safely remove it from the computer, create another batch file with the following command:

 del "O:\DCIM\100OLYMP\*.*" "D:\portable apps\HotSwap\HotSwap.EXE" O: -Q

• Edit the path to the location of your HotSwap utility and adjust the drive "O:" to match your camera's drive letter if it is not "O").

• Place a shortcut on the desktop for this batch file as well. If you now (after successfully copying and checking the data!) wanna delete the pictures and videos on the camera and remove the camera safely, simply double-click the batch file and wait until all message windows close.

• Finally, I would like to recommend the old but still incomparably useful program "Stamp 2.8" - http://klingebiel.com/tempest/hd/stamp_versions.htm

It's a very powerful file renaming tool, capable of conveniently batch-renaming large numbers of digital image files. It can look up the creation date and creation time as well as other EXIF information from the meta-data stored in the image files and put this information into the file names. File names formatted in a pattern such as "date @ time - insert event here.jpg" resulting in a file name like "2021-07-23 @ 15-04-29 - trip to Madrid with Dave.jpg" are far more meaningful and revealing than "DCF_030239.jpg". Another benefit of this utility is that the resulting files are nicely sorted chronologically in Windows Explorer. It is then no longer necessary to open images in an image viewer only to find out what the image is showing.

Let's get back to AVConvert: Output files are always saved in the same folder as the original files. To reduce the risk of file name collisions, converted files' names will be getting meaningful suffixes:

The file name "Video.mkv" becomes "Video -1080p -crop 184px -logo.mkv"
Here, the video has been resized, cropped by 184 pixels at the top and the bottom and a logo has been overlaid.

The file name "Music.wav" becomes "Music -48k -24 bit.wav"
Here, the sample rate of the WAV file has been converted to 48 kilohertz and the file's bit depth has then been converted to 24 bit in a second conversion process.

The file name "More music.mp3" becomes "More music - left channel only.mp3"
After extracting left audio channel of an MP3 file.

If an already existing file with the same target name is found on launching a conversion process, you can decide in the DOS window whether the existing file should be overwritten or not by entering y for yes or n for no.

Since AVC is managed via the context menu, user input options are limited. Nevertheless, numerous parameters can be customized (cutting times, length of video sequences, display length of title overlays, display length of images in a slide-show video, etc.). User input of the parameters is accomplished via simple plain text files which AVC opens for you to edit trivial numbers. The entries you make here are retained until you either change them again, perform a global parameter reset in the global settings menu or go through the AVC updating process.

If you start a conversion process that is impossible to run or for which you specified incorrect parameters, the process will be aborted immediately and the AVC DOS window will immediately disappear. An output file with a file size of 0 kB may be generated in some cases. Delete this empty file and select a different conversion option or check if the parameters you had set were incorrect. When entering user values into the parameter text files, care must be taken to not accidentally change the suggested format of the parameter values and not to add additional blank lines after the values.

For AVC to be able to create professional-grade video content, I thought it should meet at least the following requirements:

1. It should be able to overlay a temporary title image (lower thirds) over video footage for an adjustable period of time. The user should also be able to choose whether the title image should appear and disappear abruptly or fades in and out smoothly.

2. It should be possible to overlay a permanently visible custom logo/watermark over the video material.

3. It should be possible to overlay both the temporary title image and the permanent logo at the same time.

4. It should dispose of an option to overlay a text caption over the video material for an adjustable amount of time.

5. The user should be able to overlay the temporary text and the permanent logo overlay at the same time.

Meanwhile, AVC meets all these criteria! Title image, text and logo overlays are possible - separately or simultaneously - even when creating videos from individual JPG images incl. background music, while slowly zooming into video footage or while recording the screen. The "AVConvert public - all menus overview.pdf" file that comes with AVC gives you a quick overview of all the context menu items available in AVC. For the sake of simplicity, I have listed only the typical menu items for certain file types, e. g. for MKV files in case of video files. Identical or similar options can be found in the context menus of other video file types (MOV, MP4, etc.). However, in the case of video, MKV is the core format in AVC and provides the most options. If an option does not exist for a given video format, first transcode the video file to MKV losslessly in an instant and then trigger the desired function from the MKV context menu.

In the following sections, all menu items are explained in detail.

1. Context menus when right-clicking audio files

1.1. "AVConvert - audio format conversion (lossy) ..."

This menu comes up when you right-click an audio file. You can convert audio files to other audio formats. While the WAV context menu offers entries for conversion to all possible target formats (lossy and lossless), other audio formats may only offer a restricted number of options here but you can always convert from any format to any other format by going via the WAV format. For example, if you want to convert from MP3 to M4A, convert MP3 to WAV first and then convert the WAV file to M4A.

1.2. "AVConvert - audio format conversion (lossless) ..."

In this context menu you can convert WAV files losslessly into other lossless audio formats. You will also find options to split a stereo wave file into two separate mono files, to combine two mono wave files into one stereo file or to convert a left-right stereo file to MS, which is mid-side stereo or vice-versa.

1.3. "AVConvert - change sample rate ..."

This feature is only available for uncompressed audio formats and allows you to change the sample rate of audio files from 44.1 kilohertz to 48 kilohertz and vice versa.

1.4. "AVConvert - change bit depth ..."

This function is only available in the WAV context menu and allows you to change the bit depth of audio files from 16 to 24 bit and vice versa.

1.5. "AVConvert - extract audio ..."

This function is available in the M4A, MP3 and WAV context menu and allows to save only the left or right audio channel from a stereo file. In the context menu of AAC files you have the option to wrap - which means losslessly transcode - AAC audio into the M4A container. M4A is easier to play back for some media players than the raw AAC format and also allows meta-data tagging. Likewise, in the M4A context menu, you can choose to extract raw AAC from an M4A file.

1.6. "AVConvert  - re-order audio channels ..."

This function allows changing the channel order of multi-channel/surround audio files from FL, FR, C, LFE, SL, SR (front left, front right, centre, subwoofer, surround left, surround right) to FL, C, FR, SL, SR, LFE (and vice versa).

1.7. "AVConvert - create true stereo IR ..."

This function is only available in the WAV context menu and allows you to create 4-channel true stereo impulse files from regular stereo WAV impulse files (used in convolution reverb plugins in professional audio editing programs), You can opt for a channel sequence of LRLR or LRRL.

1.8. "AVConvert - memorize this files name"

This menu entry allows to memorize the path and name of an audio file to use it with AVC, for example to merge it losslessly with a video file.

2. Context menus when right-clicking video files (notably MKV files)

2.1. "AVConvert - audio format conversion ..."

In this menu you can convert the audio stream present in a video file into a separate WAV file, convert 2 or 3 stereo audio streams present in the video file to either 2 or 3 separate stereo files or to a single 4- or 6-channel WAV file which is useful when dealing with multi-channel OBS video files. You'll also find an option to convert the first audio stream inside a video file into AAC format (in-place-audio conversion, no separate audio file is created). However, the newly created video file will contain AAC audio instead of the original audio while video quality remains untouched.

The following option will basically do the same audio format conversion to AAC, however, the audio level will be adjusted at the same time during the conversion process. Default setting for the level change is +6 dB. You can specify any desired amount of volume change by going into the "AVConvert - set A/V resolution/encoding quality" context menu (by right-clicking the folder or desktop background) and clicking on the entry "specify custom audio volume change". A text file will open up and you can type in the desired dB value. Positive and negative values are allowed (like +3 or -8). Don't forget to save the changes you made to the text file.

The last option in this menu allows to convert up to 3 stereo audio streams present in a video file into 3 separate WAV files.

2.2. "AVConvert - extract audio losslessly ..."

In this menus you can extract the original audio stream(s) from a video into a separate file with no quality loss (i. e. without re-compression or conversion to another format). The first sub-menu features a list of lossy audio formats that can be extracted and the second sub-menu shows entries to extract WAV audio streams. You have to pick the appropriate option here depending on the number and the type of audio streams that are actually present in the video file. To help you determine what type and number of audio streams are present in a given video file, I recommend installing either MediaInfo or MediaTab. Both apps are free. In the case of MediaInfo, a tool-tip message will pop up when hovering the mouse pointer over a media file in Windows Explorer, revealing information about the file's media parameters. In the case of MediaTab, ALT-double-click a media file to reveal its properties.

Once you have figured out the properties of the audio stream(s) embedded within a video container, you can pick the appropriate audio extraction option in the respective audio extraction sub-menu. If you try to extract a stream or format that is not present, nothing will happen. In some cases, AVC might create an empty 0 kB file which you can safely delete. Then, go ahead and try extracting the correct format and stream number.

2.3. "AVConvert - de-mux video/audio losslessly  ..."

This menu allows you to save the video and the audio data of a video file into separate files. Again, you have to pick the correct audio stream type while doing this (see section above). 

2.4. "AVConvert - mux video with audio losslessly ..."

This menu allows you to add an audio stream to a video or replace an existing audio stream in a video file with an new one while keeping video and audio quality untouched. If the video doesn't have any audio stream, one will be added when using either of the two options. If one or more audio streams are already present in the video, you can determine whether the new audio stream should replace all others or should be added as an additional stream to the existing ones.

There are two methods of muxing video with audio. The first one is placing the new audio file (or even multiple new audio files) into the video file's folder. The audio file(s) must have exactly the same file name as the video file(s) (except for the file extension, of course) and should be of the same length as the video(s). Right click a video file and select "AVConvert - losslessly mux video with audio ...", then choose the corresponding "MKV video with ..." menu entry that reads the correct, corresponding audio format and finally choose whether you wanna add the audio to existing audio streams or replace all existing audio streams with the new one. Using this method, all video and audio files with identical names within the folder will get muxed in a single pass.

Using the second method, you can only mux a single video/audio file pair but the method is a little bit more convenient because you can specify the audio file by simply right-clicking it and choosing "AVConvert - memorize this file's name". The audio file doesn't have to be located in the video file's folder. Once, you memorized an audio file's name, you right-click the video file, open its muxing sub-menu and choose either "MKV video with memorized audio file (add audio)" or "MKV video with memorized audio file (replace audio)".

2.5. "AVConvert - adjust audio offset  ..."

This menu allows you to input a desired audio sync offset value (in seconds) to shift the audio forward or backwards in time with respect to the video. First, click on "1. offset in seconds" and specify the desired value. Use the decimal point when entering decimal values (not a comma)! Negative values will make the audio play back earlier. Put the minus sign directly in front of the value (e. g. -0.825). Don't forget to save the text file after you have changed the value. Now, click on "2. apply offset" to start the process. The offset value will be included into the output video's file name.

A little side note: In video encoding, to reduce file size, not all but only a few video frames are saved as full images (referred to as key-frames or i-frames). Images between key-frames can be either P- or B-frames. They only store the differences in the pixels with regard to their preceding key-frame. Since most of the time only a few pixels change from one frame to the next, the P-frame/B-frame method can significantly reduce the amount of video data that needs to be stored. Cutting video footage at key-frames - when done properly like in AVC - is a fast and lossless process. However, cutting video at P- or B-frames requires re-compressing the entire video file which takes a lot of time and results in generation loss. It is therefore very useful that AVC inserts key-frames into videos every 0.5 seconds and also on scene changes during any of its video conversion processes since this makes it possible to later cut such a video losslessly with sufficient timing accuracy, entirely avoiding another re-compression pass. Depending on the origin of the video material, key-frame frequency can vary between once per second and once every 30 seconds which definitely doesn't yield sufficient timing accuracy for lossless trimming. Since B-frames may cause glitches in some video editing and playback software, AVC does not insert any B-frames at all during its conversion processes.

2.6. "AVConvert - crop video losslessly ..."

In this menu you can crop portions of your video. This process is not only lossless but also reversible! For instance, you can give your videos a cinematic wide-screen look in just a few seconds and without quality loss by selecting one of the top/bottom cropping options. No black area is inserted into the video footage! Instead, the corresponding area will just not get shown in your video player software (at least not in MediaPlayerClassic and PotPlayer which I'm using) nor will it be shown when uploading such a video to YouTube, however, the encoding process during the upload will make the cropping permanent. Note that you have to confirm to AVC what the input/source video's resolution is prior to actually cropping by clicking on the corresponding resolution confirmation entry for 720p, 1080p, 1440p or 2160p (with 2160p being the default setting)! This is of special importance if the source video had already been cropped beforehand.

You can specify arbitrary cropping areas in the following AVC sub-menu (described under 2.7). Of course, you can crop videos repeatedly but it might happen that such non-standard videos are not played back smoothly in video playback software. Since cropping video is lossless and accomplished so fast, you can easily try different values to find out what your preferred look is.

Keep in mind that the losslessly cropped videos actually still contain all of the original video footage! The cut-off part is just not shown during playback! This is a very unique feature of AVC! Using AVC, you can re-crop an already cropped video to make areas visible again that you thought were cut away forever! Essentially, cropping videos in AVC is not only lossless in one direction but losslessly reversible! Conversely, this implies that if you want to re-crop a previously cropped video (to make it even smaller) you have to add the previous crop values to those of the second pass to actually make the cropped area smaller (if this is your intention).

To crop a 1920x1080 pixel FullHD video area in the exact centre of a 4k source video, set x-offset to 960 which is 3840 minus 1920 devided by 2, set the y-offset to 540 which is 2160 minus 1080 devided by 2, set the width to 1920 and the height to 1080 while also making sure that source video resolution has been confirmed to be set to 3840x2160.

In the cropping sub-menu, you'll also find an option to crop the task-bar from video footage. By default, 64 pixels are cropped from the bottom of a video. This value is customizable via the AVConvert - global settings menu.

To make the cropped dimensions of a video permanent and irreversible, you can use one of AVC's non-lossless video conversion options like resize - even to the same resolution -, resize incl. adding title, text or logo overlays, etc.. This will permanently discard the previously hidden areas and render them unrecoverable.

Also keep in mind that it's a smart idea to first crop video footage before overlaying something. Otherwise, you might crop areas where something had been overlaid earlier.

The last four menu options in this menu let you specify the source video's resolution which is important for AVC to know in order to correctly crop videos that had already been cropped before.

2.7. "AVConvert - crop settings templates ..."

In this menu you can save the settings for cropping videos in templates, reload saved templates and edit cropping templates. The first menu entry allows the currently valid settings to be re-used to crop other videos in the same way.

The second entry allows you to save the current cropping settings as a template. For this purpose, the currently valid crop values are saved in a text file and are then displayed. If necessary, you can still make changes to the values here or simply save the file, preferably under a custom template name in the "AVConvert\USER\Crop" sub-folder. In the template file, the first number listed represents the x offset of the crop, i. e. how many pixels are going to be cropped from the left edge of the source video. The second value is the y offset and specifies how much to crop from the top edge of the source video. The third value determines the width of the new video that is being cut out of the source video. The fourth value is the height of the cropped area and the last two values must match the width and height of the source video. Make sure that all the values you enter are divisible by 2! AVC cannot check the values you enter for errors or plausibility.

The next menu option in the video crop sub-menu allows you to open the current cropping settings to view or edit them. Make sure to save the file if you have made any changes to it. Then, use the next sub-menu entry to activate your changes. If you skip this step, your changes won't be taken into account during the next cropping process.

The last sub-menu entry allows you to conveniently import cropping settings of a cropping template file that you had previously right-clicked and its file name memorized.

2.8. "AVConvert - transcode video and special video effects ..."

By clicking on one of the transcoding option entries in this menu you can losslessly transcode MOV videos (or MP4 videos in case you right clicked an MP4) into a MKV video container or transcode MKV videos into MP4 or MXF. The option to transcode to MKV is very useful since various advanced video editing functions of AVC are not available in the AVI, MOV, M4V, MP4, MPG, VOB or WebM context menus but only in the MKV context menu.

In the MKV context menu, this option allows to losslessly transcode a video to MP4 or MXF, either keeping the original audio or replacing it with AAC audio. Be aware that the MP4 video container is very limited with regard to the video and audio stream formats it can contain. It can contain only compressed formats which means that you can not have uncompressed WAV audio in an MP4 video file. If the transcoding process failed, the MKV source video contained an MP4-incompatible video or audio stream.

The "smart phone portrait-orientation" menu entry allows to convert portrait-orientation smart phone video footage that shows large black borders on the left and the right when watched on a 16 by 9 screen into a 16 by 9 video without black borders. A blurred copy of the original footage is put into the background.

The "reverse video" option converts the video so that it plays backwards. I'd recommend applying this effect only to very small sections that you extracted losslessly since the reversing filter must load the entire portion into the RAM before it can apply the reversing effect.

The last menu entries allow you to convert video files to different variants of the ProRes format.

2.9. "AVConvert - convert video (incl. overlays) ..."

You can use this menu to resize your videos to the currently set output resolution of AVC. Video output resolution can be specified in "AVConvert - set A/V resolution/encoding quality" sub-menu, accessible via the folder/desktop background context-menu. A temporary title image, custom text caption or a permanent logo will be overlaid at the same time if any of those had been specified beforehand. You can decide to either keep (i. e. copy) the original audio stream or to convert the source video's audio to AAC in the same conversion process. It's important to know that by default AVC will insert key frames which are fully encoded video frames into the target video every 0.5 seconds and also at every scene change during any type of video conversion. This is with regard to the fact that video footage can only be cut losslessly at key frames. The more key frame occurrences there are in a video, the more precisely you can edit it losslessly.

As mentioned before, overlays will automatically get included into the output video, unless blank overlays had been specified. Regarding title image overlays, you can choose whether the title image should appear abruptly or should be faded in and out smoothly.

Clicking on one of the six "start process" options A1 through C2 launches the actual conversion process. Depending on the option you choose, AVC will include possible overlays and either copy the original audio or convert it to AAC. Options C1 and C2 will encode the video in 2 passes which takes approximately 50% longer but produces smaller files which have still the same image quality than the larger single-pass files. When choosing a 2-pass conversion option, you cannot have a title image overlay fade in and out. It can only appear abruptly.

2.10. "AVConvert - trim video losslessly ..."

This menu allows you to losslessly trim video footage blazingly fast and without quality loss! The relevant video data will only be copied over to the trimmed output file at maximum hard drive copying speed. In the first step, click on the first sub-menu entry and enter the desired cut in point. Video footage before this point will not be copied to the output video. The format for entering the time is 00:00:00 (hh:mm:ss, all seperated by collons), 00:00:00 is the default value for the start time which means nothing is cut off from the beginning of the video by default. You can add a decimal suffix to the time (like 00:03:48.5) to increase cutting accuracy but the actual outcome depends on the key-frame frequency of the source video.

If necessary, save the edited start time and then click on entry 2 to specify the cut-out point. The time format is identical to that of the start time, the default value is 00:00:10. If you only want to crop a portion at the beginning of a video but not at the end, set the cut-out value to a time that is beyond that of the video's length. Finally click on "start trimming process". As mentioned before, the timing accuracy of lossless trimming is determined by the frequency of key-frames present in the video file. If you had previously converted the video footage using one of AVC's video conversion options, the key-frame frequency and therefore the cutting accuracy is 0.5 seconds or better.

In the last entry of this sub-menu, you can specify whether AVC should convert the original audio in the video file to AAC while trimming.

2.11. "AVConvert - concatenate videos losslessly ..."

Using this feature, you can losslessly concatenate any number of video files (which must all have absolutely identical media parameters) into a single video in just a few seconds. This feature is one of the most powerful and impressive ones in AVC and outshines many other video programs in terms of speed and output quality!

Right-click on any of the videos to enter the video file type's context menu. You don't have to right-click on a specific video here. Then, click on the first sub-menu item of the menu "AVConvert - concatenate videos losslessly" to create a list of all the video files of the clicked file type in the folder. You will instantly find a new text file named "concat_video_list_MOV.txt" in the folder (assuming you had right-clicked an MOV file). The newly created text file contains an alphabetical list of all videos of the respective video format in that folder.

If you want to concatenate all videos listed in the text file in exactly this order, right-click again on any video file of the file type in question and select "2 concatenate videos from MOV list" from the concatenation menu (using the MOV extension as an example here - you could also concatenate MKV and MP4 files). Since AVC only copies data and doesn't re-compress anything, the speed of the concatenation is only limited by the read and write speeds of your hard drive. In other words, concatenation completes blazingly fast while both video and audio quality remain entirely unaffected! After the concatenation process has ended, you will find the concatenated "videos_concat.mov" file in the folder. Concatenate an hour worth of 4k video footage without quality loss in only 20 seconds! This is where using M.2 and SSD drives (and AVConvert) really pays off!

If you don't want all the videos in the list to be concatenated or you want to change the concatenation order, open the text file in a plain text editor and delete the lines of the clips you don't want to include or rearrange lines as you like. Just make sure to keep the specific formatting of the entries unchanged and to save your changes! Then, go back to the MOV context menu and trigger the concatenation command. You'll soon realize that this feature is among the most powerful ones in AVConvert! Concatenation is so fast that you can easily try out completely different video clip sequences, even when dealing with large amounts of or long video clips - and all this without any loss of quality! As you can imagine, with traditional video programs, this is an extremely time-consuming task considering the time it takes to render every time anew after every change you make! Even the tiniest change requires the entire output video to be re-rendered. This is where AVC can play its biggest trump card: Altering the concatenation sequence requires you to edit the entries in the text file, which can be accomplished in just a few seconds, however, the concatenation process itself will still always complete within the same few moments, regardless the amount or magnitude of changes that you had made!

Important notice: Please make sure that no concatenation file ("videos - concat.mov" or "videos - concat.mkv" or "videos - concat.mp4") is listed in the concatenation list text file when you trigger a new concatenation process because otherwise the new concatenation process will attempt to concatenate itself over and over again, causing the new concat file to grow until it eventually fills up the entire storage space on the drive.

Also note that concatenating media files that are not structured identically (e. g. originating from different cameras) can lead to very loud audio glitches during playback, among other issues! You can only properly concatenate video material from different sources without risk if you had brought it "to a common denominator" with AVC in terms of format, for example, by converting everything to 2160p while possibly including overlays like a text caption, a title image and/or a logo during the same conversion pass.

2.12. "AVConvert - extract still images from video ..."

In this menu you can save a customizable section of a video as a sequence of separate JPG still images. In the first step, specify the starting second in the video from which onwards frames are to be extracted. In the second step, you can set the length of the extraction section. In the third step, you can determine how many images per second should be saved from the video section you have defined. The default value is 1, which means that a single image per second is extracted from the video. If you enter 5 here, five frames from each second of video of the section you defined will be saved as still images. On the other hand, entering 0.5 will extract only one still image every 2 seconds. Clicking on the last menu item starts the extraction process. The extracted images will receive the same name as the video file from which they were extracted. However, the file name is supplemented by information about the selected extraction area and an ascending four-digit image number. You can theoretically extract up to 9,999 separate images from a video which covers more than 6.5 minutes for a video that has a frame rate of 25 fps.

Please note that the extraction process may take quite a long time and that you may find a large number of identical still images after the extraction process. This is because, depending on the starting location you specified for the extraction, AVC may encounter non-key-frames at that starting point. Those images cannot be properly extracted since they don't contain the full image information but AVC will still continue extracting frames until eventually encountering the first key frame. From that point on, all images should get extracted properly. Just delete all unneeded still images after the extraction process completed. If a relevant section of the video is not properly extracted to still images, try expanding the extraction range by one or two seconds at the start and the end. This ensures that you will be getting the section of interest extracted properly.

The extraction process can be sped up by a lot by cutting the relevant section from the video out losslessly into a separate file beforehand and then extracting the still images from the shorter file.

2.13. "AVConvert - create animated GIF from video ..."

In this menu you can specify parameters to create animated GIFs from videos. The first two sub-menu entries allow you to specify the starting point and the length of the portion that you want to convert. Default starting time is 0 seconds and the default length is 9 seconds. The third entry allows you to specify the output height of the animated GIF file. Default output height is 720 pixels.

2.14. "AVConvert - rotate video ..."

In this menu you can rotate and/or flip (or in other words: mirror) video footage in 90° steps. This process requires video data re-compression. Depending on the source video format, rotation may or may not work as expected. Sometimes, it may be necessary to perform two or more subsequent rotations to get to the desired orientation. Unfortunately, there is no standard for rotating or aligning videos. As always, target video resolution depends on the global video output resolution currently set in AVC. As video data has to be re-compressed while it is being rotated, it may be beneficial to choose 2160p resolution for the intermediate rotation steps to keep quality loss at a minimum.

2.15. "AVConvert - zoom into video ..."

In this menu you can slowly zoom into a video. First, set the speed for the zooming effect (default: 1). Please make sure that you have set the AVConvert frame rate to match that of the source video (in the folder/desktop background AVConvert overlay settings context menu)! Else, video and audio will get out of sync. This requirement only exists for this "zoom into video" function. Clicking on the second menu entry, you can launch the conversion process.

If a title or a logo overlay had been specified, those will get inserted while creating a zoomed-in video! Please use AVC's folder/desktop background overlay settings context menu to specify or temporarily disable overlay images or overlaid text.

2.16. "AVConvert - overlay video over video ..."

This menu allows you to overlay one video over another video or stacking up to three videos horizontally. The video you right-clicked will be the one in the background or the one on the left). Right-click the video file that you want to have superimposed and choose "AVConvert - memorize this file's name ..." and then click on "as 1st video overlay file". Back in the "overlay video over video" sub-menu, the first eight sub-menu entries A1 through A8 allow you to specify the starting and end points of the video overlay as well as the duration and the size of the overlaid video (all values in pixels). It is best to try different values for the height value since the size of the overlay in the final output video depends on several factors, so that the result is not always predictable, especially when background and foreground video resolutions differ and another resizing pass is carried out during the overlaying process.

The overlay video can be placed anywhere on top of the background video. If the overlay video shall be overlaid horizontally and vertically centered which is the default position, leave the default values which are capital W minus small w devided by 2 for horizontal centering and capital H minus small h devided by 2 for vertical centering unaltered. The same applies to the height values of the videos, also given as capital H and small h.

There are sub-menu entries that allow you to determine the volumes of both video's audio streams in the final output video. A value of 1 keeps the original volume, 0 means that the audio stream will be muted. Use decimal values between 0 and 1 to adjust the streams' volumes to your liking (0.5 meaning half the original volume, 1.5 meaning 50% louder than originally).

Click on the A8 sub-menu item to start the rendering process. Sub-menu items B1 and B2 allow you to horizontally stack 2 videos in different ways. You can choose whether you wanna combine the cropped left half of the left video with the cropped right half of the right video or you can combine the cropped centre sections of both videos (like in a 2-person talking-heads situation). 

Sub-menu items C1 and C2 allow you to horizontally stack the frames of 2 videos next to each other (obviously scaled down to completely fit the output frame). By default, the resulting empty space around the videos will be padded in solid black but the background colour can be customized.

Sub-menu item D allows you to put a user-definable image into the background of the 2 horizontally stacked videos.

Finally, sub-menu item E. allows you to stack the cropped, centered sections of 3 videos horizontally (like with 3 talking heads).

2.17. "AVConvert - overlay still image over video ..."

This menu allows you to overlay a still image over video footage. This function will use the image file that you had specified by right-clicking the image file and choosing "AVConvert - memorize this file's name". You can choose to have a thin black border added to the overlaid image or not. You can also choose to have the background video blurred or not. The image file will have a very slow zooming effect applied to it. If a logo overlay file is specified, it will get overlaid as well during the creation of the output video.

2.18. "AVConvert - super slowmo (incl. logo) ..."

Using this menu you can create very smooth slow motion videos. You can choose a factor of x1.5, x2, x3 or x4. The process is obviously not lossless and requires video re-compression. This process may take quite a long time since a large number of intermediate interpolated images has to be generated. When opting for a slow-down factor of x4, the process can take around 120 times the running time of the original video depending on the specs of the computer. A single second of video may take around 2 minutes to render! I'd recommend using this feature only with video clips that are a few seconds long. You may want to first cut out the video section losslessly and then apply the slowmo effect to this shorter file to speed up the process. The interpolation process can produce noticeable artefacts notably with fast moving content in the video.

With the sub-menu items of the super slowmo context-menu, you can embed a logo in the slowed down video so that only a single lossy recompression process is required which in turn yields less artefacts. If necessary, please read the detailed explanations regarding the logo integration steps in the logo insertion section for the folder/desktop background context-menu (section 5).

2.19. "AVConvert - speed-up video ..."

In this menu you can increase the frame rate of videos losslessly so that the video is played back faster. Possible target frame rate options are 24 fps, 25 fps, 29.97 fps, 30 fps and 50 fps (up to 100 fps from 25 fps footage). Simultaneously, the audio is converted to AAC and stretched to the new video length while preserving its original pitch.

For example, if your source video has a frame rate of 25 fps, select an entry in the frame rate sub-menu that starts with "from 25 to" and then specify the desired target frame rate (e. g.: "from 25 to 30 fps"). Unfortunately, the resulting videos will not always play back smoothly. However, it helps if you then convert the speed-changed video with one of AVC's video conversion options, preferably one that includes overlays at the same time in oder to subject the video to only a single re-compression pass.

2.20. "AVConvert - slow down video ..."

In this menu you can losslessly reduce the frame rate of videos so that it is played back slower. Possible target frame rate options are 23.976 fps, 24 fps, 25 fps, 29.97 fps and 30 fps. Simultaneously, the audio is converted to AAC and stretched to the new video length while preserving the original pitch. For instance, if your source video has a frame rate of 30 fps, select an entry in the frame rate sub-menu that begins with "from 30 to" and then specify the desired target frame rate (e. g. "from 30 to 24 fps"). Unfortunately, the resulting videos will not always play back smoothly. However, it helps if you then convert the speed-changed video with one of AVC's video conversion options, preferably one that includes overlays at the same time in oder to subject the video to only a single re-compression pass.

The last menu entry allows you to convert variable frame rate (VFR) videos from smart phones to constant frame rate (CFR) which then allows them getting concatenated with regular CFR video footage. However, be aware that the result of such a frame rate mode conversion can't be predicted. The resulting video might play back in slow motion or sped up. This is a known issue when dealing with variable frame rate, notably if you intend to mix such footage with regular, constant frame rate material.

2.21. "AVConvert - memorize this file's name ..."

This menu entry allows you to have the right-clicked video file's path and name saved into a text file in order to later use this video as an overlay video over another video. In the sub-menu, you can choose whether you want to have the file's name saved as the primary or secondary overlay video (for the 2 or 3 talking heads).

3. Context menus when right-clicking JPG image files

3.1. "AVConvert - change aspect ratio for JPG images ..."

In this menu you can change the aspect ratio of all currently selected JPG images in a folder to 16 by 9. This is useful if you do not want to have black borders on the sides of your images when you create slide-show videos from those images with AVC. One of the first 3 sub-menu entries should be used if the source images have an aspect ratio that is narrower than 16 by 9 (like portrait-orientation images) while the last two sub-menu options should be used when the source images have an aspect ratio wider than 16 by 9 (like some very wide smart phone images). Choosing the wrong/inappropriate option will produce no output image.

The first option will zoom into the original image until its black borders are gone. The following options will add an enlarged, blurred copy of the original image behind it as a background as often seen with portrait-orientation smart phone videos on TV or YouTube. One of these options will retain the original image size whereas the other one will resize it to the output resolution currently set in AVC.

The last two options crop the sides of images larger than 16 by 9, either with or without simultaneous resizing taking place.

3.2. "AVConvert - create 1-JPG video incl. music"

In this menu you can very easily create a video from a single JPG image and add an audio/music bed to it. First, right-click the audio file and then click on "AVConvert - memorize this file's name". Now, right-click the JPG image and click on "AVConvert - create 1-JPG video incl. music". The output video will be created in the video resolution currently set in AVC and will automatically have the length of the audio file.

3.3. "AVConvert - 1-JPG video incl. title, logo + music ..."

In this menu you can create a video from a single JPG image and at the same time underlay the video with the sound of an audio file. If previously set, a temporary title image, a text caption and/or a permanent logo will get overlaid over the resulting video. The video is created in the length of the audio file and in the video output resolution currently set in AVC. This option only works properly with images in 16 by 9 aspect ratio. When using images in other formats, the overlays may not appear correctly and the aspect ratio of the images will be distorted. You may use one of the "change aspect ratio" image conversion options mentioned above to convert all your images to 16 by 9 aspect ratio prior to using the 1-JPG video option.

By choosing either option A or B, you can decide whether a slow zooming effect is applied to the still image or not. Options C1 and C2 allow you to change the speed of the zooming effect and the duration before the zoom gets reset and starts over again.

Options C3a and C3b allow you to choose whether a possible title overlay will get inserted abruptly or by smoothly fading it in/out.

Option D allows you to very quickly batch-overlay a title and/or logo overlay over all currently selected JPG images in a folder in a single step.

3.4. "AVConvert - create slide-show video from JPGs ..."

In this menu you can quickly and easily create a slide-show video from all JPG images in a folder. Please make sure to remove special characters from the JPG file names prior to attempting to create the slide-show since FFmpeg has trouble with file names containing those characters and will immediately abort the slide-show creation process.

Right-click on any of the JPG images in the folder to open the JPG context menu. Now, click on the entry "AVConvert - create slide-show video from JPGs ..." and then on the entry "1 create a list of all JPG images in the folder". A text file labeled "concat_image_list_JPG.txt" is created, in which all JPG images of the folder are listed alphabetically.

If you want to include all the images in your slide show video in this alphabetical order, you can go straight to the next sub-menu item, otherwise open the text file and delete any lines with image entries you don't wanna include or rearrange the order of the entries to your liking. Be careful not to change the formatting of the entries! Finally, save the file.

In the following sub-menu item "2 define display duration for images (in seconds)" you can set how long each image is shown in the slide-show before the transition to the next image occurs. The default value is 4 seconds.

To finally create the slide-show video, either click on entry 3a or 3b depending on whether you wanna have a possible title overlay appear and disappear abruptly or smoothly via fade in/out. The slide-show video will be created in the current AVC video output resolution with silence as the audio.

3.5. "AVConvert - create video from JPG still images ..."

You can use this menu to create a slide-show video from JPG still images in a folder in a slightly different way. This feature is designed to create time-lapses. The images will not cross-fade. They must be in 16 by 9 format! Please make sure to remove special characters from the JPG file names prior to attempting to create the slide-show since FFmpeg has trouble with file names containing these characters and will immediately abort the slide-show creation process.

In the sub-menu, you have the option to determine the number of images shown per second. The default value is 0.25, which means that every image will get shown for 4 seconds and the following image will occur abruptly without a smooth transitioning effect. If you set the number of images per second to 1, a new image will be displayed every second and if you enter a value greater than 1, you'll get a time-lapse effect or the effect of quickly browsing through an image gallery. In the first step, create the list of all images in the folder. Then, enter the desired value for the images per second and finally click on the last sub-menu entry to start creating the video.

4. Context menu when right-clicking animated GIF files

4.1. "AVConvert - convert to MKV video, silence audio"

In this menu you can convert an animated GIF file to an MKV video file incl. silent AAC audio. The resulting video will have near-1080p dimensions, depending on the aspect ratio of the original file.

5. Context menu when right-clicking TXT files

5.1. "AVConvert - memorize this file's name ..."

This context menu entry is useful when you want to load a cropping template file. Right-click the txt file and then click on this menu entry to load the files content. The respective cropping parameters are active immediately.

6. Context menu when right-clicking in the folder/desktop background

6.1. "AVConvert - record screen video ..."

In this menu you can create a video of what's currently happening on your screen. In order for this to work reliably on most computers, screen video recordings are made at only 12 frames per second and without audio! You can later use AVC's muxing feature to losslessly add audio that has been prepared separately.

Make sure to first specify a storage folder for your screen videos in AVC's global settings menu, accessible via the folder or desktop background context menu. Important: Be sure to include a backslash at the end of the path name like in D:\My screen videos\ or else the path will not be recognized correctly!

In the global settings menu you can also determine whether the mouse pointer should be included into screen videos or not. By default it will be included. Any currently specified insert title, text or logo overlay will be inserted into the screen video during its creation! If you don't want to include any of those overlays, either disable them in the overlay settings menu or specify blank images and make sure the text overlay file is empty.

The sub-menu entry A. of the screen video menu allows you to record a full-screen video. Using this option, output video is always resized to 1080p, regardless the actual size of the screen and regardless the settings made in AVC's video encoding quality menu. In case you do want to include overlays, make sure that they are in 1080p resolution. 

Sub-menu entry B. allows you to record the entire desktop on a 4k screen in up to 2160p. This also happens at a reduced frame rate of 12 fps and with no audio being recorded. The frame rate is reduced because screen capturing in 4k resolution is a very challenging task for most computers. The reduced frame rate helps avoiding lost frames. Even if frames do get lost, you will probably not notice it. Also, you can add a fitting audio stream later which will conceal any possible video glitches. You can choose to have the output video resized to your desired output resolution during the capturing process and you can also opt to include title, text and/or logo overlays. Be sure to specify 4k-resolution overlay files in this case.

6.2. "AVConvert - settings for text overlays ..."

This menu allows you to manage all text overlay-related settings like the name of font being used and the font's size.

6.3. "AVConvert - settings for title image and logo overlays ..."

This menu allows you to manage various image overlay-related settings. Among other things, you can disable and re-enable overlays temporarily.

Title insert and logo overlay files are PNG files with transparency and the content already located at the desired location in the image. The overlay images must match the resolution of the source video they are to be overlaid over. To specify a title image or a logo overlay image, right-click the desired image file and pick one of the two menu entries "AVConvert - set this file as title overlay" or "AVConvert - set this file as logo overlay". You should create title and logo overlay image files in all source video resolutions that you are going to work with because you must always use the title/logo in the resolution of the source video regardless the planned output resolution.

Overlay files in 4k resolution must be 3840x2160 pixels in size. Use 2560x1440 pixels for 2k, 1920x1080 pixels for FullHD and 1280x720 pixels for HD overlay files. All these sizes are 16 by 9 aspect ratio. AVC comes with a few of my own titles and logos, all of them in multiple resolutions to match every possible source video resolution. If you saved your own overlay files into the AVConvert/Logos sub-folder (which is not a requirement), make sure to back up your files to an alternate location to avoid them being overwritten or deleted during an AVConvert update process or simply do not delete/overwrite the current Logos folder during an update process to avoid losing your files!

6.4. "AVConvert - open currently set overlay images ..."

This menu allows you to view the current AVConvert overlay image files in the system's default image viewer.

6.5. "AVConvert - set A/V resolution/encoding quality ..."

This menu allows you to set the video output resolution used in AVC while re-compressing video files. Options are 720p, 1080p, 1440p (which is 2k) and 2160p (which is 4k), the default resolution is 2160p. The resolution which is currently effective has a "+" behind it. You can also set the AVC conversion quality to High Quality or Low Quality for video and audio respectively. Default setting is HiQ for both audio and video encoding. The LoQ settings cut the encoding bit rate of video or audio respectively in half. The currently active setting has a "+" behind it.

The "specify custom audio volume change" option allows you to specify the amount of volume change that AVC applies during the audio format conversion triggered via the menu entry "AVConvert - audio format conversion" "convert audio in video file to AAC incl. custom volume change" that can be found in the context-menu of MKV files. By default, the audio level will get boosted by +6 dB.
Finally, you can set the preferred JPG image aspect ratio that is used for JPG slide-show creation. Default aspect ratio is 16 by 9 which is the preferred one since it works best with all of AVC's still-image-to-video options.

6.6. "AVConvert - global settings..."

This menu allows you to view and edit AVC's global parameters. First, specify your preferred output video frame rate. The default value is 25 fps. Next, specify the folder where screen videos will be saved. Important: Make sure to include a backslash at the end of the path name or else the path will not be recognized correctly!

The next menu entry allows you to determine whether the mouse pointer will get included into screen videos or not. The following option allows you to specify the taskbar height which is relevant when using the "losslessly crop taskbar" feature in the cropping menu of video files.

Clicking on the next menu entry, you can view all AVConvert settings at once including annotations. The following menu entry allows you to reset all customizable AVConvert settings to their defaults. The output frame rate is the only setting that is not reset and instead remains as it is.

The next menu entry allows you to entirely unregister AVConvert from your system in order to completely remove it or to update it to a newer version. The following entry allows you to open the AVConvert PDF help file. Next, you can open AVConvert's web page in your default browser and the last menu entry allows you to display the FFmpeg version currently used by AVConvert.

6.7. "AVConvert - show current settings ..."

This menu is meant to give you an ovewrview over the most important settings currently being effective in AVConvert like video output resolution, video output frame rate, current encoding quality modes and the current overlay files. There are options to view the current overlay files and to highlight them in Windows Explorer. Another option allows to highlight the currently memorized audio file in Windows Explorer.

6.8. "AVConvert - temporarily disable AVConvert context-menus"

This menu entry allows you to temporarily disable all AVC menu entries in case you want to temporarily tidy up your context-menus. After you disabled the context-menus, there will be only three context-menu entries left in the folder/desktop background context-menu:

1. A menu entry to re-enable AVConvert context-menus
2. A menu entry to entirely unregister ("uninstall") AVConvert
3. The menu entry that displays the currently installed AVConvert version

6.9. "AVConvert - current version: [date]"

This menu item shows the AVConvert version currently installed.

Hints and tips

    • For more information and video tutorials regarding AVConvert, please visit my AVConvert YouTube playlist at:
https://www.youtube.com/@SonicAxiom/videos
      
    • Batch processing multiple files can put a very heavy load on your computer and might freeze or even crash it! Select a reasonable amount of files, notably video files, for batch conversion or transcoding.
      
    • If the DOS conversion process window terminates immediately, this indicates that the chosen option could not be performed. This may happen when you try to extract a specific audio stream from a video which does not exist or does not match the format you clicked on. If a video contains multiple audio streams and you want to extract a specific one of them, make sure to pick the stream extraction option that has the correct number and the matching format.
      
    • An AVConvert process may also abort if file names contain special characters since FFmpeg cannot handle those correctly.
      
    • Make sure to choose the correct audio format when extracting audio from a video file. If you choose to extract AC3 from an MPG file that does not have AC3 audio in it, AVConvert will do nothing. AVConvert cannot determine what type of audio is actually present in a video file. Use MediaInfo or MediaTab to determine the exact media file properties prior to launching the extraction process.
      
    • Working with M4V files that are DRM-copyright-protected will probably result in no or empty output files.

Donation

I'm providing this utility free of charge. However, if you find it useful, please consider donating an amount of your choice by hitting the PayPal button on my VST plugin web page. Any amount is appreciated. Thank you in advance!

https://www.audioworld.de/AudioWorld%20AVConvert_e.php

The transaction page ID will read: YQRRP2HQ5CQN2
Payment reference: AW VST plugin

Known issues

• make sure to have no special characters in the path where you extract AVConvert

• if you want to use special characters in text caption overlays (for instance German characters), please make sure to set the text file encoding type to "UTF-8" in the save dialog of the Windows plain text editor. Else, some characters might not show at all or they are replaced by gibberish.

• Conversion of MPG and VOB source files containing DVD mpeg video and mp2 audio will probably fail due to unknown reasons. Convert those files with a free third-party app like "Video to Video".

• some conversion processes involving OGG Vorbis audio may fail for unknown reasons.

Important disclaimer

This software is provided as is in the hope that it will be useful. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Make sure to thoroughly check the processed media files before deleting your precious source files!
I refuse any liability for negative side-effects following the use of this software like file corruption, computer malfunctions or data loss!

This manual is a constant work in progress. It may not always reflect all the latest changes made to AVConvert.

Contact

sonicaxiom@online.de

This document is SonicAxioms AVConvert help file in plain text, created on 2024-05-05.
© 2024 by SonicAxiom