How can i open h264 video files in virtualdub?

Question

First the video files was mp4 then i converted them to avi files. Now that they are avi files when i try to open a video file in virtualdub i'm getting this error:

Couldn't locat decompressor for format h264 (unknown) virtualdub requires video for windows vfw compaitable decompress ...etc

What i did so far ?

Install ffdshow in configuration i changed not to disable h264 and all others in decoder.

I installed divx

I have virtualdub 1.10.4 Now i'm using ffdshow 32bit i tried 64bit before

I have windows 8.1 pro 64bit

Tried almost or anything i found in google nothing worked so far. I wanted to open the original mp4 video files in virtualdub but nothing worked so i converted it to avi but also not working.

What else can i do ? Maybe there is another program like virtualdub that it will work ?

Answer 1

You need to install the h.264 VFW codec here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/ Just close VirtualDub beforehand, and pick the default options in the installer. Worked like a charm for me.

AFAIK the file being MP4 or AVI is unimportant, it's just a change of "container", ie. what's inside both files is a h.264 encoded video channel.

Caveat: as mentioned by Ivo Kostić in another answer, it doesn't work well with interlaced x264 (I have no experience with that, I just thought this important fact should also appear in the "top" answer).

Answer 2

I used the VirtualDub FFmpeg Input Driver Plugin, Direct sourcforge page

1. Download
2. Copy files to the plugins folders in the virtualdub directory
3. Restarted virtualdub

Answer 3

and no matter what you do currently x264vfw (either as standalone as mentioned by ghis, or via ffdshow's vfw config (decoder options)) doesn't work well with interlaced h264, it doubles the framerate and then it's not really usable esp. if you just wanna cut video in 'direct stream copy mode'.

a bug that probably won't be fixed.