Avidemux vs. Hybrid vs. AviSynth for encoding/deinterlacing?
 

I recently learned you cannot capture directly to MPEG2 with VirtualDub, so I need to encode my captures.

I'm starting out with HuffYUV captures from VDub, and my main goal is to encode them for streaming.

I've seen people recommend each of these three programs for encoding, or for deinterlacing, but I've also seen someone claim Avidemux is dead without explaining why. What's the difference between them?

More specifially...
Can I deinterlace with QTGMC with all of them? Is there something I can do with one I can't do with another? Is one more updated than another, or has one been updated to a bad version and it sucks now? Is there something else I'm not aware of that makes one better than the other?

Lastly, whichever one is best for what I am doing, is there a specific version I should be using?

Thanks

Never used avidemux outside of quick clip trimming and encoding, so I can't comment on that.

You can use QTGMC deinterlacing with Hybrid or Avisynth itself if you prefer manually scripting. Much prefer the ease of use with Hybrid. It's pretty much a GUI frontend to Avi/Vapoursynth. So it basically has a bunch of the useful avisynth filters, all wrapped together in a nice package. You are able to load in custom filters too and still do manually scripting in the 'custom' tab.

You can of course also use Hybrid to encode your files to different formats, such as x264 .mp4 files or ProRes for example. You can not encode to mpeg using Hybrid.

Avidemux is mostly junk now, lots of bugs for the past decade.

The sole value in it is to encode to MPEG-2 -- but DVD-Video specs only, it does lack options for better broadcast-depth settings like 4:2:2 and bitrates. It's a very narrow implementation of ffmpeg. I wish selur could add MPEG to Hybrid, but he's not familiar with it, and my coding chops are a decade out of date now (and were never great, I was mostly a reverse engineer for hacking/modding).

Honestly, anybody that recommended Avidemux in 2025 is probably somebody that should not be taken seriously as a knowledgeable user. They're just parroting outdated suggestions.

Hybrid is an amazing tool, the "Swiss knife" of typical encoding needs and filtering.

The member @selur has done an amazing job, and I've honestly never met a better independent freeware dev. Never, not in 35 years of downloading freeware (yes, that includes even BBS days). He deserves not just praise, but a donation (scroll to bottom).
--- But don't forget this site, it needs funding too!. ;)

The GUI needs some work, it's very "IT/engineering" obtuse at times. Not so user friendly, not a candy-coated newbie tool. But ask. selur will help, I'll help, others will help. It just looks daunting, but it's really quite easy*. (*When you learn to ignore most of the detailed settings that you'll rarely use, but are invaluable when you do).

Avisynth is not an encoder, and is purely a scripted language, a go-between for the source file and the encoder software. Instead of opening the video, you open the Avisynth script file (.avs), assuming the encoder knows how to handle it. Many do not, but it's because they are either too basic, or NLEs.

VERDICT = use Hybrid. :congrats:

Thank you! This is exactly the type of answer I was looking for!