The shit I put up with

So now I've spent $80 in getting a new Transmission Output sensor installed (because after all, that's what the Autozone code scanner said it was! Right??), I still have the Overdrive Off light flashing at me. They scanned it again, and that sensor error code didn't come up, so it's something deeper in the beast.

So while I have to work up the courage to call the dealer that sold me the freakin' thing, I was up late working on a video clip.

It was a 19 minute clip, originally shot in crappy Apple Quicktime MOV, in glorious 15 fps and 11025 hz audio, horribly upconverted to 44.1Khz. A file that downloaded as an FLV.

So here's what I had to do:
1. Convert to AVI - Super(c) had to do this because MediaCoder got confused. At least I got to set the resolution (352X288), aspect ratio to 4:3. I had to force the fps to 15 because MediaCoder thought it was 20fps. Well, no, it's not.

2. Use Virtualdub to amazingly resample the audio down to 11025 hz and fix the crappy raspy audio, a telltale sign the audio wasn't 44.1khz to begin with. It took a while to figure out that VirtualDub's audio filters aren't simply straightforward. You need to set up an Input Node, a Filter, and an Output Node, and on the little chart that comes up for this, you need little lines and arrows connecting stuff. Unlike the video processing where you just stack them in the order you want it performed.

3. I still have to pull out the audio as an MP3, because while the audio is fixed, the data still shows up as 11025 hz. I use Audacity to set the sample rate of the 11025 audio and the project itself back to 44100. Notice that rate is 4 times the playback rate, so I drop the speed by -50% twice. Each time doubles the playback time. 2x2 = 4. Which is what I want. The raspy audio is prevented by converting audio in this manner. Lots of digital cameras still do not save audio as CD quality, so it must be correctly converted using this method.

4. Remux the audio into the video, again using Virtualdub to copy the video stream into the new AVI. Rename this as the file I used in Movie Maker, and it slips into my project as if it was the first file I was working with. All my edits are retained, because while I was fixing the original clip's audio, I was inserting a CD quality MP3 over it in 2 places where it appears in the video. (It was a singing group with only 1 song.) Fade out the clip, fade in the song, back and forth. It works.